The Beef with Kobe – CounterPunch

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Great teams have great benches. So strong was the musical squad assembled for Kobe Bryants send-off at Los Angeless Staples Center on Monday, that even Hall of Famer Jennifer Lopez didnt rate any playing time. All the megastar got was a couple of call-and-response notes in the massed sing-along to Beyoncs XO, claimed by that singer to be Bryants all-time favorite song. Beyonc called the tune, not JayLo.

Lopez didnt even get the musical equivalent of a few layups during the warm-up. She had to sit and watch otherinferior!talents hog the limelight and pad their stats. JayLos agony must have been akin to that of the young Bryant when he was forced to come off the bench in his first two seasons with Lakers, the years just prior to the construction of Staples Center, the cathedral in which his hardwood heroicsincluding Mondays posthumous oneswere recorded and have now been enshrined. Jerseys and Jumbotron are the relics and icons of our Age.

At least JayLo had someone to hold on to while riding the bench. Her grip around boyfriend Alex Rodriguezs arm tightened noticeably during Christina Aguileras rendition of Franz Schuberts Ave Maria at the close of the ceremony. JayLo clung fervently to those infamous bi- and triceps as if they were steroid-enhanced rosary beads.

As for Aguilera, she stood saintly still during her performance even while her voice shimmied and shook. Aguileras funerary showboating ran up the score on bespectacled and beleaguered Franzand JayLo, too.

Had there been a scorers table, Aguilera might have tried to jump onto it as Bryant had done near that very spot a decade earlier after Game 7 of the NBA Finals when he won his fifth championship at Staples Center. Atop his spontaneous plinth, the demi-god extended his arms with basketball in one hand like Herculess club, as if to gather within his mighty wingspan all the confetti and adoration raining down on him.

All Aguilera could do after her star turn was beam and bask. Emcee Jimmy Kimmel then mounted the podium to remind her to stand down, making a lame joke about her singing in Italian. Mr. Kimmel take note: half-Latina Aguilera sang Schuberts wedding warhorse fully in Latin, as its always done. Because Aguilera didnt vacate the stage expeditiously, she alone got a double ovation. However odd at a memorial service, ovations at Hollywood ceremonies, whether Oscars or obsequies, come with the territory in Tinseltown.

Perhaps Lopezs antics at the recent Super Bowl in Miami had disqualified her from ascending the altar and lifting a hymn to the departed. On that Sabbath Day earlier in the month, she got vertical and twirled on a strippers pole doubling as the antenna of the Empire State Building. Hers were the motions of a slo-mo sex-copter enacted while Bryants ongoing period of mourning was still in effect. There were three songstresses Monday morning: besides Beyonc and Aguilera, Alicia Keyes appeared at the event. All had appeared in variable states of provocative undress on previous Super Sundays. But these vocal and dance athletes have been on the bench for a string of state and civic rituals. It was their time to score some points.

Beyonc opened the observances with XO and the suitably heavenly Halo. But over the ensuing two hours it was to be classical music, a confirmation of the prematurely departed Laker stars own classic status.

Before Aguileras Ave Maria, an even bigger hit had been heard: Beethovens Moonlight Sonata. It was fitting that the piece should be called on, and not just because of its somber C-sharp minor ruminations. Beethoven, too, was given a huge public funeral, estimated at some 20,000 people, about the number of people who gathered in and around Staples Center, thus a much larger percentage of Viennas population in 1827 than Bryants rites tallied in LA in 2020.

Like incense, an unsettling synchronicity hung in the air of Staples as Bryant was sainted. One expected the Zeitgeist to appear on the Jumbotron, or at least see an ad for Hegels Drive-Thru-World-of-Spirits on Hollywood Boulevard. 2020 marks the 250th year since Beethovens birth, and no one could have expected that the most famous piano piece this side of Fr Elise would reach its biggest ever global audience thanks to the untimely death of a basketball star.

According to another of the speakers, Bryants best friend and one-time agent (now the General Manager of the Lakers), Rob Pelinka, Bryant was always dreaming up romantic gestures for his wife, Vanessa, who stoically, touchingly delivered the mornings first address. Pelinka related how Bryant once found himself in a hotel suite with a piano and seized the opportunity to learn the opening bars of Beethovens sonata by ear so that he could play them for his spouse.

Pelinka then introduced the performer Alicia Keyeslike Beyonc and Aguilera, a Grammy winnerand the piece she was about to play as the Moonlit Sonata. Pelinkas unwitting grammatical transformation of the nickname was strangely appropriate, as if that musical moon were a klieg light on the movie set that is LA. At least visibility was good.

The sobriquet Moonlight for this sonata goes back to an 1823 story by the Beethoven admirer, poet and music critic, Ludwig Rellstab. Here is the scene he sets to Beethovens piano celebrated piece: A lake reposes in the faint shimmer of the moon; the waves lap softly on the dark shore; gloomy wooded mountains rise up and cut off the holy region from the world; swans glide like spirits through the water with whispering rustles, and an Aeolian harp mysteriously sounds laments of yearning lonely love down from those ruins. The passages portent now extends to a mountainside in southern California. (In Staples the harp would have to wait until Aguileras Ave Maria.) Keyes Romantic surges and shifts were more dramatic than even the impetuous Beethoven might have countenanced.

She played the piece on a piano that was purplelike the face of the new moon before a solar eclipse. Keyes was clad in matching color, her singing voice silent for these musical reflections: contemplation not cantillation was called for at this juncture in the mournful rites. An all-black string quartet made sure the sonata became a safe space by adding a shimmering halo of musical and moral support for Keyess Beethovenian encounter. Ludwig Vans production design was deemed insufficient on its own. (Aguileras string quartet was made up exclusively of white players with that heavenly harp thrown in just in case the conjuring of the pearly gates wasnt clear enough already. Separate but equal obtained among the Staples fiddlers.)

Purple piano and purple planets had aligned. A coast away from the Staples solemnities, Harvey Weinstein got done on two out of three chargesat 66%, a damn sight better than the abysmal free-throw percentage of Bryants former Lakers teammate and the last of Mondays eulogists, Shaquille ONeal. Weinstein could never soar through the air and thrill crowds, make people love him even for one magical moment.

In drop-stepping away from rape charges back in 2003, Bryants defense team had followed the tried-and-true game plan of slut-shaming the accuser and leaking her identity to the press. The nineteen-year-old woman subsequently refused to testify in court and the Colorado prosecutors dropped the charges just before trial, even though the case had looked strong. There had been blood on her undergarments and on his shirt; the woman had bruises on her neck and tears in her vaginal wall. Bryant had admitted that he had not received explicit consent from her. She later brought a civil case against him and received an undisclosed settlement. Though he publicly apologized, Bryant maintained that he had believed the sex consensual.

In the aftermath of the rape charges, Bryant shed the skin of his previous brand (Kobe Bryant) for that of Black Mambathe lethal, phallic snake that strikes in the movie, Kill Bill: Vol. 2 by Quentin Tarantino, the filmmaker whose work helped make Harvey Weinstein into a Hollywood mogul of power and prestige. The first installment of Kill Bill came out in 2003, the year of Bryants alleged assault.

With charges pending MacDonald and Coca Cola cut ties with him, Nike did not. Bryants Mamba shoe deal with that company brought him some sixteen million dollars annually.

Even for all his moves, Bryant could not completely shake the past. In 2018, after the advent of the #MeToo movement that Weinsteins depredations had ushered in, Bryant was dropped from a film festival jury. Aside from that lone referees whistle, Hollywood embraced Bryant, even as it turned on Weinstein.

In basketball, as in life and death, there are winners and losers. Weinstein received the first installment of his earthly judgement the same day Bryant was being sanctified in Staples and his constellation spread across the firmament, Beethovens music rising up towards the darkened vault from which shone the gold and purple stars 8 and 24.

Beethoven did not connect his famous sonata with moonlight. He called the piece Sonata quasi una fantasiasonata in the manner of a fantasy. The phrase bespoke freedom from constraining rules, yet the composers admirers heard a profound unity across the works three movements. One can also hear dark urges in this music. Beneath its uncanny calm lurks danger, even violence, however hard the maudlin string quartet of Keyess rendition worked to diffuse the threat.

Likewise, in Bryants life, work, and death one can trace intersecting lines, tragic vectors. Bryant was a self-styled Romantic of the hopeless variety. Dear Basketball, the short-animated film that Bryant wrote, won an Oscar in 2019, the retired star taking full advantage of his Hollywood homecourt advantage. The movie was shown again at Mondays ceremony. To his own voice-over a cartoon version of Bryant is artfully portrayed accomplishing one of his greatest athletic feats. He flies through the air, spins, and completes a reverse dunk. Its a rapturous, godlike act, the very embodiment of imagination and skill, desire and gratificationof fantasy and fulfillment. Icarus without wings, Bryant seems to defy gravity, launched as if to fly on forever. But after attaining his seemingly impossible goal of putting the rock in the hole he crashes back to earth.

Bryants legacy escapes those forces. For that to happen he had to have teammates who would sing his praisesin, on, and off court.

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The Beef with Kobe - CounterPunch

Health Care Is On Coloradans’ Minds. This Is Where The 2020 Presidential Candidates Stand – Colorado Public Radio

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George McHenry, 78, lives in Federal Heights and is also worried about prescription drug costs.A few years back, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He takes hormone treatments, which would cost more than $10,000 a month if he werent on Medicare.But McHenry, a reliably Democratic voter, considers himself lucky.

I'm aware that a lot of seniors cannot afford the cost of either drugs or care, McHenry said. And I think that's really terrible.

Maureen OMara-Sanzo, a 73-year-old from Highlands Ranch, describes herself as a conservative-liberal, or a liberal-conservative.Shes retired from the roofing industry and says her health and health care coverage Medicare, plus supplemental coverage are pretty good.But she worries about all the people who dont have health coverage they can afford and thinks people need more affordable insurance options.

It's a very crucial issue for people in terms of living and dying, she said.

President Donald Trump has promised to essentially defend the private insurance system.Hes staked out a position in opposition to Democrats, promoting an expansion of private Medicare advantage plans.

Last fall in Florida, Trump signed an executive order before a sign reading Great Health Care for You, to expand what medical savings accounts or MSAs, which some Medicare recipients make use of. In announcing the plan, he described Democrats Medicare for All as a disaster for seniors on the program.

"They want to raid Medicare to fund a thing called socialism, he said.

The Trump administration and its Republican allies in Congress have taken a number of steps to circumvent the Affordable Care Act.As NPR described last year, Republicans ditched the individual mandate, the requirement people get health coverage pay a penalty. The provision aimed to keep more healthy people insured in order to keep premiums low.

"We eliminated Obamacare's horrible, horrible, very expensive and very unfair, unpopular individual mandate. A total disaster. That was a big penalty, Trump said last fall.

The administration has taken other steps:allowing states to implement work requirements to Medicaid, ending cost-sharing subsidies to insurers, and slashing federal funding to programs aimed at helping people sign up for insurance on state exchanges.

One of the biggest moves came last spring when the Justice Department threw its weight behind a lawsuit aimed at invalidating the law.

Still, the ACA has proved resilient, with signups remaining fairly steady.

Bernie Sanders backs Medicare for All.The Vermont senators plan would expand the popular federal health program and essentially get rid of private insurance.Itd provide comprehensive care for everyone, with no out-of-pocket expenses. He says the average worker pays 20 percent of their income for health costs and his proposal would cut that sharply because we're eliminating the profiteering of the drug companies. And the insurance companies and ending this Byzantine and complex administration of thousands of separate health care plans.

Sanders has been criticized for not providing more specifics of how hed pay for his plans.He estimated on 60 Minutes last weekend that the cost of his plan would be $30 trillion over a decade.But questions remain about whether projected revenues would meet projected costs.

Sanders visited Colorado earlier this month, welcomed by a boisterous crowd of 11,000. In response to the rally, Colorado Republicans jumped on Sanders signature issue. Spokesman Kyle Kohli said the party is confident Sanders would find tough footing in the general election, due his support for the universal health care measure that Colorado voters rejected soundly in 2016.

Coloradans already made it loud and clear they have zero interest in Bernie Sanders government takeover of their health care, Kohli said.

In 2016, Sanders easily won the Colorado Democratic caucuses, capturing 59 percent of the vote, prior to a major overhaul of Colorados nomination process.

Elizabeth Warren also supports Medicare for All, although she proposes a more gradual transition.

Costs are gonna go up for billionaires, the Massachusetts senator said. They're going to go out for giant corporations, and out of pocket costs for middle class families are going to go down. It's costs that matter.

When she unveiled her plan in November, Warren said it would raise $20.5 trillion, but that middle class tax increases wouldnt pay for it.Instead, the funds would come from a variety of sources, including tax increases on the rich, cuts in spending on the military and payments to doctors. She said there would be considerable savings from a more efficient national system, in which administrative costs are expected to fall significantly.

Warren said by her third year in office, she aimed to pass legislation through Congress to complete the transition to full Medicare for All.

A number of big players in the health care world, including insurers, hospitals, drug companies and doctors groups oppose the sweeping changes in the plans of both Warren and Sanders as too far-reaching and too expensive.

Both Warren and Sanders say though their plans are expensive, theyll result in significant savings for consumers overall.

Joe Biden is among the many candidates in the Democratic field who balk at the ten-of-trillions price tag of a Medicare-for-All system. One recent poll showed a majority of Americans like both ideas, but more favor the public option.

It covers everybody. It's realistic and most importantly, it lets you choose what you want, the former vice president has said about his plan. On his website he describes it as protecting and building on Obamacare.Then-President Barack Obama signed the law into effect nearly a decade ago, on March 23, 2010.

His plan includes a public option proposal, which Biden argues would help bring costs down, without the disruption to the health system and patient care of Medicare for All. And it would give consumers a choice.

Bidens proposals echo those of some of the other candidates in the middle with goals like giving every American access to affordable health insurance, by expanding Medicare, promising a less complex system, and standing up to what his website describes as abuse of power by prescription drug corporations.Hed do that by letting Medicare directly negotiate drug prices and allowing for generally cheaper prescription drugs to be imported from Canada.

His approach has critics as well, as Politico reported when his plan was unveiled. Some progressives view the improvements hes aiming for as too cautious and incremental.Republicans blasted his plan as Obamacare 2.0, and a group of major health associations fretted that Medicare expansion would hurt hospital bottom lines.

Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor, has also come out as sharply critical of the more ambitious progressive push to expand health coverage. Medicare for All doesn't work because about 155 million people in America get their insurance from their employer. They want to keep it, Bloomberg told CPRs Colorado Matters earlier in February.

The hospitals and the doctors want to make sure that's still there as well because that's what subsidizes the people who are getting paid for by Medicaid and Medicare. He noted unions have often fought very hard and negotiated for medical benefits so they want to make sure that they continue to do that as well.

Hes also described Medicare for All as unfeasible and likely to win over key voters Democrats would need to prevail in the fall.

His plan, like Biden and others, would create a public alternative to private insurance. His website describes it as being administered by the federal government but paid for by customer premiums It aims to expand and improve on the ACA, by reversing what his campaign calls the Trump administrations attempts at sabotage.It would do that by boosting enrollment efforts, restricting the sale of skimpy health plans that dont meet ACA requirements and defending the ACA against politically motivated lawsuits.

Like Bidens proposal, Bloomberg too has drawn criticism for being too gradual.And Democrats in Congress have already been unable to get through some of his ideas, like ending surprise medical bills and lowering drug costs.

But Bloomberg touts his skills as a businessman to explain why he could succeed.

Look, in New York, I had a Republican Senate and a Democratic House and I got gay marriage through the Republican Senate. If I can do that, I can get a health care plan through a Republican Senate at a national level, he told Colorado Matters.

Pete Buttigieg also favors a more centrist approach.He backs a public option that he says would result in coverage for everyone, but that cuts cost.

The idea of my proposal, Medicare for all who want it, is that we take a version of Medicare and make it available to anybody who wants in on it without commanding people to adopt it if they'd prefer their private plan, the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor said.

Buttigieg maintains his plan would incentivize private insurers to compete on price and bring down costs.If private insurers cant offer something dramatically better, the plan would create a natural glide-path to Medicare for All, according to his website.

To make health care more accessible, the Buttigieg plan would expand subsidies for low-income people to make insurance coverage dramatically more affordable for individuals and families.

Buttigiegs proposal has drawn fire for what critics have likened to a supercharged version of the mandate to buy insurance contained in the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.Under his plan, those who dont have coverage would be automatically signed up in the government program, which could cost them thousands. His campaign told the Washington Post the payments are justified because it allows a consumer to be insured throughout the year.

Amy Klobuchar favors building on the ACA.According to her website, she thinks the quickest way to achieve universal health care is via a public option that expands the government programs Medicare and Medicaid.

What I favor is something that Barack Obama wanted to do from the very beginning, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said about her proposal.

And that is a public option, a nonprofit choice that will bring down the cost of insurance.

The senator backs changes to the ACA to reduce consumer costs like making it easier for states to implement reinsurance, something Colorado launched last year with approval from the federal government.

Klobuchar stresses the importance of making prescription drugs affordable. According to her campaign site, Klobuchar has authored proposals to lift the ban on Medicare negotiations for prescription drugs.Shed also allow personal importation of safe drugs from countries like Canada, and stop pharmaceutical companies from blocking less-expensive generic products.

Some of the toughest criticism for some of the candidates comes from their rivals.For example, Warren blasted Klobuchars plan in a recent debate as being too thin, calling it a Post-it note, insert plan here.Of Buttigiegs health proposal, Warren said, Its not a plan, its a PowerPoint.

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Health Care Is On Coloradans' Minds. This Is Where The 2020 Presidential Candidates Stand - Colorado Public Radio

The immorality of US hegemony with Ron Paul – RT

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We have a big interview for you this week. Ron Paul came on the show to discuss the multitude of corrupt practices that hold up the USA. Lee and Paul discuss the military industrial complex, the impending economic collapse, and the persecution of Julian Assange. But before the interview, Lee opens the show with fearmongering stories from the New York Times. He goes paper-shredding on their coverage of the coronavirus and a patently false story about how Bernie Sanders isn't bringing new voters into the Democratic Party.

Anders Lee finishes off the show by fact-checking the fact-checkers on one of the many stupid stories our corporate media chooses to focus on instead of discussing important issues. Michael Bloomberg's campaign released a video that had been altered with cricket sounds after he made the comment that he was the only candidate on the stage who had started a business. So, were there crickets on stage? There are two answers: No and "Why are you wasting your time with this story?"

YOUTUBEChannelRedacted Tonight

LIKERedacted Tonight atwww.Facebook.com/RedactedTonight

FOLLOWRedacted Tonight at@RedactedTonightand@LeeCamp

PODCASThttps://soundcloud.com/rttv/sets/redacted-tonight

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The immorality of US hegemony with Ron Paul - RT

Ron Paul: Trump Does The Bidding Of Deep State – The National Memo

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Reprinted with permission from Alternet

For many years, former Rep. Ron Paul was the most prominent libertarian in Congress often frustrating fellow Republicans by voting against their spending bills. Paul, now 84, left Congress in early January 2013 but still speaks out about politics. And in hisFebruary 24 columnfor the Ron Paul Institutes website, the Texas libertarian isvehemently critical of President Donald Trumpfor, as he sees it, throwing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange under the bus.

Paul hasnt always been critical of Trump. The former Texas congressman asserts that in 2016, Trump upset the Washington apple cart and set elements of the Deep State in motion against him. But Paul quickly adds that Trump has since become part of the Deep State he once challenged.

Trump loved it when WikiLeaks exposed the criminality of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party as it cheated to deprive Bernie Sanders of the Democratic Party nomination, Paul writes. WikiLeaks release of the (Democratic National Committee) e-mails exposed the deep corruption at the heart of U.S. politics, and as a candidate, Trump loved the transparency. Then Trump got elected.

Paul goes on to say that the real tragedy of the Trump presidency is nowhere better demonstrated than in Trumps 180-degree turn away from WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.

According to Paul, Trumps administration is pushing for a show trial of Assange worthy of the worst of the Soviet era and the U.S. is seeking a 175-year prison sentence.

It is ironic that a President Trump, who has been (a) victim of so much Deep State meddling, has done the Deep States bidding when it comes to Assange and WikiLeaks, Paul laments. President Trump should preempt the inevitable U.S. show trial of Assange by granting the journalist blanket pardon under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

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Ron Paul: Trump Does The Bidding Of Deep State - The National Memo

Pardon the Interrupters: meet the ska-punks with an InfoWars problem – Telegraph.co.uk

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At age 18, Aimee Allen climbed behind the wheel of her Pontiac Grand Am and left her home in Montana for the last time. Leaving behind a broken home, an abusive stepfather, and a spell in foster care, she trained her sights on the bright lights of Los Angeles. Parking her car in sight of the Hollywood sign, like thousands of others before her she plotted her course to the summit of the music industry.

The Interrupters are the fruits not of her success, but of her failure. Formed in 2011, the Angelino quartet came together at the point at which Allens career as a solo artist had rendered her lonely and broke. Her dream was to become the new Joan Jett, to whom she presented a bouquet of flowers at a concert in New York City my whole body was shaking, and I was sobbing, she said of the experience but after a decade spent wilting on the vine, it turned out that there was more power, and greater happiness, in a union.

I kind of feel that I was alone my whole life until I found The Interrupters, she says. But when I did, I finally felt like I was home. I was an orphan before, and now Ive got a family. And weve got each other. If a show goes badly, its on all of us; but if its great, then we all get to share that.

The Interrupters play a fluent and seamless mixture of modern ska and American punk rock. Prior to taking to the stages of increasingly large venues this month the quartet performed for 4000-people over two nights in London the band watch Dance Craze, a concert film from 1980 featuring performances from The Specials, The Beat, and The Selecter. On record and in concert, this 2-Tone template has been recalibrated by the Americans and dispatched across the Atlantic as if brand-new.

The curious thing about this is that a proportion of the groups audience is old enough to have bought singles such as Too Much Too Young and Mirror In The Bathroom on their days of release. As well as this, alongside the Fred Perry shirts and Harrington jackets are a sizeable contingent of young teenagers for whom The Specials are unknown history in the way that Van Halen are for Billie Eilish. With only three albums to their name, the range of ages on display at concerts by The Interrupters is the widest I have ever seen for an emerging act.

I take it as the highest compliment that in England we have people coming up to us after our shows saying I saw the Specials, I saw The Clash, and I love your band, says Kevin Bivona, the groups guitarist. The fact that they could even put us in the same sentence as those people is hard to wrap my head around.

On a cold and sunny February lunchtime, Kevin Bivona sits with Aimee Allen these days known as Aimee Interrupter in the downstairs lounge of The Interrupters double-decker tour bus. Parked outside the BBCs Maida Vale Studios, the band find themselves in Northwest London to record a five-song session for 6music. When the sound engineer in a soundproof booth isolates Bivonas Fender Telecaster guitar on the superior breakup song Gave You Everything I dont know why youre gone, I walk these floors like a country song its throttled precision sounds like something that could saw a car in half.

The pair are friendly, thoughtful, and, it seems to me, tight. When the singer requires new eyelash-extensions, so as to save time it is her band mate that buys them for her. Theyre also uncommonly wholesome; answers are peppered with words such as like and awesome you can take the band out of California, and all that - but are entirely free of swearing. This U-certificate approach even extends to the concert stage.

We make unity music, says the singer. We want everyone to feel like theyre part of a big family.

Its been 20-years since Aimee Allen arrived in Hollywood equipped with little more than a capacity to carry a tune. A waitress by day, each night she would stand outside clubs such as the Whisky A Go Go, The Viper Room, and the Roxy Theatre, on the Sunset Strip, and ask perfect strangers if theyd like to form a band. She survived these encounters unmolested, but admits today that I got really lucky.

She joined forces with an act called No Motiv with whom she played a concert that was seen by Randy Jackson, one of the judges on American Idol. Jackson promised to secure the group a recording contract. After a fashion, he did; Allen signed as a solo artist with Elektra Records in 2002.

It was at this point that her problems began. Despite working with producer Mark Ronson, Aimee Allen did not appear to be a high-priority for her new label. When Elektra was subsumed in a merger with Atlantic Records, her debut album, the fabulously titled Id Start A Revolution (If I Could Get Up In The Morning), was viewed by her new paymasters as surplus stock. 17-years on, it remains unreleased.

I wouldnt wish being a solo artist on anybody, she says. You have people on your payroll, and you dont know if theyre saying that youre amazing because they feel like they have to, or because its genuine Its really lonely because its just you. Theres nowhere to hide. I was just part of the major label machine [and] I felt like I was floating.

In 2008, Aimee Allen recorded the Ron Paul Revolution Theme Song we dont want big government, or the Bilderberg Group that pays for it - in support of Texan libertarian Congressman Ron Pauls independent bid for president. In the same year, she made the first of several appearances on Alex Jones deeply controversial InfoWars radio programme.

Ten years later, the show was removed from all online mainstream media platforms for, among other things, claiming that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings were fake, and that the parents of the 20-children murdered by gunman Alan Lanza were actors hired by the US government.

At the mention of Alex Jones and InfoWars, the temperature on The Interrupters tour bus seems to drop by about 15-degrees. A 10-second silence ensues, punctuated only by a gravid sigh of deep displeasure.

I just want to be very careful about how I answer [this], she says. Okay, yes, I regret it [appearing on the show]. But at the time, he [Alex Jones] wasnt what he became. Would I go on his show now? Hell no, obviously [But] I couldnt see the future. And, honestly, [at the time] he was just an underground conspiracy theorist. It was entertainment; it wasnt that big of a deal. I had no idea he was going to become a controversial hate-speaker. Do you know what I mean? I one hundred-percent disavow what he stands for.

One of the worst things as a musician is when you are just trying to get your music heard and somebody co-opts you to their agenda, says Kevin Bivona. It happens quite often and its something youve got to be careful of.

At this point, my interview with The Interrupters appears to be holed below the waterline. The singer says that she wants to set the record straight [but] in a way that isnt going to create more trouble for me, a response, surely, to an online article from 2014 that accused Aimee Allen of being a stooge of the alt-right, and of supporting racist positions such as Ron Pauls opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

In a thoughtful and respectful response to the piece, Bivona wrote in reply that he failed to see how you can use a young persons [sic] 2008 political songs and a few interviews she did six years ago and apply them to a creative project they are involved with [today], when you dont even know them personally.

Its perhaps worth mentioning that other performers have also appeared on InfoWars, including Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins (more than once, as it goes). Its also worth noting that The Interrupters and I do recover the ground lost during our awkward moment. But if the band display a certain skittishness about being interviewed it is almost unheard of for the singer to be questioned alone this is probably the reason why.

In the days that follow, I receive two calls from the bands organisation, one of which asks if it might be possible for Aimee to expand on her position via email.

It was a traumatic time and I deeply regret going on that show, she writes. It became a vehicle for the type of hateful rhetoric that I stand vehemently against. I would never knowingly be associated with anyone expressing racist, homophobic or any other bigoted ideals. I spend all my energy spreading love and making unity music.

The singers 11-year career as a solo artist wasnt entirely shrouded in failure. Her debut album, A Little Happiness, released in 2009, clawed its way to the lower reaches of the US Billboard Heatseekers Chart. She also collaborated with Linda Perry on the song Save Me (Wake Up Call), recorded by the punk group Unwritten Law, and scored a top-10 hit on the alternative chart. But after a decade of struggle, these relatively modest returns were not what she envisaged when she left her Northwestern broken-home.

[When I left Montana] I was just so nave and so hopeful, she says. Where I had come from was bad; anything was better than where I was from. I had a tough upbringing [and] I never felt like I fitted in. I never felt like there was a home for me. Everything just felt so alien and I felt so unconnected to things. But when I listened to [punk rock] I realised that there were people out there who were like me. I just had to find them.

This happened when Aimee Allen met Kevin Bivona while on tour supporting Sugar Ray in 2009. A studio engineer, occasional roadie, and sideman for such acts as The Transplants and Travis Barker, the pair began writing songs together for the singers solo career. But the Montanan was tired of being out in the cold, and from this the idea of a band was born. The groups rhythm section arrived in the form of the guitarists younger twin-brothers, Jesse and Justin Bivona, on drums and bass respectively.

From the start, The Interrupters were an independent concern in the classic mode of Southern Californian punk rock. The band signed to Hellcat Records, founded by Tim Armstrong, the vocalist and guitarist with Rancid, who also serves as their producer. In turn, this imprint operates under the umbrella of Epitaph Records, the most successful and influential punk label of the past 35-years, owned by Brett Gurewitz, the guitarist with Bad Religion.

For anyone who believes that punk rock has endured beyond its initial 1970s heyday and clearly it has then, here, The Interrupters are rubbing shoulders with royalty. Both men are among the finest songwriters in the movements history I had a paperback crime running straight down my spine, wrote Gurewitz in The Devil In Stitches but, just as importantly, both are happy to let their artists run riot.

In 1994, with the genre finally part of the mainstream, Mr. Brett sided with the Epitaph band NOFX in their decision not to permit MTV access to any of their videos, at the likely cost of hundreds of thousands of album sales.

The access we have to punk legends is just crazy, says Kevin Bivona.

Along with Tim Armstrong and Brett Gurewitz, The Interrupters have also met with the approval of Green Day, who they will support on the Oakland trios forthcoming North American stadium tour.

But as with most punk rock groups of their kind, the success of The Interrupters has blossomed without anyone really noticing. Despite the groups last album being the finest ska-themed outing of its kind for more than 20-years, outside of the pages of the rock press this is the first time the band have been interviewed by a mainstream publication.

Being completely honest, where we are at right now is far beyond what I could ever have imagined when I picked up a guitar when I was a kid, Kevin Bivona has told me. I am so happy and grateful for all the success that weve had. I definitely dont want to put a ceiling on how big I want the band to get. I just want to be able to keep making the music and writing the songs, and doing exactly what we do. I want us to be as big as the universe will allow us to get.

Fight the Good Fight by The Interrupters is available now on Hellcat Records

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Pardon the Interrupters: meet the ska-punks with an InfoWars problem - Telegraph.co.uk

Amgen To Present At The Cowen 40th Annual Healthcare Conference – BioSpace

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THOUSAND OAKS, Calif., Feb. 27, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) will present at theCowen 40th Annual Healthcare Conference at11:20a.m.ET onMonday,March2,2020 in Boston. Peter H. Griffith, executive vice president and chief financial officer, and Murdo Gordon, executive vice president of Global Commercial Operations at Amgen will present.Live audio of the presentation can be accessed from the Events Calendar on Amgen's website,www.amgen.com, under Investors.A replay of the webcast will also be available on Amgen's website forat least90 days following the event.

About AmgenAmgen is committed to unlocking the potential of biology for patients suffering from serious illnesses by discovering, developing, manufacturing and delivering innovative human therapeutics. This approach begins by using tools like advanced human genetics to unravel the complexities of disease and understand the fundamentals of human biology.

Amgen focuses on areas of high unmet medical need and leverages its expertise to strive for solutions that improve health outcomes and dramatically improve people's lives. A biotechnology pioneer since 1980, Amgen has grown to beone ofthe world'sleadingindependent biotechnology companies, has reached millions of patients around the world and is developing a pipeline of medicines with breakaway potential.

For more information, visitwww.amgen.comand follow us onwww.twitter.com/amgen.

CONTACT: Amgen, Thousand OaksMegan Fox, 805-447-1423 (media)Trish Hawkins, 805-447-5631(media)Arvind Sood, 805-447-1060 (investors)

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Working on ‘the human side’ of heritable cancers – Penn: Office of University Communications

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I love working with people, says Allison Werner-Lin of the School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2). Werner-Lins office overlooking Locust Walk is homey and lamp-lit, with student gifts sharing space with scholarly tomes. This is just one of her workspaces, however. Recently returned from sabbatical, Werner-Lin has been working with the National Cancer Institute (NCI), as well as out of her home in upstate New York, which doubles as a private practice for families seeking bereavement therapy. The divide between academia and clinical practice suits her. I feel like I have one foot in each world and in a very positive way, Werner-Lin says.

Werner-Lin has extensive clinical and research experience and uses both to inform her work, which centers on heritable cancers. She began her academic work studying young adults with mutations in genes associated with breast and ovarian cancer, BRCA1 and BRCA2. Recently, her work with the NCI has branched out to the study of Li-Fraumeni syndrome (LFS). Patients with LFS have a mutation in a tumor-suppression gene, resulting in a high incidence of cancer starting in childhood, and 50% of LFS patients develop cancer by age 40. Both patient populations make life-altering decisions based upon their family histories and medical diagnoses.

Dr. Werner-Lins groundbreaking research merges science with social work at the intersection of qualitative health research, the structure and evolution of genes, hereditary cancer, and how it impacts individuals and families at various stages of life, says SP2 Dean Sara Sally Bachman. Each day, Allison is pushing the frontiers of genomic study and oncological social work while also mentoring other social change agents who will undoubtedly make a difference locally, nationally, and internationally.

For more than a decade, Werner-Lin has worked in the Clinical Genetics Branch of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics of the NCI organizing the human side of research. Patients come annually to the NCI to receive full-body MRI cancer screenings and participate in data collection that covers everything from cancer history to family communication to risk management. Werner-Lin mentors an interdisciplinary team of predoctoral and postdoctoral fellows to explore how these families understand and cope with genetic information. Her work is used to train providers in delivering holistic medical and psychological care.

We talk with families about their experiences communicating cancer-risk information with loved ones, making reproductive decisions, and managing the endless cycle of screening, Werner-Lin says. She has seen patterns in how families share cancer-risk information and seek support, noting that information travels based on relationship patterns and emotional closeness, not necessarily degree of risk.

People with LFS have limited options for cancer prevention, and expectations for a cancer diagnosis and early death are common. Were seeing a lot of physical loss, where amputations and other changes in physical function are common consequences of treatment.

Many of the people Werner-Lin speaks with are looking at different pathways to parenthood or are choosing not to have children at all, she says. Grief becomes a chronic part of their lives, and those kinds of sustained of losses can connect individuals in and across families.

Former SP2 graduate student Catherine Wilsnack is a Cancer Research Training Award Fellow at the NCI, doing qualitative research as part of Werner-Lins team. Wilsnack first met Werner-Lin while in her second year at SP2 and calls the encounter transformative. Werner-Lin is a phenomenal mentor in every way, says Wilsnack, who earned her masters in social work (MSW) in 2019. She always goes above and beyond for her students. I would not be where I am today if it were not for her and her guidance, so I just feel extremely lucky.

Now in midcareer, Werner-Lin is taking the time to mentor younger generations. There are so many opportunities to focus on other peoples career development without such a bounded focus on my own professional needs, she says, crediting her own mentors with the ability to achieve professional success.

At Penn, Werner-Lin is involved in the Cancer Moonshot initiative led by Katherine Nathanson and Steve Joffe, an effort designed to accelerate cancer research aimed at prevention, detection, and treatment. Werner-Lins aspect of the project, based at the Abramson Cancer Center at Penn Medicine, involves issues surrounding genetic testing in people aged 18 through 40. Susan Domchek, executive director of the Basser Center for BRCA, says, Allisons work in terms of the psychosocial implications of having a BRCA mutationhow an individual can come to terms with that and how that information gets disseminated between familieshas been extremely helpful. She has a deep expertise on helping families navigate these situations.

Approximately 1 in 400 people carry mutated breast cancer genes, though mutations are more common in certain groups of people. The gene mutations are passed in an autosomal dominant pattern, meaning each parent with a mutation has a 50% chance of passing it on. Children of a BRCA-positive parent can pursue genetic testing to learn if they carry the mutation, adding pressure to family planning.

Werner-Lin was one of these children. Her mother has a BRCA1 mutation. She recovered from colon cancer when Werner-Lin was in college and is currently in remission from a rare ovarian cancer. When I was 23 and was thinking about having kids, I couldnt figure out how to do it, Werner-Lin says. I started talking to people, talking to other women, and that became my dissertation.

This curiosity and compassion led Werner-Lin to operate a private therapy practice out of her home, where she exclusively sees children and young adults with a deceased parent. People often dont see how therapy is connected to the genetics part of my work, but for me they are inseparable, Werner-Lin says. In my cancer work, parents often die young, leaving small children. Frequently, the children of cancer patients conflate their parents lives with their own, not seeing options, degrees of freedom, or technological innovation.

Working together with an MSW student, Werner-Lin does whole family-therapy, from diagnosis to end-of-life, through the grieving process. She helps to facilitate goodbyes, talks about legacy building, and makes the concept of death more concrete for young people.

The language adults use to talk about death is often confusing and shrouded in existential concepts, Werner-Lin says, citing references to angels or going to a better place. Young kids dont necessarily understand time or geography, she says. If were in New York, and Mommy went to the other side, is that a better place?

Instead, she says, we talk about the brain being a light switch, and once you turn it off you cant turn it on again. We talk about how the heart stops beating and the eyes stop seeing. These practical realities are important, Werner-Lin says. Kids need to understand the way the world is predictable, especially when people they love and need can fall off the earth at any moment.

Now back on campus, Werner-Lin is focusing on teaching and engaging with her graduate students. Acting in service to her patients, her students, and her colleagues is a core part of Werner-Lins brand of academia. If you tell her that you want to do something, Wilsnack says, she will go out of her way to help.

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Working on 'the human side' of heritable cancers - Penn: Office of University Communications

Her parents taught her grit, caring for others. She’s using those traits to fight heart disease. – Thrive Global

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On stage at the Miss America 2020 pageant, Svati Shah looked into the camera and delivered her important message.

It wasnt merely that heart disease and stroke kill more women than all forms of cancer combined. Or that cardiovascular diseases are largely preventable.

It was telling the television audience of over 3.6 million people there are clear ways to change that ways that go far beyond the usual advice of diet and exercise.

By urging more women to take up careers in science and medicine, she said. By ensuring women are included in medical research. By empowering women to change the fact that women living 20 miles apart can have a 20-year difference in lifespan.

When women come together to demand change, change happens.

Dr. Svati Shah is an associate dean in the Duke University School of Medicine and, Im proud to say, a volunteer for my organization, the American Heart Association. I asked her to speak on our behalf at the Miss America pageant because of the passion and spirit she brings to this fight, and to emphasize that women are helping lead the way.

I hope girls who watched were as inspired by Svati as they were by any of the women on that stage. Whats really inspiring is everything that led Svati to that moment.

Her parents fled India in the early 1970s to escape poverty and disease, and so their children could lead happier, healthier lives. Her dad arrived in the United States with $8 and no job. The grit and dedication she saw from her parents especially her mom has turned her into the person she is today: doctor, scientist, wife, mother and so much more.

***

Her story begins in Ahmedabad, India, where her father was born into a home without running water or electricity. As the oldest child, he upheld the custom of helping raise his five siblings.

Her mother also was an oldest child. She had seven siblings; five died before age 5. Sadly, that was somewhat common. Even more sadly, they died of conditions that couldve been treated with antibiotics and fluid hydration.

In his 20s, her dad plunked his life savings into a plane ticket to London and, thus, to a new, more prosperous life. Upon landing at Heathrow Airport, rules required him to take a tuberculosis test. He tested positive. A false positive. Regardless, he was sent back to India, penniless.

Once he earned enough for another ticket, although this time to New York. During the flight, he stepped out of the bathroom and saw a gun pointed at his head. Hijackers. His emigration was rerouted through Cuba, eventually, safely delivering passengers to their intended destination.

Working as an engineer, he was able to bring over his wife a year later. In another year and a half, they had their first child. Svati.

***

The first home Svati remembers was a very small, very nasty apartment across from Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.

Her dad worked days as a civil engineer. Her mom worked nights as a punch-card operator for a bank. In the middle of every night, dad woke up and went to the subway stop to escort mom home.

Between her parents opposite schedules and their challenge of raising another younger daughter, Svati began walking to school alone at an early age. She encountered things no child should see. Like someone getting shot on the subway.

She was 9 when her dad got a job in Richland, Washington, the town where the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki was built. He became an engineer at the nuclear plant and her mom became a secretary there. The family bought a small house.

Then, when Svati was in seventh grade, her parents divorced. Her dad moved away, leaving her mom to raise two teen girls on $19,000 a year.

Although their community included many Indian families, the stigma of divorce made this family outcasts in that community. Food and staples were sometimes bought with food stamps. The thermostat was kept at 55 to save money.

***

Halfway through her senior year of high school, Svati wondered whether she could get into an elite college.

Problem was, shed missed the application deadline. Except for one: Johns Hopkins University.

All she knew was that it was a good school. She got in and, most importantly, earned enough scholarships to make it affordable.

Once on campus, she made a powerful discovery. Hopkins was the perfect school for someone who aimed to wipe out preventable diseases.

That had become Svatis goal because of the horror stories shed heard just from her family.

In addition to the deaths of her moms siblings decades before, both of her fathers parents had gone blind because of cataracts and one of her uncles died from a fever, leaving behind four young children.

I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be in health care, she said. And I just loved science.

***

Svati trained in biostatistics, coding, epidemiology and clinical research on her way to earning a masters degree at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

The plan was to go into public health. Instead, she opted for medical school. Affordability lured her back toward her mom and sister: the University of Washington.

Her ability to code and work with statistics made her in high demand among researchers. Between her desire to do everything and a work ethic forged by her parents and her own hardscrabble youth, she dove into every project she could.

I wasnt the smartest medical school student, but I worked really, really hard, she said. Taking care of patients was fun. It was a constant academic assault: reading about them, figuring out whats wrong and then trying to solve that puzzle.

She did so well that she landed her top choice for an internal medicine residency. Harvard.

***

While in Boston, she decided to focus on cardiology because of the variety. She could interact with patients, perform procedures in the catheterization lab and do research.

Then cardiologist Pat OGara asked what specific area of cardiology she wanted to study.

Stumped, she said, Dr. OGara, if you were me, what would you do?

Genetic epidemiology, he said.

Genetics was emerging as the future of research. Learning how a persons hardwiring could put them at risk for a disease seemed exciting, especially when paired with heart disease, the deadliest of them all. Plus, improving risk prevention seemed like a straight shot to the family history that lured her into medicine.

Svati had never considered it.

Until now.

That sounds great, she told him.

***

Her next stop was a fellowship at Duke, where she aimed to do clinical research through the schools renowned institute.

Then she learned that Duke recently started a Center for Human Genetics. And that one of its main studies involved seeking the genes that cause early onset heart disease in 1,000 families. She gladly joined that team.

The human genome has 3 billion letters and we were looking at 420, she said. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack.

They found several needles.

Soon after, in April 2003, a consortium of scientists completed the Human Genome Project, which then led to major technology advances.

That rocked my world and exploded it, she said. Now we could measure 500,000 letters across the genome.

Out of 3 billion, thats still a tiny amount: 1/6,000.

Again, Svati and her Duke colleagues picked the right haystack.

We found the first gene that causes heart disease, she said. Its actually not in a gene its on the outside of a gene on chromosome 9p21. Its the most consistent risk factor for heart disease, and its held true decades later.

***

Because she continues to have a variety of interests, the focus of her work has shifted many times. One thing shes dug into is the Undiagnosed Diseases Network, a federally funded program that seeks to solve rare, mysterious conditions that afflict families, and she started a genetics clinic at Duke to take care of patients and their families who have genetic heart disorders.

Meanwhile, Svati started her own family. She married another Duke cardiologist, Patrick Hranitzky, and had two sons.

Four years ago, when their oldest son, Kieran, was 5, he was hospitalized because of a severe gastrointestinal bleed. Months later, doctors found the source. One of those rare diseases.

Its called Factor VII deficiency. Its caused by a lack of a protein needed for blood to clot. Screening showed that her younger son, Kellan, has it, too.

We think of different conditions as rare diseases, but in aggregate, they actually affect a lot of people about 1 in 40, she said.

Among the ways to fight it? Genomics.

Last summer, Svati was named director of the Duke Precision Genomics Collaboratory and associate dean of genomics.

Because theres a convergence of data science, electronic health records, population health and a deeper understanding of the genome, we can actually screen people for diseases and identify who is at risk, she said. Theres a long way to go, but this is an exciting time.

***

Its also an exciting time for women in science.

Thats why the American Heart Association partnered with the Miss America pageant.

Thats why Svati stood on stage delivering our message.

Thats why shes sharing her story here.

Many of us were told we cant do everything. We can, she said. Were capable of being great mothers, great scientists, great doctors. You can do it all.

I want women to hear that message, but I also want all people considering this career to know: You can do it all.

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Her parents taught her grit, caring for others. She's using those traits to fight heart disease. - Thrive Global

Ancient Scotsman with Protruding Rear End Found Carved on Monolith – The Vintage News

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In 2017, near Perth in Scotland, road workers found an ancient monolith which has a carved curious-looking figure of a human with a spear. It was found 300 feet underground while new roads were under construction. The rock measures about six and one third feet by two feet wide and weighs almost a ton. While the carving is hard to see in some places, 3D photography has brought the image out so it can be better studied.

The figure is obviously a warrior wearing a helmet; he was sturdy and stocky with a slightly protruding belly and a doorknob or pronounced butt, according to Cambridge Core. The rock, dubbed the Tulloch Stone, is dated to the first millenium and was found near a ring ditch which may have been a burial ground that was destroyed in the 1980s when a new stadium was built.

The figure is believed to have been carved by someone from the Pict Tribe, the earliest inhabitants of Scotland. Pictish folklore says they were descended from the Celtic goddess Brighid with the lineage following the maternal line. Supposedly, Brighid was descended from an ancient fairy race of Ireland, the Tuath de Danaan. According to The Scotsman, her name was the foundation of the name of Britain.

The warrior carved onto the Tulloch Stone wields a spear with a kite-shaped blade and a doorknob-style butt. (University of Aberdeen)

Not much of the Picts history is known other than names of the kings dating back to about 300 AD. The Picts were strong enough to fight off the Romans but had repeated battles with the Angles. When King Kenneth I took power in 848 AD, he had the Pictish King Drust IX and his noblemen done away with, effectively wiping out the Picts.

After several generations, the Pictish church, language, and culture had all but disappeared. According to Medievalist.net, Dr. Jim Wilson, of the University of Edinburghs Usher Institute and MRC Human Genetics Unit, has created a map of the genetics of Scotland and has determined that at least ten percent of the males of Scotland carry Pictish DNA.

Depiction of an ancient Pict from present-day Scotland

While there are plenty of examples of Anglo-Saxon burials with weapons that attest to a warrior type culture, Dr. Mark Hall, archaeological curator at the Perth Museum on Smithsonian Magazine, believes that type of culture didnt evolve in the same way in Scotland until after the Romans attempted conquest. The continual conflict appears to have influenced the Pict culture and led to the more hierarchical, warrior focused social organization of the latter Pict period.

Warrior Pict

There are several other Pictish stones found in Scotland. Undiscovered Scotland describes three that were found in Aberdeenshire in the small village of Rhynie. The largest, at just over four feet tall depicts the head of an animal, most likely a seal or otter, along with a symbol found to be common among Pictish stones, a double disk and a Z-rod.

It also has several abstract symbols and a carving of a mirror. The smallest stone may be a piece broken off of a larger stone and displays carvings of a beast, a comb, and part of a curvy symbol. A few yards up a hill the Craw Stone can be found, and the most famous Pictish stone, the Rhynie Man, is located at the headquarters of Aberdeenshire Council on the edge of Aberdeen. More stones are in the garden of Leith Hall, a country estate in Kennethmont built in 1650.

The Tulloch Stone is reminiscent of two other carvings in particular, according to Cambridge Core. The Rhynie Man is a human figure with the same style of body as the Tulloch stone figure but holding a spear and a shield, and he has some sort of neck adornment, but the carving is too faint to determine exactly what it is.

The ancient monolith was found near a 5th to 7th century stone burial cairn in the 19th century and is about four and a quarter foot tall. The Collessie stone, found in 2017 by highway construction workers in a field at Melville Home Farm about a half mile east of Collessie, depicts another similarly styled human figure with a spear and a shield.

Related Article: Thousands of Lost Ancient Sites Discovered on Mystical Scottish Isle of Arran

The Rhynie and Collossie figures both have symbols below their feet. Although unclear, it is possible that the symbols are names of specific individuals. Another theory is that all three figures may instead represent ancient heroes, social groups, or gods.

Discovery of the ancient monolith Tulloch Stone and the other warrior images is fueling much study about the development of a martial ideology in post-Roman Pict society and the development of early Scotland.

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IFFGD Raises Awareness for Rare Digestive Diseases on Rare Disease Day 2020 – P&T Community

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MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C., Feb. 27, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Each year, Rare Disease Day is recognized by people around the world on the last day of February. This is a day to bring attention to rare diseases and to encourage recognition of these conditions as a global health challenge. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) identifies a disease as rare if it affects fewer than 200,000 people in the United States. In Europe, a disease is defined as rare if fewer than 1 in 2,000 people are affected 1.

As rare diseases are currently defined, there are as many as 7,000 conditions listed as rare, and 300 million people in the world are estimated to be affected by one or more of these conditions1. This year on February 29th, IFFGD will join the rare disease community in a social media campaign to raise awareness about rare diseases while highlighting those that affect the digestive tract using hashtags #RareDiseaseDay and #ShowYourStripes.

"We are joining the rare disease community to support all individuals around the world who are impacted by rare diseases," said IFFGD President, Ceciel Rooker. "Greater awareness for each rare disorder and patient involvement in research gets us one step closer to better diagnoses and treatment options for those living with a rare condition(s)."

Many rare diseases such as Hirschsprung disease, chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction (CIP), achalasia, eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE), congenital sucrase-isomaltase deficiency (CSID), and short bowel syndrome (SBS), among others, are documented to affect how the digestive tract functions. Symptoms associated with a rare disease and a chronic digestive disorder can be debilitating and life-altering. Increasing awareness by sharing information and personal stories about these rare diseases helps to educate the public while empowering millions who are impacted by a rare condition.

Ms. Rooker added, "Sharing your personal story and embracing the uniqueness of your disease are what Rare Disease Day is about. If you are living with a rare disease, remember that your stripes are unique, and when we raise awareness as a collective, we are powerful. Everyone should be proud to show his/her rare disease, not just for one day of the year but every day."

1 Research recently published in the European Journal of Human Genetics, article authored by EURORDIS-Rare Diseases Europe, Orphanet & Orphanet Ireland "Estimating cumulative point prevalence of rare diseases: analysis of the Orphanet database". The analysis is of rare genetic diseases and is therefore conservative as it does not include rare cancers, nor rare diseases caused by rare bacterial or viral infectious diseases or poisonings https://www.nature.com/articles/s41431-019-0508-0

About Rare Disease Day

Rare Disease Day is observed the last day of February on the 28th or 29th in a leap year the rarest day of the year to underscore the nature of rare diseases and encourage recognition of these conditions as a global health challenge. This awareness event was first established in Europe in 2008 by EURORDIS and is now observed in more than 80 countries. For more information about Rare Disease Day, visit https://www.rarediseaseday.org/.

About IFFGD

The International Foundation for Gastrointestinal Disorders (IFFGD) is a nonprofit education and research organization dedicated to improving the lives of people affected by functional gastrointestinal and motility disorders. Founded in 1991, IFFGD helps improve care by enhancing awareness, improving education, and supporting and encouraging research into treatments and cures for chronic digestive conditions. Learn more about IFFGD at http://www.iffgd.org.

Media Contact:Hayley McCorkle234973@email4pr.com414-964-1799

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When a Supervolcano Erupted, These Ancient People Survived the Blankets of Ash – Discover Magazine

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About 74,000 years ago, a volcano in Sumatra erupted, smothering its corner of the globe in debris and dust. The blast was the biggest volcanic eruption in the last 2 million years. For a long time, researchers thought its fallout would have wiped out most of the human life in the broader region including modern-day India.

If the eruption had made life nearly impossible in early India, then records of human activity, like stone tools, would have transformed dramatically after the explosion as survivors adapted to their new conditions. But excavations in India show that the people who lived there during the eruption managed to keep going after the ash settled.

Stone tools embedded in dirt older than the eruption matched those found in deposits after the eruption, according to new research out in Nature Communications. Those stone tools were identical they didnt change at all, says Michael Petraglia, a study co-author and archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

These new excavations back up the growing evidence that the Sumatra eruption wasnt as life-threatening as scientists used to believe. And the tools themselves look similar to what early Homo sapiens were producing in Africa which could indicate that humans in India moved into the continent earlier than some anthropologists think.

Several years ago, other researchers digging in the Middle Son Valley identified ash from the Sumatra volcano. When looking at a crosscut of the land, the deposit is visible from afar, Petraglia says: Its a white strip running through reddish brown sediment. This north-central region in India is also rich in fossils and other remains. Petraglia and his team were curious if theyd find artifacts from early humans in the region too. Lo and behold, we found artifacts eroding out of these red and brown sediments, he says.

Excavations several hundred feet away from where the ash lies revealed several dozen stone tools, found in increasingly deeper levels of dirt. Though there was no ash sediment mixed in with the finds, the team drew parallel lines to where the white streaks lie in the nearby landscape. Seeing what was in the dirt before and after the ash helped the team conclude that the explosion didnt stop human activity in the region. Instead, people continued on, making the same tools they had been making.

The analysis backs up a similar concept that Petroglia and his team had proposed in 2007 to much controversy. "Since writing that, weve been debating ever since, Petroglia says. And this reinforces what weve said for 10 years."

Additionally, these Son Valley finds more closely resembled the designs of those made by early H. sapiens still in Africa than those made by European Neanderthals. To Petraglia, this coordination combined with the fact that some of the excavated tools are older than the eruption itself supports the idea that early humans moved out of Africa in more than just one wave 60,000 years ago.

Archaeological remains are most of what the region has to go on when it comes to spelling out their early history. Human fossils are hard to find, and theyre exceedingly rare in Asia, Petraglia says. He also acknowledged that the genetics of modern-day populations also dont show evidence of a super-early wave of human migration into the area.

For now, Petraglia plans to look in Sri Lanka for more fallout of the Sumatra explosion. Maybe remains from other surrounding regions will also support the possibility of humans having fared decently well after the volcano blew its top.

Of course, the layers of ash falling in India would have been difficult to deal with, Petraglia says. But look at towns covered in ash from volcanoes now, he says. "People are eventually able to clean up."

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Research on intermittent fasting shows health benefits – National Institute on Aging

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Evidence from decades of animal and human research points to wide-ranging health benefits of intermittent fasting, according to an NIA-conducted review of the research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Still, more research is needed to determine whether intermittent fasting yields benefits or is even feasible for humans when practiced over the long term, such as for years.

Intermittent fastingis an eating pattern that includes hours or days of no or minimal food consumption without deprivation of essential nutrients. Commonly studied regimens include alternate day fasting, 5:2 intermittent fasting (fasting two days each week), and daily time-restricted feeding (such as eating only during a six-hour window).

Hundreds of animal studies and scores of human clinical trials have shown that intermittent fasting can lead to improvements in health conditions such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancers and neurological disorders. The evidence is less clear for lifespan effects. Animal studies have shown mixed results, with sex, food composition, age and genetics among the factors that influence longevity. Human trials have mainly involved relatively short-term interventions and so have not provided evidence of long-term health effects, including effects on lifespan.

The review authors are Rafael de Cabo, Ph.D., of NIAs Intramural Research Program (IRP), and Mark P. Mattson, Ph.D., formerly of NIAs IRP and currently a neuroscientist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Although intermittent fasting often results in reduced calorie consumption, weight loss is not the main driver of the health benefits observed in preclinical and clinical studies, according to the authors. Rather, the key mechanism is metabolic switching, in which fasting triggers the body to switch its source of energy from glucose stored in the liver to ketones, which are stored in fat.

Ketone bodies are not just fuel used during periods of fasting, the authors wrote. They are potent signaling molecules with major effects on cell and organ functions.

Ketogenesis, or the increase of ketones in the bloodstream, initiates activity in a variety of cellular signaling pathways known to influence health and aging. This activity enhances the bodys defenses against oxidative and metabolic stress and initiates the removal or repair of damaged molecules. The impact of ketogenesis carries over into the non-fasting period and can improve glucose regulation, increase stress resistance and suppress inflammation.

Repeated exposure to fasting periods results in lasting adaptive responses that confer resistance to subsequent challenges, the authors explain. The broad-spectrum benefits include not only disease resistance but also improved mental and physical performance.

The authors acknowledge impediments to widespread adoption of intermittent fasting: the ingrained practice in developed nations of three meals a day plus snacks (along with the ready availability and marketing of food), the discipline required to shift to a new eating pattern and the lack of physician training on intermittent fasting interventions. The authors suggest that clinicians who prescribe intermittent fasting encourage their patients to adopt a gradual, phased-in schedule in consultation with a dietitian or nutritionist.

In addition to the question of intermittent fastings long-term effects in humans, the authors point to two other areas requiring further research. Studies are needed to determine whether this eating pattern is safe for people at a healthy weight, or who are younger or older, since most clinical research so far has been conducted on overweight and middle-aged adults. In addition, research is needed to identify safe, effective medications that mimic the effects of intermittent fasting without the need to substantially change eating habits.

This review article and many of the research studies cited within were supported by NIA.

Reference: De Cabo R and Mattson MP. Effects of intermittent fasting on health, aging, and disease. New England Journal of Medicine. 2019;381(26):2541-2551. doi: 10.1056/NEJMra1905136.

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Research on intermittent fasting shows health benefits - National Institute on Aging

Why This S&P 500 Stock Is Defying the Brutal Coronavirus Plunge – CCN.com

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As most of the U.S. stock market flounders amid a massive global flight from risk assets, one stock briefly led the S&P 500 with an astonishing 3.4% rally. Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ: GILD) defied the coronavirus slump after the World Health Organization praised its remdesivir drug as a leading candidate to help fight the global health crisis.

With all three of the major U.S. stock market indices down more than 3%, Monday was a terrible day for Wall Street bulls.

For those investors brave enough to dive into the biotech wars to find a coronavirus treatment, there was some gold to be found. Gilead Sciences has emerged as the front runner in providing a drug to combat the disease, according to the WHOs Bruce Aylward.

Hopes were already high for remdesivir after Gilead claimed that there were optimistic signs based on its animal tests.

Remdesivir has demonstrated in vitro and in vivo activity in animal models against the viral pathogens MERS and SARS, which are also coronaviruses and are structurally similar to COVID-19.

The limited preclinical data on remdesivir in MERS and SARS indicate that remdesivir may have potential activity against COVID-19.

Given that some of these results were on monkeys, which have a close correlation with human genetics, investors are banking on the possibility that this drug, which has been used to help treat HIV and Cholera, gets fast-tracked to human trials.

The coronavirus has now infected around 80,000 people globally, but its the diseases spread outside of China that has spooked the S&P 500 so much.

Outside of stocks, the fear in the marketplace looks very real as the price of gold rallies aggressively alongside the safe-haven Japanese yen. Demonstrating concerns about growth, crude oil took a monster 5% hit as global trade continued to struggle.

South Korea is dealing with a parabolic spike in infections, while northern Italy is on lockdown after a seventh death. The quarantine threatens the most important financial hub of one of the eurozones wealthiest nations.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has acknowledged the desperate need to contain the virus.

Its clear that the upside for Gilead Sciences stock is enormous if they can prove that remdesivir works before another drugmaker develops an effective treatment.

But thats still a big if.

Until then, the move higher in GILD only marks speculative optimism, with the potential for a far more significant spike.

Disclaimer: This article represents the authors opinion and should not be considered investment or trading advice from CCN.com.

This article was edited by Josiah Wilmoth.

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Why This S&P 500 Stock Is Defying the Brutal Coronavirus Plunge - CCN.com

Stone tools show humans in India survived the cataclysmic Toba eruption 74,000 years ago – Firstpost

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The ConversationFeb 27, 2020 10:14:33 IST

About 74,000 years ago a volcanic eruption at what is now Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia, created one of the most dramatic natural disasters of the past two million years. The plume of the eruption punched 30 kilometres or more into the sky, eventually blanketing much of India and parts of Africa in a layer of ash. Some scientists argue the eruption plunged Earth into a six-year volcanic winter followed by a thousand-year cooling of the planets surface. The long chill, the argument goes, may have resulted in the near extinction of our own species.

One prominent theory says the eruption was a key event in human evolution. If this is right, the few human survivors in Africa would have developed more sophisticated social, symbolic and economic strategies to cope with the harsh conditions. These new strategies might then have enabled them to repopulate Africa and migrate into Europe, Asia and Australia by 60-50,000 years ago.

New evidence suggests that humans in India survived the Toba eruption and continued to flourish after it. Image credit: Christina Neudorf, Author provided

It is still unclear how intense the fallout from the Toba eruption really was, and how it affected humans. The debate has been running for decades, drawing on evidence from climate science, geology, archaeology and genetics.

We have found new evidence that humans in India survived the Toba eruption and continued to flourish after it. The study by researchers from the University of Queensland, the University of Wollongong, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, the University of Allahabad and others is published in Nature Communications today.

We studied a unique archaeological record that covers 80,000 years at the Dhaba site in the middle Son valley of northern India. Ash from the Toba eruption was found in the Son valley back in the 1980s, but until now there was no archaeological evidence to go with it.

The Dhaba site fills a major time gap in our understanding of how ancient humans survived and migrated out of Africa and across the world. The stone tools we found at Dhaba are similar to the ones people were using in Africa at the same time.

Some of the stone tools found at Dhaba. Image credit: Chris Clarkson

These toolkits were present at Dhaba before and after the Toba super-eruption, indicating that populations survived the event. It is likely that humans made the same kinds of tools all along the dispersal route from Africa through India, reaching Australia by at least 65,000 years ago.

Dhaba, therefore, provides a crucial cultural link between Africa, Asia and Australia. Although fossil and genetic evidence indicate modern humans have lived outside Africa for the past 200,000 years (at sites such as Apedima, Misliya,Qafzeh, Skhul, Al Wusta and Fuyan cave) only human fossil evidence can prove beyond doubt they were in India 80,000 years ago.

Nevertheless, the stone tools at Dhaba go a long way toward demonstrating human presence.

Our findings at Dhaba fit with archaeological evidence from Africa, Asia, and elsewhere in India to support the idea that the Toba super-eruption had minimal effects on humans and did not cause a population bottleneck. Archaeological sites in southern Africa show human populations thrived following the Toba super-eruption.

Climate and vegetation records from Lake Malawi in East Africa likewise show no evidence for a volcanic winter at the time of the eruption. Genetic studies similarly have not detected a clear population bottleneck around 74,000 years ago.

Possible routes of ancient human migration. Image credit: Chris Clarkson, Author provided

At Jwalapuram, in southern India, Michael Petraglia and colleagues found similar Middle Palaeolithic stone tools above and below a thick layer of Toba ash. At the Lida Ajer site in Sumatra, close to the eruption itself, Kira Westaway and colleagues found human teeth dated to 73,000-63,000 years ago. This indicates humans were living in Sumatra, in a closed-canopy rainforest environment not long after the eruption.

Our new findings contribute to a revised understanding of the global impact of the Toba super-eruption. While the Toba super-eruption was certainly a colossal event, global cooling may have been less significant than previously thought.

In any case, archaeological evidence suggests that humans survived and coped with one of the largest volcanic events in human history. Small bands of hunter-gatherers turned out to be highly adaptable in the face of climate change.

Chris Clarkson, Professor in Archaeology, The University of Queensland and Michael Petraglia, Professor of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Stone tools show humans in India survived the cataclysmic Toba eruption 74,000 years ago - Firstpost

Milestones: 19451952 – Office of the Historian

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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada, and several Western European nations to provide collective security against the Soviet Union.

Signing of the NATO Treaty

NATO was the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere. After the destruction of the Second World War, the nations of Europe struggled to rebuild their economies and ensure their security. The former required a massive influx of aid to help the war-torn landscapes re-establish industries and produce food, and the latter required assurances against a resurgent Germany or incursions from the Soviet Union. The United States viewed an economically strong, rearmed, and integrated Europe as vital to the prevention of communist expansion across the continent. As a result, Secretary of State George Marshall proposed a program of large-scale economic aid to Europe. The resulting European Recovery Program, or Marshall Plan, not only facilitated European economic integration but promoted the idea of shared interests and cooperation between the United States and Europe. Soviet refusal either to participate in the Marshall Plan or to allow its satellite states in Eastern Europe to accept the economic assistance helped to reinforce the growing division between east and west in Europe.

In 19471948, a series of events caused the nations of Western Europe to become concerned about their physical and political security and the United States to become more closely involved with European affairs. The ongoing civil war in Greece, along with tensions in Turkey, led President Harry S. Truman to assert that the United States would provide economic and military aid to both countries, as well as to any other nation struggling against an attempt at subjugation. A Soviet-sponsored coup in Czechoslovakia resulted in a communist government coming to power on the borders of Germany. Attention also focused on elections in Italy as the communist party had made significant gains among Italian voters. Furthermore, events in Germany also caused concern. The occupation and governance of Germany after the war had long been disputed, and in mid-1948, Soviet premier Joseph Stalin chose to test Western resolve by implementing a blockade against West Berlin, which was then under joint U.S., British, and French control but surrounded by Soviet-controlled East Germany. This Berlin Crisis brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of conflict, although a massive airlift to resupply the city for the duration of the blockade helped to prevent an outright confrontation. These events caused U.S. officials to grow increasingly wary of the possibility that the countries of Western Europe might deal with their security concerns by negotiating with the Soviets. To counter this possible turn of events, the Truman Administration considered the possibility of forming a European-American alliance that would commit the United States to bolstering the security of Western Europe.

Signing of the Brussels Treaty

The Western European countries were willing to consider a collective security solution. In response to increasing tensions and security concerns, representatives of several countries of Western Europe gathered together to create a military alliance. Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg signed the Brussels Treaty in March, 1948. Their treaty provided collective defense; if any one of these nations was attacked, the others were bound to help defend it. At the same time, the Truman Administration instituted a peacetime draft, increased military spending, and called upon the historically isolationist Republican Congress to consider a military alliance with Europe. In May of 1948, Republican Senator Arthur H. Vandenburg proposed a resolution suggesting that the President seek a security treaty with Western Europe that would adhere to the United Nations charter but exist outside of the Security Council where the Soviet Union held veto power. The Vandenburg Resolution passed, and negotiations began for the North Atlantic Treaty.

In spite of general agreement on the concept behind the treaty, it took several months to work out the exact terms. The U.S. Congress had embraced the pursuit of the international alliance, but it remained concerned about the wording of the treaty. The nations of Western Europe wanted assurances that the United States would intervene automatically in the event of an attack, but under the U.S. Constitution the power to declare war rested with Congress. Negotiations worked toward finding language that would reassure the European states but not obligate the United States to act in a way that violated its own laws. Additionally, European contributions to collective security would require large-scale military assistance from the United States to help rebuild Western Europes defense capabilities. While the European nations argued for individual grants and aid, the United States wanted to make aid conditional on regional coordination. A third issue was the question of scope. The Brussels Treaty signatories preferred that membership in the alliance be restricted to the members of that treaty plus the United States. The U.S. negotiators felt there was more to be gained from enlarging the new treaty to include the countries of the North Atlantic, including Canada, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, and Portugal. Together, these countries held territory that formed a bridge between the opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean, which would facilitate military action if it became necessary.

President Truman inspecting a tank produced under the Mutual Defense Assistance Program

The result of these extensive negotiations was the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949. In this agreement, the United States, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United Kingdom agreed to consider attack against one an attack against all, along with consultations about threats and defense matters. This collective defense arrangement only formally applied to attacks against the signatories that occurred in Europe or North America; it did not include conflicts in colonial territories. After the treaty was signed, a number of the signatories made requests to the United States for military aid. Later in 1949, President Truman proposed a military assistance program, and the Mutual Defense Assistance Program passed the U.S. Congress in October, appropriating some $1.4 billion dollars for the purpose of building Western European defenses.

Soon after the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the outbreak of the Korean War led the members to move quickly to integrate and coordinate their defense forces through a centralized headquarters. The North Korean attack on South Korea was widely viewed at the time to be an example of communist aggression directed by Moscow, so the United States bolstered its troop commitments to Europe to provide assurances against Soviet aggression on the European continent. In 1952, the members agreed to admit Greece and Turkey to NATO and added the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955. West German entry led the Soviet Union to retaliate with its own regional alliance, which took the form of the Warsaw Treaty Organization and included the Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe as members.

The collective defense arrangements in NATO served to place the whole of Western Europe under the American nuclear umbrella. In the 1950s, one of the first military doctrines of NATO emerged in the form of massive retaliation, or the idea that if any member was attacked, the United States would respond with a large-scale nuclear attack. The threat of this form of response was meant to serve as a deterrent against Soviet aggression on the continent. Although formed in response to the exigencies of the developing Cold War, NATO has lasted beyond the end of that conflict, with membership even expanding to include some former Soviet states. It remains the largest peacetime military alliance in the world.

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Milestones: 19451952 - Office of the Historian

Will NATO come to Turkey’s aid in Syria? – Ahval

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The United States has limited its reaction to the killing of at least 36 Turkish soldiers in a Russian-backed Syrian government offensive in Idlib, northwest Syria on February 27 to a statement expressing concern over the attack and pledging solidarity with Turkey.

We stand by our NATO ally Turkey and continue to call for an immediate end to this despicable offensive by the Assad regime, Russia, and Iranian-backed forces, the U.S. State Department said in a statement on Friday.

While refraining from blaming Russia - which has total superiority over Syrian air space - for the deaths, Turkey has informed NATO of its plans for a cross-border operation into Idlib and requested support from the alliance to enforce a no fly zone over the region ahead of the offensive.

NATO, without signalling any intention to take the action that Turkey seeks, issued a statement that said: The North Atlantic Council, which includes the ambassadors of 29 NATO allies, will meet on Friday 28 February following a request by Turkey to hold consultations under Article 4 of NATOs founding Washington Treaty on the situation in Syria.

Article 4 of the charter stipulates that any NATO member can request talks when they believe their territorial integrity, political independence or security is threatened. Turkey could also invoke the alliances Article 5, which states that an armed attack against one member is an attack against all and creates the possibility of collective self defence.

Yet, most NATO members are very reluctant to be drawn into conflicts. France in particular has been trying to initiate a debate on what the alliance should do if Ankara requests assistance under NATOs Article 5.

Ankara had called for consultations on Article 4 several times in the past, including after one of its jets was downed by Syrian forces in 2012, and in 2015 after a spate of terrorist attacks in Turkey. NATOs reaction in those instances was confined to verbal condemnations of the incidents and is likely to remain limited to that this time as well.

In what appeared to be an attempt to pacify Turkeys anger with the alliance, after an emergency meeting in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday called on Russia to halt the offensive in Idlib. He said that NATO stood in solidarity with Turkey, and expressed condolences for the death of Turkish soldiers.

Stoltenberg said that NATO has provided political and practical support to Turkey and that the allies are looking to make further contributions, without going into detail. "The allies will continue to follow developments on the southeastern border of NATO very closely," he concluded.

Well aware that no action beyond verbal condemnation of of its actions would be forthcoming from NATO, Russia blamed Turkey for failing to provide them with accurate coordinates of its forces deployed in Syria. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Turkish troops were among terrorists in the area hit by Syrian fire. However, Turkey maintains the attacks occurred after Turkey had informed Russian authorities of its deployments.

NATO is unlikely to assist the Turkish military in the multilateral conflict in Syria, despite Turkeys strategic importance to the alliance due to its location straddling the Bosporus strait and bordering the Black Sea, and by hosting the ncirlik air base in southeastern Turkey from which the alliance operates aerial surveillance flights.

Ahval English

The views expressed in this column are the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Ahval.

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Will NATO come to Turkey's aid in Syria? - Ahval

Data science pusher Dataiku hooks arms with NATO on battlefield AI contract – The Register

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Data science platform Dataiku is teaming up with military alliance NATO to create a system to help it build and "deploy" AI projects.

The deal with NATO's Allied Command Transformation (ACT) aims to use Dataiku's tech and data scientists to solve some of the most "challenging use cases in the field", NATO said, vaguely, without specifying the type of thing they were referring to.

"We were looking to expand our use of data science, machine learning, and AI in the organisation," said General Andr Lanata, NATO supreme allied commander for transformation. "We are invested in sharing ACT's progress with other member states, with the goal of expanding competencies and successful, deployed use cases of AI projects in the field."

Dataiku makes Data Science Studio - an advanced analytics and collaborative data science tool - which comes up against the likes of Teradata, Talend, and IBM. The seven-year-old startup has been valued at $1.4bn and inhaled $101m in its last funding round in December last year.

Dataiku CEO Florian Douetteau said of the military deal: "NATO ACT is in the unique position to leverage data science and machine learning to have global impact."

Earlier this week, the US Department of Defense adopted a set of "ethical principles" on the controversial topic of the deployment of AI technology for military use. Google dropped its association with computer-vision software Pentagon project, Maven, after internal and external backlash last year.

Dataiku got its introduction to NATO via an "innovation hub" competition in Paris, 2018. In an incredibly prescient imaginary scenario, participants were asked to assist in the control of a disease outbreak in a landlocked country.

The outbreak led to a public health crisis complicated by the emergence of rebel groups attacking medical supplies.

The Dataiku team won two of the three gongs up for grabs by applying object detection with deep learning on aerial imagery. Let's hope it does not need to put any of the lessons learned into practice any time soon.

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The threat of a nuclear war between the US and Russia is now at its greatest since 1983 – RT

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When the Commander of NATO says he is a fan of flexible first strike at the same time that NATO is flexing its military muscle on Russias border, the risk of inadvertent nuclear war is real.

US Air Force Gen. Tod D Wolters told the Senate this week he is a fan of flexible first strike regarding NATOs nuclear weapons, thereby exposing the fatal fallacy of the alliances embrace of American nuclear deterrence policy.

It was one of the most remarkable yet underreported exchanges in recent Senate history. Earlier this week, during the testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee of General Tod Wolters, the commander of US European Command and, concurrently, as the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR) also the military head of all NATO armed forces, General Wolters engaged in a short yet informative exchange with Senator Deb Fischer, a Republican from the state of Nebraska.

Following some initial questions and answers focused on the alignment of NATOs military strategy with the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the US, which codified what Wolters called the malign influence on behalf of Russia toward European security, Senator Fischer asked about the growing recognition on the part of NATO of the important role of US nuclear deterrence in keeping the peace. We all understand that our deterrent, the TRIAD, is the bedrock of the security of this country, Fischer noted. Can you tell us about what you are hearingfrom our NATO partners about this deterrent?

Wolters responded by linking the deterrence provided to Europe by the US nuclear TRIAD with the peace enjoyed on the European continent over the past seven decades. Fischer asked if the US nuclear umbrella was vital in the freedom of NATO members; Wolters agreed. Remarkably, Wolters linked the role of nuclear deterrence with the NATO missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere outside the European continent. NATOs mission, he said, was to proliferate deterrence to the max extent practical to achieve greater peace.

Then came the piece de resistance of the hearing. What are your views, Sir, Senator Fischer asked, of adopting a so-called no-first-use policy. Do you believe that that would strengthen deterrence?

General Wolters response was straight to the point. Senator, Im a fan of flexible first use policy.

Under any circumstance, the public embrace of a flexible first strike policy regarding nuclear weapons employment by the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe should generate widespread attention. When seen in the context of the recent deployment by the US of a low-yield nuclear warhead on submarine-launched ballistic missiles carried onboard a Trident submarine, however, Wolters statement is downright explosive. Add to the mix the fact the US recently carried out a wargame where the US Secretary of Defense practiced the procedures for launching this very same low yield weapon against a Russian target during simulated combat between Russia and NATO in Europe, and the reaction should be off the charts. And yet there has been deafening silence from both the European and US press on this topic.

There is, however, one party that paid attention to what General Wolters had to sayRussia. In a statement to the press on February 25the same date as General Wolters testimony, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister stated that We note with concern that Washingtons new doctrinal guidelines considerably lower the threshold of nuclear weapons use. Lavrov added that this doctrine had to be viewed in the light of the persistent deployment of US nuclear weapons on the territory of some NATO allies and the continued practice of the so-called joint nuclear missions.

Rather than embracing a policy of flexible first strike, Lavrov suggested that the US work with Russia to re-confirm the Gorbachev-Reagan formula, which says that there can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be unleashed. This proposal was made 18 months ago, Lavrov noted, and yet the US has failed to respond.

Complicating matters further are the Defender 2020 NATO military exercises underway in Europe, involving tens of thousands of US troops in one of the largest training operations since the end of the Cold War. The fact that these exercises are taking place at a time when the issue of US nuclear weapons and NATOs doctrine regarding their employment against Russia is being actively tracked by senior Russian authorities only highlights the danger posed.

On February 6, General Valery Gerasimov, the Russian Chief of Staff, met with General Wolters to discuss Defender 2020 and concurrent Russian military exercises to be held nearby to deconflict their respective operations and avoid any unforeseen incidents. This meeting, however, was held prior to the reports about a US/NATO nuclear wargame targeting Russian forces going public, and prior to General Wolters statement about flexible first use of NATO nuclear weapons.

In light of these events, General Gerasimov met with French General Fanois Lecointre, the Chief of the Defense Staff, to express Russias concerns over NATOs military moves near the Russian border, especially the Defender 2020 exercise which was, General Gerasimov noted, held on the basis of anti-Russian scenarios and envisage training for offensive operations.

General Gerasimovs concerns cannot be viewed in isolation, but rather must be considered in the overall historical context of NATO-Russian relations. Back in 1983, the then-Soviet Union was extremely concerned about a series of realistic NATO exercises, known as Able Archer 83, which in many ways mimicked the modern-day Defender 2020 in both scope and scale. Like Defender 2020, Able Archer 83 saw the deployment of tens of thousands of US forces into Europe, where they assumed an offensive posture, before transitioning into a command post exercise involving the employment of NATO nuclear weapons against a Soviet target.

So concerned was Moscow about these exercises, and the possibility that NATO might use them as a cover for an attack against Soviet forces in East Germany, that the Soviet nuclear forces were placed on high alert. Historians have since observed that the threat of nuclear war between the US and the USSR was at that time the highest it had been since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

US and NATO officials would do well to recall the danger to European and world security posed by the Able Archer 83 exercise and the potential for Soviet miscalculations when assessing the concerns expressed by General Gerasimov today. The unprecedented concentration of offensive NATO military power on Russias border, coupled with the cavalier public embrace by General Wolters of a flexible first strike nuclear posture by NATO, has more than replicated the threat model presented by Able Archer 83. In this context, it would not be a stretch to conclude that the threat of nuclear war between the US and Russia is the highest it has been since Able Archer 83.

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Afghan conflict: US and Taliban sign deal to end 18-year war – BBC News

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The US and the Taliban have signed an "agreement for bringing peace" to Afghanistan after more than 18 years of conflict.

The US and Nato allies have agreed to withdraw all troops within 14 months if the militants uphold the deal.

President Trump said it had been a "long and hard journey" in Afghanistan. "It's time after all these years to bring our people back home," he said.

Talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban are due to follow.

Under the agreement, the militants also agreed not to allow al-Qaeda or any other extremist group to operate in the areas they control.

Speaking at the White House, Mr Trump said the Taliban had been trying to reach an agreement with the US for a long time.

He said US troops had been killing terrorists in Afghanistan "by the thousands" and now it was "time for someone else to do that work and it will be the Taliban and it could be surrounding countries".

"I really believe the Taliban wants to do something to show we're not all wasting time," Mr Trump added. "If bad things happen, we'll go back with a force like no-one's ever seen."

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The US invaded Afghanistan weeks after the September 2001 attacks in New York by the Afghanistan-based al-Qaeda group.

More than 2,400 US troops have been killed during the conflict. About 12,000 are still stationed in the country. President Trump has promised to put an end to the conflict.

The deal was signed by US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as a witness.

In a speech, Mr Pompeo urged the militant group to "keep your promises to cut ties with al-Qaeda".

Mr Baradar said he hoped Afghanistan could now emerge from four decades of conflict.

"I hope that with the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan the Afghan nation under an Islamic regime will take its relief and embark on a new prosperous life," he said.

Meanwhile US Defence Secretary Mark Esper was in the Afghan capital Kabul alongside Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani - whose government did not take part in the US-Taliban talks.

Mr Esper said: "This is a hopeful moment, but it is only the beginning. The road ahead will not be easy. Achieving lasting peace in Afghanistan will require patience and compromise among all parties." He said the US would continue to support the Afghan government.

Mr Ghani said the country was "looking forward to a full ceasefire". The government said it was ready to negotiate with the Taliban.

Within the first 135 days of the deal the US will reduce its forces in Afghanistan to 8,600, with allies also drawing down their forces proportionately.

The move would allow US President Donald Trump to show that he has brought troops home ahead of the US presidential election in November.

The deal also provides for a prisoner swap. Some 5,000 Taliban prisoners and 1,000 Afghan security force prisoners would be exchanged by 10 March, when talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government are due to start.

The US will also lift sanctions against the Taliban and work with the UN to lift its separate sanctions against the group.

In Kabul, activist Zahra Husseini said she feared the deal could worsen the situation for women in Afghanistan.

"I don't trust the Taliban, and remember how they suppressed women when they were ruling," the 28-year-old told AFP.

"Today is a dark day, and as I was watching the deal being signed, I had this bad feeling that it would result in their return to power rather than in peace."

This historic deal has been years in the making, as all sides kept seeking advantage on the battlefield.

The agreement is born of America's determination to bring troops home and a recognition, at least by some Taliban, that talks are the best route to return to Kabul.

It's a significant step forward, despite deep uncertainty and scepticism over where it will lead. When the only alternative is unending war, many Afghans seem ready to take this risk for peace.

Taliban leaders say they've changed since their harsh rule of the 1990s still seared in the memory of many, and most of all Afghan women.

This process will test the Taliban, but also veteran Afghan leaders of the past, and a new generation which has come of age in the last two decades and is hoping against hope for a different future.

Since 2011, Qatar has hosted Taliban leaders who have moved there to discuss peace in Afghanistan. It has been a chequered process. A Taliban office was opened in 2013, and closed the same year amid rows over flags. Other attempts at talks stalled.

In December 2018, the militants announced they would meet US officials to try to find a "roadmap to peace". But the hard-line Islamist group continued to refuse to hold official talks with the Afghan government, whom they dismissed as American "puppets".

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Following nine rounds of US-Taliban talks in Qatar, the two sides seemed close to an agreement.

Washington's top negotiator announced last September that the US would withdraw 5,400 troops from Afghanistan within 20 weeks as part of a deal agreed "in principle" with Taliban militants.

Days later, Mr Trump said the talks were "dead", after the group killed a US soldier. But within weeks the two sides resumed discussions behind the scenes.

A week ago the Taliban agreed to a "reduction of violence" - although Afghan officials say at least 22 soldiers and 14 civilians have been killed in Taliban attacks over that period.

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It began when the US launched air strikes one month following the 11 September 2001 attacks and after the Taliban had refused to hand over the man behind them, Osama bin Laden.

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The US was joined by an international coalition and the Taliban were quickly removed from power. However, they turned into an insurgent force and continued deadly attacks, destabilising subsequent Afghan governments.

The international coalition ended its combat mission in 2014, staying only to train Afghan forces. But the US continued its own, scaled-back combat operation, including air strikes.

The Taliban has however continued to gain momentum and in 2018 the BBC found they were active across 70% of Afghanistan.

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Nearly 3,500 members of the international coalition forces have died in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.

The figures for Afghan civilians, militants and government forces are more difficult to quantify. In a February 2019 report, the UN said that more than 32,000 civilians had died. The Watson Institute at Brown University says 58,000 security personnel and 42,000 opposition combatants have been killed.

There are many reasons for this. But they include a combination of fierce Taliban resistance, the limitations of Afghan forces and governance, and other countries' reluctance to keep their troops for longer in Afghanistan.

At times over the past 18 years, the Taliban have been on the back foot. In late 2009, US President Barack Obama announced a troop "surge" that saw the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan top 100,000.

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The surge helped drive the Taliban out of parts of southern Afghanistan, but it was never destined to last for years.

The BBC World Service's Dawood Azami says there are five main reasons the war is still going on now. They include:

There's also the role played by Afghanistan's neighbour, Pakistan.

There's no question the Taliban have their roots in Pakistan, and that they were able to regroup there during the US invasion. But Pakistan has denied helping or protecting them - even as the US demanded it do more to fight militants.

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Afghan conflict: US and Taliban sign deal to end 18-year war - BBC News

NATO’s Arctic War Exercise Unites Climate Change and WWIII – The Real News Network

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This is a rush transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Greg Wolpert: Its the Real News Network. Im Greg Wolpert in Baltimore. The US military is about to send 7,500 combat troops to Norway for exercise Cold Response 2020 where they will join thousands of allied NATO troops in the Finnmark district along the border to Russia to participate in war games that will take place in mid-March.

These maneuvers have been held every other year since 2006, but their increased size and importance are raising credible fears that NATO and the United States are preparing to use the Arctic as a battleground for a possible conflict with Russia. Why have these NATO games in such a Northern latitude been gaining in importance? US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo openly explained the rationale when he visited Finland in May of last year.

Mike Pompeo: The Arctic is at the forefront of opportunity and abundance. It houses 13% of the worlds undiscovered oil, 30% of its undiscovered gas, and an abundance of uranium, rare earth minerals, gold, diamonds, and millions of square miles of untapped resources, fisheries galore. And its centerpiece, the Arctic Ocean, is rapidly taking on new strategic significance. Offshore resources, which are helping the respective coastal states are the subject of renewed competition.

Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade. This could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as 20 days. Arctic sea lanes could come before the could come to the 21st century Suez and Panama canals.

Under President Trump, were fortifying Americas security and diplomatic presence in the area. On the security side, partly in response to Russias destabilizing activities, we are hosting military exercises, strengthening our force presence, rebuilding our icebreaker fleet, expanding Coast Guard funding, and creating a new senior military post for Arctic Affairs inside of our own military.

Greg Wolpert: Pompeo also explained that in addition to the threat that Russia represents, so does China.

Joining me now to discuss the significance of NATOs exercise Cold Response are Michael Klare and [Erik Vold 00:02:20]. Michael is The Nations defense correspondent and professor emeritus of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College. His latest book is, All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagons Perspective on Climate Change. Erik, who joins us from Oslo, is a Norwegian political analyst and author and is working as a foreign policy advisor to the parliamentary group of the leftist Red Party of Norway.

Thanks, Michael and Erik for joining us today. So lets start with the Arctic, why the Arctic has become of such great interest to the United States? We saw it earlier as Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo already explained it pretty well in that clip. But January, once again, the month of January, beat all climate records as the warmest January in recorded history. Michael, talk about how climate change is driving this scramble for the Arctic.

Michael Klare: Well, at one point you couldnt go there. You couldnt go near there because it was covered with ice. The region was impenetrable. But because of climate change and the rapidly rising temperatures in the Arctic, the ice cap is receding and thats making it possible to drill for oil and natural gas and other resources in the Arctic region. This has led to a scramble to extract those resources by giant energy firms from around the world. So this has made the region much more of importance from a geopolitical perspective.

Its especially true of Russia because Russia highly depends on the sale of oil and natural gas to prop up its economy. Something like 25% of its foreign income comes from the sale of oil and gas and at present most of that oil and natural gas that it sells to Europe and Asia comes from reserves below the Arctic Circle. But those are running out. So for Russia to continue to rely on oil and gas reserves to power its economy, it has to go above the Arctic Circle.

And so from Moscows perspective, the development of Arctic resources is absolutely crucial. This is something that President Vladimir Putin has said over and over again and has invested vast resources, economic inputs into developing the new oil and gas fields developed, discovered above the Arctic Circle in Russias territory.

But as well discuss, this creates problems for Russia because its very hard to deliver those new oil and gas reserves to the rest of the world because of the distance from markets. This has put a new emphasis on trade routes that pass by Northern Norway, which is where this exercise is being held.

Greg Wolpert: All right. Talk to us also about the US interest that is in the resources because you make an interesting point in one of your articles for The Nation where you point out also that even if we arent right away running out of natural resources in the Middle East, there is an issue that climate change in the Middle East is actually driving also whats happening in the Arctic. Explain that to us.

Michael Klare: Yes, indeed. If you look at the latest scientific literature on what we could expect from climate change in the future, the Middle East region, especially the Persian Gulf, which is where most of oil drilling is occurring at present, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran and so on, those areas are going to become unbearably hot in summer months. You can expect, in decades to come, that summertime temperatures during the day are likely to average above 110 degrees Fahrenheit and very possibly above 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Its almost impossible for humans to survive for very long in those temperatures.

A lot of equipment breaks down under those circumstances. So its very possible that itll become impossible to produce oil and gas in that region. That makes production in the Arctic much more attractive as those areas become impossible to operate in the Middle East. So the oil companies, American and British oil companies are increasingly looking towards the Arctic as a future source of production to ensure that they have adequate supplies.

Greg Wolpert: Erik, I want to turn to you now. Now, what has Norway done to facilitate the scramble for Arctic resources? I mean, Norway is usually seen as a peace loving country, the home of the Nobel Peace Prize after all. To what extent and why is Norway supporting US ambitions there via NATO?

Erik Vold: Well, Norway joined the NATO in 1949 and that was a very controversial decision. And because Norway is a country that is situated on the border with Russia, at that time the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union had just liberated a big chunk of Norwegian territory from Nazi occupation, so there was very little appetite in the Norwegian population to sort of antagonize the Russians by letting the US enter Norwegian territory with heavy military equipment. So we had this self-imposed restrictions on US military presence. For example, not permitting US military bases on Norwegian soil in peace time and not permitting the presence of US nukes on Norwegian territory.

Now, this policy, this very prudent policy that served us very well for about 70 years has been rolled back by this current government, which is more and more inclined to supporting the US and to supporting US militarization off the Arctic that is deemed to be threatening by the Russians. Now I can give you a very illustrative example.

In 2018, the Norwegian government introduced a proposal asking basically asking the parliament for a grant of about 1 billion kroners, about $1 million for satellite-based broadband connection in the Northern Norway. Now this was presented as a proposal to improve internet connection for business, for fishery, for maritime security, shipping and for the Norwegian defense. This grant was voted favorably, unanimously, by the parliament.

Now a couple of days later, it turned out that this grant was going to be used on something completely different. It turned out that these satellites were going to carry communication equipment for the US military directly connected to US nuclear armed submarines that were using the Arctic territories of Norwegian maritime territory getting close to Russia.

It also turned out that the reason why the Americans wanted to use civilian Norwegian satellites instead of US military satellites was because the US military considered that any satellites carrying communication equipment for nuclear, US nuclear capabilities would become possible targets for attacks from those countries that feel threatened by the presence of US nukes close to their borders. In this case, it would be Russia and China.

So what this goes to show is the way that the US is increasingly using Norwegian territory and Norwegian civilian infrastructure to move nuclear and conventional military, offensive military, capabilities closer and closer to the Russian border. And that the way that this is being done is through, to a large extent, through secrecy and deceptions, sometimes even undermining important principles of the Norwegian democracy.

Greg Wolpert: Michael, I want to get to that point that Erik is raising about increasing US military presence in Norway. Were not just talking about the NATO maneuvers that are happening in early March. So what has the US so far deployed there and what kinds of risks do these deployments represent?

Michael Klare: So step back for a minute. The US, over the past two years, has adopted a new military strategy. For the past 20 years or so, since 2001, since 9/11, the guiding strategy of the United States has been the global War on Terror. And thats led, of course to a focus on Iraq to Afghanistan and other countries where the US has been fighting the various ISIS and Al-Qaeda and so on.

Two years ago, the Department of Defense adopted a new national security strategy, which emphasizes what they call great power competition, meaning the rivalry between the US, Russia and China. And on this space is the US increasingly views Russia and China as its main adversary. In this shift in strategy emphasizes that while the US was focusing on the wars, the what we call the Forever Wars, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and so on, that Russia and China have built up their military capabilities and put NATO and the US at a disadvantage and that therefore, its essential that the US and NATO build up their capabilities again to deflect and to contain and push back Russian and then Chinese advances.

So now looking at Norway and Scandinavia, the US sees a big Russian build up in the Kola Peninsula. Thats the area that adjoins Norway in the far North, a huge buildup of Russian forces there. This is seen as a new or an expanded threat to NATO and to US forces in general because those forces that the Russians have deployed in Kola Peninsula, especially in Murmansk the big naval base there include nuclear forces. So in response, the US has undertaken a drive to beef up its forces in that region and that has included, as [inaudible 00:13:28] said earlier, the positioning of a permanent deployment of American forces that is, in this case, Marine deployments of several hundred Marines in North Central Norway.

But more importantly, under agreement with the Norwegian government, this is not well known in the United States at all, I dont even know if go regions know about it, the US has established large, large caves, I think in the area to the East of Trondheim in North Central Norway, which hold hundreds, thousands of tanks and artillery pieces and armored personnel carriers, ammunition, all the stocks you need to fight a major war. So there is an anticipation on the US side that we may have to fight a major war with Russia in the far North in the area adjoining the Kola Peninsula.

The exercise that were about to see, Cold Response 2020, US forces will fly to Norway and then go to those caves and extract all of those tanks that have been pre-positioned in Norway, move to the Northern part of Norway and engage in a mock war with Russia. So there is this, an assumption now in the Pentagon that Northern Norway will be a major battlefield in any war with Russia and in fact could be the starting place for World War III.

Greg Wolpert: Actually, Erik, this is exactly the next issue I want to touch on with you. I mean, just as Michael says, Norway would be in the middle of such a confrontation, whether its a nuclear or conventional. Now, whats been the reaction within Norway to this militarization?

Erik Vold: Thats true. I mean, Norway used to be a kind of a buffer zone between Russia or the USSR and the US. And through those Norwegian policies of limiting US presence in Northern Norway, that position was maintained until pretty recently because the current government has done a lot to tear down those limitations and basically scrap Norways role as a buffer, as a buffer zone.

So, while reactions are slow [inaudible 00:15:55]. I mean, defense policies, the whole security issue, big power competition, that issue has basically been marginalized since the end of the Cold War. The Norwegian people is slowly realizing the risks that this implies for Norway. I mean, we have enjoyed so many decades of peace and the risk of war has basically not been on the agenda.

But what we are seeing now is that by scrapping that prudent policy of maintaining a certain distance to the US even though being allies, by scrapping that policy, the risk of war is not being, is not reduced. Its increasing. Were seeing basically a security dilemma in which the increased military presence of the US in Norway makes Russia look at Norway with different eyes. I mean, well, the Russians never feared Norway, a small country of five million inhabitants with whom theyve maintained peace for almost a thousand years.

When US nuclear capabilities are connected to Norwegian civilian infrastructure, and when Norwegian territory is used to build up US military presence, then Russian guns are slowly being to more of an extent being pointed towards Norway because what the Russians do fear is that Norwegian territory is being used for aggressive purposes by the US against Russia. And so that increases the risk of Norway being drawn into this big power rivalry between Russia and the US.

It also increases the risks for the Russians. So theyre increasing their military spending. And unfortunately, this is also something that might stimulate increase defense spending in the US because to the extent that the US engages in Norway, probably in the case and increasing the risk of a conflict. Maybe the most probable scenario is a conflict arising from a misunderstanding when so much heavy military power is concentrated on such a small area. Thats the way it can happen.

So in case of a misunderstanding in which the Russians fear a US attack, they go to, they take some kind of preliminary action to protect their military capabilities in the Kola Peninsula. Then the U S will feel much more obliged to interfere, to intervene in order to maintain their credibility as a security guarantor towards other NATO States. So it also increases the risk of the US being drawn into a conflict unnecessarily based on a misunderstanding. So, what were going to see is three nations, everyone spending more on defense and getting less security in return from it.

Greg Wolpert: Michael, I was just wondering if you could add to that? I mean this was one of your points in your Nation article as well, that this could be the main area for World War III and why is that? I mean, what is it, why is Russia building up so much? After all, theyve got access to the entire, more access to the Arctic than any other country in the world, so why is it such a hotspot?

Michael Klare: Well, this partly is a matter of geography and I hope that you can put a map of this area to highlight this fact. That is to say that although Russia has a number of ports, the port at Murmansk is the only one that offers Russian submarines open access to the Atlantic Ocean and to the other oceans of the world. They cant on the Atlantic side. They also have ports on the Pacific.

One needs a minute to understand something about nuclear strategy. Russia relies on its nuclear submarines, nuclear missile armed submarines, as its secure deterrent to a US first strike. If the US were to strike first and destroy all Russian missile silos, they count on their submarines submerged as a final deterrent to such a strike because theyre supposedly more secure from detection and attack, but they have to get out into the water. Murmansk is therefore essential to them for that reason.

Hence, the United States, as it increasingly sees it, sees the possibility of a nuclear war with Russia sees that area where the submarines would exit from Murmansk to go out into the ocean as a crucial future nuclear war zone. Hence, the US has established with Norway a radar base at the very far North of Norway and Finnmark just 45 miles from the border with Russia and to track Russian submarines. This means in the event of a clash that had a nuclear potential, Northern Norway would be an immediate nuclear target for Russia. So you could see how this area is being caught up in the nuclear planning scenarios of both sides.

Its important to understand in this discussion that as we are shifting to this great power competition that weve been discussing, the US and I think the other great powers are also moving away from the strategy of mutual assured destruction, MAD as it was called, M-A-D, which said that any nuclear war would be so catastrophic that we are not even going to think about a first strike. Were only going to retain a secure second strike and not even think about nuclear war, but thats changing.

The US and Russia and China, it appears, are thinking more and more about the possibility of fighting and winning a nuclear war. I think this is utterly insane and immoral, highly immoral, but that is the case. And so nuclear battlefields are emerging places where nuclear strikes might occur. This area of Northern Norway and Murmansk would be at the very top of the list of possible targets in the event of a nuclear war. I could say more about this, but this is a matter of geography and you have to see Murmansk adjoining Northern Norway as a prime battlefield in any outset of a nuclear war.

Greg Wolpert: Well, I think its also important to reflect on how these two kind of apocalyptic scenarios, that is of climate change and of nuclear war, are coming together in this particular issue. Its really quite something. But were going to leave it there for now. Well certainly continue to follow this as we usually do.

I was speaking to Michael Klare, The Nations defense correspondent and professor emeritus of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College and Erik Vold, foreign policy advisor for the parliamentary group of the Red Party of Norway. Thanks again, Michael and Erik for having joined us today.

Michael Klare: Thank you.

Erik Vold: Thank you.

Greg Wolpert: And thank you for joining the Real News Network.

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