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Human research loopholes: Alive & well

Yonatan Moskowitz & Lee Tien
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Mon, 28 Dec 2015 20:28 UTC
Tuskegee Study

Doctor injecting a patient with placebo as part of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
In one of the darkest chapters in medical ethics, the United States government ran an experiment from the 1930s to the 1970s in which it withheld treatment and medical information from rural African-American men suffering from syphilis. The public uproar generated by the Tuskegee Syphilis Study eventually resulted in regulations restricting government-supported research testing on humans. These regulations are called the "Common Rule," and they are right now up for their first full update.

The Common Rule, also known as the "Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects," is supposed to affirmatively protect us from the abuses of the future. However, the proposed regulation is lousy with loopholes, including ones that could exempt tracking online behavior and experiments related to intelligence activities.
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Arrow Down

EU fails to uphold core principals of human rights and democracy in 2015


Sputnik News
Sat, 02 Jan 2016 19:00 UTC
mass march of refugees in Austria
© AP Photo/ Gyorgy Varga
The European Union's policies in 2015 showed that it is no longer concerned with its founding missions of democracy and rights, according to a French economist.

The European Union in 2015 has failed in upholding three of its core principles, democracy, human rights and efficient governance, French economist Gerard-Francois Dumont wrote in Atlantico.

Failing to protect refugees and entering deals with Turkey to curb their flow dealt a blow to the EU's human rights mission, according to Dumont. At the same time, the union also stamped out democracy by having its unelected bureaucratic bodies make decisions instead of local institutions.

Comment: Has the EU ever upheld its supposed core principals, or has it always just been a lapdog for NATO's continual war of aggression?

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SOTT Logo Radio

The Truth Perspective: Nations of Entropy, Nations of Creativity


Sott.net
Sat, 02 Jan 2016 19:00 UTC
Sott Talk Radio logo
Broadcasting from deep in the heart of the American Empire, join your host Elan Martin, and fellow Sott.net editors, as they discuss everything from current events and the latest machinations and manipulations of the global elite to history, science, and religion, and how it all fits together.

While it may not be quite as 'black and white' as the title suggests, there are different spheres of 'behavior' among many governments that do point towards a particular direction that certain countries are striving towards. For instance: What does sound economic policy look like among countries that are seeking to be constructive? How is force applied when a country is aligned with the forces of destruction? And what are the things that the leaders of these countries say and do that suggest sincerity, or duplicity?

The contrasts we see are stark, but seem lost on all too many of the propagandized people of the world. But with the plethora of objective information being revealed today concerning geopolitical events, we can certainly make some important distinctions that point to some clear truths.

The Truth Perspective is brought to you by the SOTT Radio Network and SOTT.net, your one-stop source for independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

Live every Saturday from 2-4pm EST / 11am-1pm PST / 8-10pm CET.

Running Time: 02:06:00

Download: MP3

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Pistol

Attack on Indian air force base at Pathankot, Punjab: 5 terrorists, 3 security men killed

Harkirat Singh, Aseem Bassi, Vinay Dhingra
Hindustan Times
Sat, 02 Jan 2016 00:00 UTC
Pathankota terror attack1
© Sameer Sehgal/HT Photo
Security has been stepped up and high alert has been sounded in the state after the terrorist attack.
Five terrorists and three security men including one Indian Air Force (IAF) personnel were killed in an attack on an air force base in Punjab's Pathankot district early on Saturday morning, setting alarm bells ringing across the country.

Gunshots rocked the facility around 3:30am on the second day of a new year as a group of at least five men in army-style clothing - believed to be operatives of the Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist group - launched the daring operation less than 24 hours after an alert was sounded in the state over the assault of a top police officer by suspected Pakistani terrorists.

Even though police said the gun battle ended by 8am in which four terrorists were killed, shots and loud explosions were heard from inside the base around 11am.

Comment:
Pak militant group's role in Pathankot attack decoded

Security agencies have traced the involvement of the shadowy terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad in the Indian Air Force base attack in Pathankot after intercepting mobile calls made by five terrorists to their handlers in Pakistan.

The Jaish-e-Mohammad - meaning 'army of the Prophet' - is a Pakistan-based outfit headed by Maulana Masood Azhar, who was one of three terrorists freed by India in exchange for the release of 176 passengers aboard an hijacked Indian Airline flight in 1999.
...
Terrorists had snatched a mobile phone from Gurdaspur superintendent of police Salwinder Singh whom they had waylaid near Pathankot on the Friday morning.

The terrorists used the SP's official vehicle to get away from the scene and get closer to their intended target in Pathankot, according to police.
...
Over the last few years, JeM cadres dwindled in Kashmir and it almost retreated into obscurity on the radar of security agencies. With the Pathankot attack, the ghost of JeM may have returned, security officials said.
Pathankot terrorists spoke of revenge for Afzal Guru

Gurdaspur resident Rajesh Verma survived a slit throat to alert security agencies about the audacious plan by a group of Pakistan-based terrorists to attack a defense installation.

Speaking to HT exclusively from a hospital bed on Saturday, Verma, 40, recounted in details his ordeal which started on Friday morning when he decided to accompany Gurdaspur police official Salwinder Singh on a trip to a saint's mazaar close to the Indo-Pak border.

"When we were coming back, four men in army uniforms signaled our car to stop. As we stopped, the four overpowered us and barged into the vehicle and tied all of us with ropes and clothes," Verma said.

Verma said that soon after they were abducted the men told them that they were going to attack the air force base to avenge the hanging of Afzal Guru, convicted in the 2001 Parliament attack.

The Urdu-speaking men were carrying assault rifles and grenades as well as a GPS navigation system and had a clear idea about the location of the base.

"'You killed Afzal Guru and now we will take revenge' they kept on saying as they continued hitting us with rifles butts," Verma said.

Guru was hanged and buried in the Tihar jail on February 9, 2013 for his role in the 2001 attack on Parliament after his mercy petition was rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee.


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Target

Russia insists Jaysh al-Islam, Ahrar ash-Sham must be on list of terrorist groups in Syria


ITAR-TASS
Sat, 02 Jan 2016 18:14 UTC
Russia
© Unknown
The Russian side so far believes it is unnecessary to make public its proposals for the list of terrorist groups active in Syria that should be excluded from the political settlement process, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov told TASS in an interview.

"The work on the list of terrorist groups in Syria that would be acceptable for all has not been finished yet," he said. "I will not report the exact list of our proposals on the candidates to be put on the terrorist list - it is still part of the process of coordination of positions that should unite all members of the international Syria Support Group, so the haste and even publicity is apparently unnecessary here."

Nevertheless, the official made an exception for two groups - Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar ash-Sham. "The specified groups, in our view, should be included in the final variant of the list, as they cannot make a contribution to attaining the political tasks for all Syria," he said. "Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar ash-Sham are criminal terrorist organizations that should be liquidated, and their criminal activity - stopped. There is, believe me, convincing evidence to this that is also known to our foreign partners."
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Stormtrooper

Are Erdogan's anti-Kurdish actions driving Turkey towards a civil war?


Sputnik News
Sat, 02 Jan 2016 18:40 UTC
turkish military police attacking kurds
© REUTERS/ Sertac Kayar
Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdogan's unquenchable thirst to concentrate political power in his hands, together with his ever-broadening campaign against the Kurds, both at home and in neighboring Syria, threatens to take the country "to the brink of a fully-fledged civil war," warns Pakistani political analyst Salman Rafi Sheikh.

In his latest analysis for the internet-based foreign policy journal New Eastern Outlook, Sheikh, a freelance journalist and political analyst who covers international relations and Pakistani affairs, explained that the present Turkish leadership's intolerance toward the idea of sharing power with the Kurdish minority threatens to become a recipe for disaster.

"If we were to believe Erdogan's up-beat 'anti-terror' rhetoric," the analyst writes, "we might also be also be tempted to believe that Turkey, led by him, has been one of the most important states fighting terrorists since the beginning of the current phase of the conflict in the Middle East - a phase that originally started with the Western-engineered so-called 'Arab Spring'."

Comment: Erdogan continues to expose his true colors as a brutal and intolerant dictator, wreaking havoc on Turkey.

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Handcuffs

Off to a fast start: Saudi Arabia executes 47 people, including prominent Shiite cleric, on terror charges


RT
Sat, 02 Jan 2016 17:45 UTC
A poster of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr
© Khaled Abdullah Ali Al Mahdi / Reuters
A poster of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.
Saudi Arabia has executed 47 people for terrorism, including the prominent Shi'ite Muslim cleric Nimr al-Nimr, the Interior Ministry said Saturday. His execution has stirred particular outrage among the kingdom's critics, saying the cleric's death aims to "set the region on fire."

Most of those executed were said to be involved in a series of attacks carried out by Al Qaeda between 2003 and 2006.

Iran has warned that executing al-Nimr "would cost Saudi Arabia dearly," Reuters reported.

A prominent state-affiliated Iranian cleric, Ahmad Khatami, said the execution of Nimr al-Nimr was something to be expected from "criminal" Saudi Arabia, Iranian Fars agency reported. He added that Saudi ruling family would be "wiped from the pages of history" for executing the cleric, Mehr reported.

An MP from the ruling Shi'ite coalition in Iraq said Nimr's execution aimed to "set region on fire," Sumaria TV reported.

The Lebanese Supreme Shi'ite Council has condemned al-Nimr's execution, calling it a serious "mistake."
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Bullseye

Ya think? Former U.S. Ambassador says America has reputation as a killer nation and danger to world society


Sputnik
Sat, 02 Jan 2016 13:19 UTC
US military
© AFP 2015/ AHMAD AL-RUBAYE
The reputation of the Americans abroad is that of a killer nation and a danger to world society; it has practically no allies and those countries who claim to be as such take the US side only in an attempt to exercise some sort of control over their homicidal tendencies, according to the former US ambassador to a number of countries Dan Simpson.

And the US arms industry, he says, is the only beneficiary of this role.

"At home, it sells the guns that are used, virtually without control, to slaughter innocent groups of people, including in churches and schools," the former US Foreign Service officer elaborated in his article for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Comment: Perhaps if more Americans understood how the rest of the world views our culture of violence and fears our 'humanitarian' interventions and spreading of 'democracy' they might begin to questions current policies and demand change. But it is unlikely that any mainstream media outlet will crack open a door that might crush the carefully constructed myth of American exceptionalism.

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No Entry

Putin signs document: US is a threat to Russian national security


Press TV
Sat, 02 Jan 2016 02:41 UTC
putin signing doc
© www.irna.ir
It is now official, US is a threat to Russia.
A new document signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin has, for the first time, named the United States as a threat to Russia's national security, highlighting a rise in tensions between the two countries in recent years.

Putin signed the document, "About the Strategy of National Security of Russian Federation," on New Year's Eve, Reuters reported on Saturday. The document, which serves as a basis for a planning strategy related to national security, replaces a 2009 version endorsed by current Prime Minister and then President Dmitry Medvedev.

The US was not included in the 2009 version of the document.

The document accuses the United States of expanding its network of military-biological laboratories in countries neighboring Russia. "The strengthening of Russia happens against the background of new threats to the national security, which has complex and interrelated nature," the document said.

The new document also says Russia's efforts to keep an independent "international and domestic" policy had caused "counteraction from the USA and its allies, which are striving to retain their dominance in global affairs."

The signing of the document comes against the backdrop of a rising military presence by the US and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. The document also names the expansion of NATO as a threat to Russia's national security.

Comment: Russia is calling it like it is. Turn-about is fair play, especially with the amount of restraint and wisdom exhibited so far on the part of Russia towards the West and specifically the US.

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Bad Guys

UK veterans may face Iraq war murder, torture and rape charges as claims grow tenfold


RT
Sat, 02 Jan 2016 15:15 UTC
British soldier rifle
© Atef Hassan / Reuters
A British soldier looks through the scope of his rifle after a roadside bomb attack that targeted their convoy in Basra, 420 km (260 miles) northeast of Baghdad
Allegations of unlawful killings and torture committed by British troops in Iraq have multiplied tenfold over the past five years, with the head of the unit established to investigate the cases saying the soldiers may face prosecution. When the UK Ministry of Defense created the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) in 2010 to look into accusations of abuse and torture allegedly committed by the British contingent in Iraq in 2003-06, the number of the victims it was dealing with was 152, yet in a matter of five years this number grew by almost 10 times, currently reaching at least 1,514, according to the latest IHAT quarterly update.

Of the total number of alleged victims, some 280 are victims of alleged unlawful killings and 1,235 are cases of ill-treatment, including alleged rape and torture. Currently, only 25 unlawful killing cases (9 percent) allegedly committed by British forces are being investigated; the ill-treatment cases under investigation total 45 (less than 4 percent).

"There are serious allegations that we are investigating across the whole range of IHAT investigations, which incorporates homicide, where I feel there is significant evidence to be obtained to put a strong case before the Service Prosecuting Authority (SPA) to prosecute and charge," Mark Warwick, a former police detective in charge of the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT), told The Independent.

Comment: In 2003, the US and Britain invaded Iraq in blatant violation of international law and under the pretext of finding weapons of mass destruction allegedly stockpiled by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. However, the world later learned that the former Iraqi regime did not possess WMDs and that the US and British leaders knew this all along.

See also:

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