If the Mistral ships remain in France their upkeep and security alone will cost the French taxpayers a hefty 5 million euros a month.

France will have to pay a high price for its failure to deliver two Mistral-class helicopter carriers to Russia.

If the Mistral ships remain in France their upkeep and security alone will cost the French taxpayers a hefty 5 million euros a month. Add to this the need to pay back the 890 million euros Russia has already lined up for the vessels plus a delayed delivery fine and the final cost will be too high to ignore,

French defense columnist Jean-Dominique Merchet writes in his regular column in L'Opinion newspaper.

More people died in the fire bombing of Dresden on February 13th to 14th, 1945 than in the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Holocaust (noun) - "Great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life, especially by fire."

When the FDA encounters instances of scientific misconduct, it buries the evidence. A recent investigation sheds light on the extent of the problem.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration - the agency tasked with protecting public health via regulation of everything from food safety to prescription drugs - occasionally encounters serious instances of misconduct in biomedical research. According to an investigation published in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, these cases include

...falsification or submission of false information... problems with adverse events reporting... protocol violations... inadequate or inaccurate recordkeeping... failure to protect the safety of patients and/or issues with oversight or informed consent... [among other violations]

Study author Charles Seife, an acclaimed science writer and professor of journalism at NYU, writes that "the FDA has no systematic method of communicating these findings to the scientific community, leaving open the possibility that research misconduct detected by a government agency goes unremarked in the peer-reviewed literature." In the course of his investigation, he identified fifty seven published clinical trials for which an FDA inspection of the trial site had turned up "significant evidence" for at least of the aforementioned problems.

Broadcasting from deep in the heart of the American Empire, join your host Harrison Koehli 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. This week, they discussed the Minsk talks, the tragic shootings in Chapel Hill, and the Messiah before Jesus, based on Israel Knohl's research.

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: 01:28:00

Download: MP3

Journalists were awaiting a news conference of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic leader Alexander Zakharchenko in his residence in Donetsk when a mine exploded nearby.

A mine had exploded near the residence of Alexander Zakharchenko, 100 meters away from the journalists who had gathered for a press conference with the leader of the self proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, RIA Novosti correspondent reports.

At least three people have been killed and four injured.

In a bizarre interview posted through its online propaganda magazine, the terrorist group claimed to have captured a 19-year-old Israeli Mossad spy. While the young man tells a potentially coerced - potentially fabricated - tale worthy of a Graham Greene novel, his father now denies those claims.

On Thursday, the self-proclaimed Islamic State terrorist group released an interview with one of their own captives through its online magazine, Dabiq. "Interview with a Spy Working for the Israeli Mossad," the title reads, next to a photo of the alleged spy.

The boy's father recognized this photo as his son.

"My son is innocent, IS accused him of working for Mossad because he tried to run away," Said Musallam told the AFP.

Galvanized by the recent terror attacks in France, European Union leaders on Thursday debated a range of ambitious steps to better protect their 28 nations, including exchanging airliner passenger manifests, tightening controls at the border and combating extremism on the Internet.

EU President Donald Tusk, the summit meeting's host, said he would seek agreement on a "work plan to step up the fight against terrorism.'' The bloc's top official for counter-terrorism warned member governments last month that ''Europe is facing an unprecedented, diverse and serious threat.''

Counter-terrorism policy shot to the top of the EU agenda following the Jan. 7-9 terror attacks in Paris against a satirical weekly, a policewoman and a kosher grocery store that claimed a total of 17 victims. The three gunmen, who proclaimed allegiance to Al-Qaida in Yemen and the Islamic State group, were also shot dead by French police.

The attacks mobilized France and other EU countries to seek more effective ways to deal with armed Islamic militancy, especially the problem of radicalized European-born Muslims who go to fight in Syria or Iraq and then return home.

Bosnian Serbs led the oppositional voice against weapon exports to Ukraine, where fighting between government forces and rebels in the East threatens to fracture the country.

After Bosnian arms producer Unis Group recently won a 5 million euro ($5.66 million) tender to provide Ukraine with weapons and ammunition, Russia called on the Bosnian government to nix the deal.

Bosnian Serbs, who have strong bonds with fellow Orthodox Christian Russia, said that permitting arms exports to Kiev would damage their relations with Moscow.

The presidency said arms exports to Ukraine would not promote regional security.

"[Arms exports] do not contribute to regional security, stability and ongoing international diplomatic efforts to broker a peaceful solution to the crisis in Ukraine," said the presidency, which represents the three main ethnic groups, as quoted by Reuters.

"The crisis in Ukraine can be resolved only through a peaceful, democratic means, political dialogue and negotiations, with full respect of the international law."

The National Security Strategy (NSS) has a lot more to it than the media is letting on.

Aside from the rhetoric about American Exceptionalism and the gobbledygook about 'values', the NSS contains some valuable nuggets of information that can provide foresight into the US' upcoming foreign policy moves. While the media has focused on the general Russian, ISIL, and Chinese components of the strategy, there's in fact a lot more to it, and it literally affects the whole world. Some of the measures being proposed are bound to be seen as threatening by other states, and they're expected to surely respond in some way or another.

New Space Race

The document declares that the US "will also develop technologies and tactics to deter and defeat efforts to attack our space systems; enable indications, warning, and attributions of such attacks; and enhance the resiliency of critical U.S. space capabilities." This amounts to the militarization of space, and Russia and China will obviously race to keep up.

More Color Revolutions

Section IV is about "values" and basically outlines the US government's engagement of non-state actors all throughout the world, specifying that "defending democracy and human rights is related to every enduring national interest." Not only will the US "support emerging democracies", but in particular, it will "[provide] direct support for civil society" and "[identify] future leaders in government, business, and civil society and [connect] them to one another." All of this reads like a Color Revolution field guide, and in case there were any doubts about that, another section reminds the world that the US government will "stand by the citizens of countries where the full exercise of democracy is at risk, such as Venezuela."

Global Alliance Systems

They specifically single out the following allies for each region:

Europe:

Current: NATO

Prospective: The US will "steadfastly support the aspirations of countries in the Balkans and Eastern Europe toward European and Euro-Atlantic integration" (a euphemism for NATO expansion).

When the US says that it "will support partners such as Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine so they can better work alongside the United States and NATO, as well as provide for their own defense", it's basically talking about NATO interoperability and the expansion of Shadow NATO.

Asia:

Core Members: Japan, South Korea, Australia

Peripheral Members: Philippines, Thailand, New Zealand

Deepening Partnerships: India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia

Middle East:

Israel, Jordan, Gulf Kingdoms

Africa:

African Union

Washington created something called NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949 to weld Western Europe firmly to the future foreign policies of Washington, however destructive that might prove to the genuine interests of Germany, France, Italy and the other nations of Europe. In 1986 the twelve nations of the then-European Economic Community modified the 1957 Treaty of Rome and signed the Single European Act. That mandated the creation of a single EEC market by end of 1992, and set forth rules for European Political Cooperation, the forerunner of the European Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy.

Then on November 9, 1989, an event of historic dimension intervened to disrupt the EEC strategy for a single market. Gorbachev's USSR surrendered the German Democratic Republic to the West. The Cold War was de facto over. Germany would be reunited. The West had apparently won. Most Europeans were jubilant. Many believed the decades of living on the brink of possible nuclear war were over. The emerging Europe seemed proud, confident of the future. NATO was an entity created by Washington, in the words of its first General Secretary, Lord Ismay, to "keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down."

European Defense Pillar or US NATO?

The Maastricht Treaty, a document with fatal flaws, was introduced at a meeting of the EEC in December 1991. A shocked Helmut Kohl was told by France's Mitterrand and Britain's Margaret Thatcher that Germany must agree to creation of a single currency to control the Bundesbank. That became today's Euro and an independent supranational European Central Bank. It was blackmail as precondition for their accepting German unification. The Germans swallowed hard and signed.

What was little discussed at the time was that the Maastricht Treaty also included a section mandating establishment for the first time of a Common Foreign and Security Policy. The twelve nations signed the treaty and intense discussions were underway of establishing a European defense pillar independent of NATO. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the raison d'être for NATO was gone. The Warsaw Pact had dissolved. Washington had assured Gorbachev that NATO would never extend to the east.