(2021-11-21). Adept in Pan-Ottomanism, Erdogan Got Carried Away Playing Soldiers. journal-neo.org 
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is well known for his resounding appeals built on the political doctrine of Pan-Ottomanism, which emerged in Turkey in the 1970s, according to which all subjects of the Ottoman Empire are members of a single nation, the Ottomans. However, such verbal passage has been recently increasingly followed by actual actions, …
(2021-11-21). Biden wants an 'autonomous' Europe that spends more on defense. rt.com 
NATO members in Europe should "absolutely" become more autonomous from the US, meaning they should spend more on military and buy American weapons systems, a senior State Department official has said. | The continued failure by the Europeans to allocate a bigger share of their GDP on defense means that the gap between their combined military capability and that of the US only grows, State Department Counselor Derek Chollet
(2021-11-21). European Union Election Observation Mission Meets with Right-Wing Politicians: Guaidó, Capriles, Machado, Evans and Figuera. orinocotribune.com On Thursday, November 18, representatives of the European Union (EU) Elections Observation Mission (EOM) that is in Venezuela reported via Twitter on several meetings they held with spokespersons of Venezuela's extreme right, such as former deputy Juan Guaidó and the coordinator of the Vente Venezuela movement, María Corina Machado, in the hours before of the regional and municipal mega-elections. | In this regard, the international observers is maintaining their work schedule while the National Electoral Council's (CNE) schedule for the November 21 mega-elections advances with the objective to materialize the de…
(2021-11-21). General explains why US lags behind China & Russia in hypersonic missiles. rt.com 
The US is behind China and Russia when it comes to hypersonic weapons, a top Space Force general has said, citing bureaucracy and concerns over spending as some of the reasons for the lag. | "We're not as advanced as the Chinese or the Russians in terms of hypersonic programs," General David Thompson, the vice chief of space operations, told an audience at the Halifax International Security Forum on Saturday. "We have catching up to do very quickly." | Read more | | Thompson mentioned bureaucrac…
(2021-11-21). Guinness Confirms Venezuela's El Sistema Record as Largest Orchestra in the World. orinocotribune.com With a gala held this Saturday, November 20, at the headquarters of El Sistema, the official announcement of the results of the record attempt was made, as Venezuela's National System of Youth and Children's Orchestras and Choirs of Venezuela (El Sistema) obtained the Guinness World Record for "The Largest Orchestra in the World." | This record was held until Saturday by Russia, where in 2019, 8,097 musicians performed the Russian national anthem. Now the record belongs to Venezuela, where 12,096 musicians from El Sistema, in a new feat, performed various pieces at the Military University of Venezuela. The piece…
(2021-11-20). Belarus' Investigative Committee identifies 109 victims of Polish border forces' actions. tass.com According to the Investigative Committee's department, criminal proceedings into five episodes of violence used by the Polish and Lithuanian forces against migrants are underway in the Grodno region…
(2021-11-20). EU's Beleaguered Immigration Policies Will Be the Sword Which It Falls on. strategic-culture.org The refugee flows are nothing new. And the games that poorer, weaker countries play by using them, have also been around for a while. | The Belarus border is just the most recent in a long list of examples how Brussels cannot fight back countries who use refugees as a weapon against the EU's failed hegemony | For many erudite commentators who know the EU well, the scenes on the Poland-Belarus border felt a bit 'déjà vu'. Once again, the EU's failed policies when tackling immigration flows — which in many cases are as a direct result of propping up dictators or for dabbling in geopolitics — comes right…
(2021-11-20). [Correspondence] CoronaVac efficacy data from Turkey. thelancet.com Mine Tanriover and colleagues1 report that the efficacy of CoronaVac against laboratory-confirmed symptomatic COVID-19 in a trial in Turkey is 83 ∑5% (95% CI 65 ∑4—92 ∑1). By contrast, the efficacy of CoronaVac against symptomatic COVID-19 has been estimated at 50 ∑7% (36 ∑0—62 ∑0) in a Brazilian trial and at 65 ∑3% (20 ∑0—85 ∑1) in an Indonesian trial.2,3 Noting that post-vaccination neutralising antibody titres are quite strongly associated with vaccine efficacy against symptomatic infection,4,5 the efficacy estimated from the Turkish dataset is much higher…
(2021-11-20). Venezuela Provides Spain Information on Terrorists who Attacked CNE Headquarters. orinocotribune.com Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Minister Félix Plasencia provided the Spanish Chargé d'Affaires in Venezuela, Ramón Santos, with information on the terrorist gang from Spain that attacked the headquarters of Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE). Minister Plasencia informed this through a post on his Twitter account. | "At the headquarters of the Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Ministry," wrote Plascencia, "we delivered a formal note to the Chargé d'Affaires of Spain, Ramón Santos, with documentation confirming the existence of terrorist gangs in that country that are trying to attack Venezuelan public institutions…
(2021-11-20). Turkey and Iran, Friends or Foes? journal-neo.org 
Turkey and Iran, whose cooperation and potential conflict are closely intertwined despite the occasional disagreement and contradictory views on world events, are still trying to maintain a complex balance between themselves to prevent a significant escalation of tension. Indeed, any shift in the balance of power between these two critical poles in the Middle East …
(2021-11-20). [Correspondence] CoronaVac efficacy data from Turkey — Authors' reply. thelancet.com We thank Martina McMenamin and Benjamin Cowling for raising important issues on vaccine trials in the context of our Article.1 The work they refer to by Palacios and colleagues2 has not been published in a peer reviewed journal; thus we cannot comment on the accuracy or the comparability of its methods. The Indonesian trial data have been published,3 and although the main method of this study was similar to ours, the case definition of COVID-19 and the methods used for active surveillance were different.
(2021-11-20). Turkey's Proxies Shell Kurdish-Held Towns In Response To Deadly Rocket Attack On Afrin (Videos). southfront.org 
Screen grab from one of the videos released by Azm. | On November 20, the Turkish-backed Unified Operations Room-Azm announced that it had shelled positions of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the northern countryside of Aleppo in response to the recent The rocket attack, which took place in the late hours of Novem…
(2021-11-20). Remains Of Turkish Laser-Guided Munition Found In Disputed Western Sahara (Photos). southfront.org 
File image. | On November 20, activists from the disputed Western Sahara region shared photos showing the remains of a Turkish-made MAM-L munition. | The MAM-L, which was developed by defense giant Roketsan, is a light-weight munition guided by semi-active laser. The munition has a range of 8 to 14 kilometers. | According to Western Sahara activists, the munition was fired by one of Morocco's newly-acquired Bayraktar TB2 combat drones. The Kingdom ordered 13 drones of this type from Turkey earlier this year. The…
(2021-11-20). Austria re-imposes partial lockdown as COVID-19 surges across Europe. wsws.org European governments' politically criminal policy of "living with the virus" despite a surge of infections has created a disaster, costing hundreds of thousands of lives.
(2021-11-20). [Correspondence] COVID-19: stigmatising the unvaccinated is not justified. thelancet.com In the USA and Germany, high-level officials have used the term pandemic of the unvaccinated, suggesting that people who have been vaccinated are not relevant in the epidemiology of COVID-19. Officials' use of this phrase might have encouraged one scientist to claim that "the unvaccinated threaten the vaccinated for COVID-19".1 But this view is far too simple.
(2021-11-20). Study on Electromagnetism of Vaccinated Persons. globalresearch.ca First published by Global …
(2021-11-20). After woman's death abortion rights fight heats up in Poland. themilitant.com Tens of thousands took to the streets in Poland Nov. 5 to protest the government's extreme restrictions on the right to abortion. The actions in Warsaw, the capital, and other cities came after it became public that a 30-year-old pregnant woman identified only as Izabela had died of septic shock in September after doctors refused to end her pregnancy because the fetus still had a heartbeat. | Defenders of a woman's right to choose say her death is the result of the government's restrictions imposed in October last year by the Constitutional Court, Poland's highest judicial body. | Under the court ruling abortion…
(2021-11-20). Russia-NATO war over Ukraine is becoming increasingly unavoidable. rt.com 
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that the West isn't taking his country's "red lines" seriously and the US and its allies could be about to sleepwalk into a dangerous conflict with the world's largest nuclear power. | Red lines are about deterrence. The purpose of drawing them in the first place is to communicate crucial security interests and the severe consequences that would ensue if they were undermined. In essence, Moscow's ultimatums are intended to stop the West from making a dangerous miscalculation. | Deterrence rests on the three Cs: capability, credibility, and communication. Russia has t…
(2021-11-20). John McEvoy Exposes Britain's Role in Suppressing Democracy at Home and Abroad. orinocotribune.com Lowkey and John McEvoy discuss how the United Kingdom is playing a key role in upholding the established world order and doing the dirty work to suppress any challenges to it. | The Watchdog podcast is dedicated to uncovering hidden truths and exposing the secret affairs of Western governments. One individual doing more than almost anyone in revealing the true nature of the British state and its affairs worldwide is journalist and academic