the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

Since the pandemic began, America’s billionaires have seen their wealth skyrocket to an amount almost equal to a fifth of US GDP. This concentration of wealth is morally unacceptable — but it also represents a mortal threat to democracy.  by Luke Savage  It’s by now widely understood that the past twelve months have been a tale of two very different pandemics. Amid the countless stories of human misery buried in monthly unemployment figures, reports of widespread hunger, and tragic (though avoidable) deaths of frontline workers, COVID-19 has been a veritable bonanza for the tiny few at the commanding heights of the hyper-financialized global economy. Recent numbers published by the Financial Times underscore just how dramatic these gains have really been:                               Over the past two decades, as the global population of billionaires rose more than fivefold and the largest fortunes rocketed past $100bn . . . The pandemic has reinforced this trend. As the virus spread

Newly leaked documents show that US officials in 1958 cavalierly planned a nuclear strike on China over a handful of disputed islands. As Washington once more stokes tensions with China, it’s a reminder of the callous recklessness at the heart of US foreign policy.   by Branko Marcetic  Part 2 - Destruction for Dignity The plan, approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and developed before the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis began, envisaged only two phases in the response to a Chinese attack: patrol and reconnaissance, followed by the defeat of Chinese forces, who would be “ countered by an American attack with atomic weapons against the Chinese mainland. ” The nuclear attacks would begin against Chinese air bases before moving incrementally up into the Chinese mainland as far north as Shanghai, as was discussed at one point. As the study took care to point out, the plan didn’t include any intermediate step involving conventional weapons: “ the phase immediately following patrol and reconnaiss

Through his hallowed foundation, the world’s de facto public health czar has been a stalwart defender of monopoly medicine.  by Alexander Zaitchik Part 5 - Gates defused the real issue of decolonizing global health By 1999, Bill Gates was in his final year as CEO of Microsoft, focused on defending the company he founded from antitrust suits on two continents. As his business reputation suffered high-profile beatings from U.S. and European regulators, he was in the process of moving on to his second act: the formation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which commenced his unlikely rise to the commanding apex of global public health policy. His debut in that role occurred during the contentious fifty-second General Health Assembly in May 1999.  It was the height of the battle to bring generic AIDS drugs to the developing world. The central front was South Africa, where the HIV rate at the time was estimated as high as 22 percent and threatened to decimate an entire generation. I

Under cover of the pandemic, Greece’s right-wing government has passed a slew of new measures to benefit the wealthy at the expense of workers, while massively expanding police powers. On the back of a decade of austerity, the latest laws are set to transform the country into a client state and playground for foreign tourists.   by Matthaios Tsimitakis/Mihalis Panayiotakis    Part 5 - Policing Everywhere and at All Times It is now a meme-producing cliché in Greece to say that the government believes that all problems can be solved by hiring more police officers. Indeed, in inverse relation to the shrinking number of permanent staff in the Greek health system, police numbers have grown amid the pandemic. As the official government census of public employees shows, between January 2020 and January 2021, the Ministry of Public Order and Citizen Protection acquired 4,568 more staff, while the Ministry of Health lost 1,680 employees — possibly the only country in the world to reduce the num

People are dying at record rates from opioid overdoses, and harm reduction advocates are asking the Biden administration to overhaul how it deals with the crisis.   by Michelle ChenTwitt  Part 2 - Turning a Corner Though the pandemic has aggravated the opioid overdose epidemic, the Biden administration has signaled a shift in Washington’s approach to the crisis. The massive American Rescue Plan stimulus bill includes a tranche of $30 million dedicated to harm reduction services. That’s a tiny fraction of the $7.6 billion the federal government spent on the opioid overdose crisis in fiscal year 2019. But Beth Connolly, project director of the Substance Use Prevention and Treatment Initiative at Pew Charitable Trusts, said that as the first explicitly targeted federal funding for harm reduction, “ it really is a message and a step in the right direction. ”  The harm reduction provision in the relief package could boost federal support for syringe service programs (SSPs), which provide cl

Belarusian regime-change activist Roman Protasevich, whose arrest on a grounded plane caused a global scandal, joined Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and was cultivated by the US government’s media apparatus.   by Ben Norton  Part 2 - Western government-backed color revolution seeks regime change in Belarus Roman Protasevich is among the most high-profile Belarusian opposition figures to be cultivated by Western governments in a regime-change operation targeting their home country. In 2020, a protest movement in Belarus quickly morphed into a Western-backed attempt at a so-called color revolution. It aimed at overthrowing the government of President Alexander Lukashenko, a former Soviet collective farm director who has ruled Belarus since 1994 and maintained some Soviet-style policies, while pursuing friendly relations with Russia and China. To the chagrin of the US and its EU allies, Lukashenko has overseen a relatively state-led economy with greater public ownership and more robust

failed evolution   World's number one political prisoner, Julian Assange, still in high security prison for exposing horrendous war crimes carried out by the US imperialists and their allies.     

Moderate Rebels   Chilean activist Pablo Sepúlveda Allende, a grandson of Chile's legendary socialist President Salvador Allende, discusses how the nationalization of his country's enormous copper reserves partially inspired the CIA's September 11, 1973 CIA coup d'etat that installed the brutal military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

failed evolution   Ναι. Αλλά απ'ότι φαίνεται μόνο αυτούς.   Δεν εξηγείται αλλιώς το γεγονός ότι οι πληρωμένες πένες έπιασαν αμέσως δουλειά, σε άλλη μια επιχείρηση δολοφονίας χαρακτήρα, όταν ο καθεστωτικός μηχανισμός αντιλήφθηκε το μέγεθος της απήχησης που είχε το νέο βίντεο του Μιθριδάτη.   Μέσα σε λιγότερο από μια εβδομάδα, ήδη μετράει πάνω από 1 εκατομμύριο views, παρόλο που οι καθεστωτικοί παπαγάλοι της μιντιακής χούντας (πλην ελαχίστων περιπτώσεων), κάνουν σαν να μην υπάρχει.  Από την μια, λοιπόν, το καθεστώς φρόντισε να το εξαφανίσει από την μιντιακή ατζέντα (αφού εκεί "συνωστίζεται" η μάζα). Από την άλλη, για τον φόβο των Ιουδαίων, κινητοποίησε τον καθεστωτικό τύπο για να αποδομήσει το αντικαθεστωτικό αυτό "πόνημα" του Μιθριδάτη με τις τυπικές (μέχρις αηδίας) κατηγορίες περί λαϊκισμού, fake news, κ.λ.π. Όμως με αυτό το έργο, ο Μιθριδάτης είπε μόνο αλήθειες. Και τις είπε μέσα από στιχάκια, πολύ πιο γενναία και με μεγαλύτερη ευθύτητα, ακόμα και από την πιο σ

New Economic Thinking   " Capitalism is broken. The relentless pursuit of more has delivered climate catastrophe, social inequality and financial instability – and left us ill-prepared for life in a global pandemic. Tim Jackson’s passionate and provocative book dares us to imagine a world beyond capitalism – a place where relationship and meaning take precedence over profits and power. Post Growth is both a manifesto for system change and an invitation to rekindle a deeper conversation about the nature of the human condition. " Rob Johnson talks with Jackson about his new book, Post Growth: Life after Capitalism , and how we might break free of the cycle of restrictive thinking which has plagued economics, and the world.