the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

What was billed as a cooperative venture between Palestine and Israel is merely the occupation of water in disguise   by Jessica Buxbaum    Part 2 - Soldiers aiding settlers in water attacks   Saturday’s protest was calm and without clashes, but the event was underscored by earlier violence. Tuesday of that week, at least 60 masked Israeli settlers raided Mfakara — throwing stones, turning over cars, cutting water pipes and slitting the throats of sheep. Five children were injured during the attack, including a four-year-old boy who was sent to the hospital after being pelted in the head with rocks. Israeli soldiers watched from the sidelines — during what activists are describing as a “pogrom”– intervening only to fire tear gas, stun grenades and rubber-coated steel bullets at Palestinians. Earlier in September, a CFP protest to deliver water to Palestinian communities was met with violence from Israeli soldiers. Six Israelis and two Palestinans were injured — including Rabee, who was

Under the cover of counterterrorism, AFRICOM is beefing up Nigeria’s military to ensure the free flow of oil to the West, and using the country as a proxy against China’s influence on the continent.   by TJ Coles  Part 5 - Nigeria and the “war on terror”   Western propaganda paid less attention to Shell’s systemic violence against the Ogoni and other peoples, focusing instead on the more headline-grabbing resistance, such as high-profile ransom kidnappings and pipeline disruption. State oppression in the drier, less fertile north, meanwhile, fed the narrative pushed by Islamic groups: that Western culture is toxic. Founded in 2002 and led by Mohammed Yusuf who was later executed by the state, Boko Haram is officially called the Group of the People of Sunnah for Preaching and Jihad (Jamā’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-Jihād). It emerged in the northeastern city, Maidugari, close to Chad and Cameroon, where it set up semi-autonomous communities. Religious graduates who studied in Sudan

Even if we were to accept all the accusations against the WIV regarding their alleged subpar safety standards, none of it has any relevance to the Covid-19 pandemic unless it can be shown the WIV possessed SARS-CoV-2 in its lab before the outbreak, and there is no evidence of that.   by Joshua Cho    Part 4 - WIV’s biosafety practices not substandard   For the sake of argument, even if one grants the unproven premise that the WIV’s BSL-4 lab was engaged in bioweapons research, it is still irrelevant to the question of whether SARS-CoV-2 originated there, since the WIV doesn’t conduct coronavirus research at a BSL-4 setting. Most coronavirus research around the world is conducted at BSL-2 and BSL-3 settings. This demonstrates that those who suspect the pandemic originated from the WIV’s BSL-4 lab don’t seem to be aware of basic information about coronavirus research. Some notable examples are people like novelist Nicholson Baker citing Husseini’s suspicions of the WIV’s BSL-4 facility i

Le simple fait de compter le coût de l’intervention occidentale en Afghanistan en vies militaires américaines ou britanniques constitue la preuve ultime que nous sommes une civilisation en décomposition   David Hearst Partie 5 - Une vérité brutale   Il existe une alternative à cette logique folle qui consiste à penser que l’on fait la promotion de la démocratie en lâchant des drones sur des pauvres gens à des milliers de kilomètres. Imaginez un monde où les États-Unis auraient dépensé 2 000 milliards de dollars pour le peuple afghan. Un monde où ils auraient cherché à influencer des mouvements religieux conservateurs comme celui des talibans non pas par la guerre, mais par une stratégie basée sur le dialogue. Pas avec des drones, mais avec un dialogue. Imaginez où en serait l’Afghanistan aujourd’hui, ainsi que la quantité de soft power que l’Occident détiendrait encore. Quand ils se retirent, les États-Unis se soucient encore moins des populations qu’ils abandonnent que de celles qu’il

The media’s latest ahistorical freak-out over Afghanistan is further evidence of its de facto merger with the U.S. national security state   by Gareth Porter   Part 1   Following the Taliban’s victory over the U.S. military, U.S. corporate media has churned out a new narrative about the imminent threat of terrorism from Afghanistan that sets the stage for future military interventions. Blasted out in a stunningly disciplined fashion, the media has demonstrated as clearly as ever its coordination with the national security state and advancements of its interests.  The corporate media coverage in the the weeks following the Taliban entry into Kabul conveyed two overriding political messages: first, that the Taliban victory had brought to power the Haqqani network, which is said to be even more violent than the Taliban and even closer to al Qaeda; and second, that the the danger of terrorism had now become much more serious, because the Taliban had could not be counted on to prevent al Qa

Angela Merkel’s tenure will be remembered as Germany’s, and Europe’s, cruelest paradox. On the one hand, she dominated the continent’s politics like no other peacetime leader — and is leaving the German chancellery considerably more powerful than she had found it. But the way she built up this power condemned Germany to secular decline and the European Union to stagnation.   by Yanis Varoufakis  Part 2 - Episode 1: Pan-European Socialism for Germany’s Bankers In 2008, as banks on Wall Street and in the City of London crumbled, Angela Merkel was still fostering her image as the tightfisted, financially prudent Iron Chancellor. Pointing a moralizing finger at the Anglosphere’s profligate bankers, she made headlines in a speech in Stuttgart where she suggested that America’s bankers should have consulted a Swabian housewife, who would have taught them a thing or two about managing their finances. Imagine her horror when, shortly afterwards, she received a barrage of anxious phone calls fr

globinfo freexchange   As we were writing back in 2014:                        Having secured the new labor force through fully automated machines, what has left for the dominant elite now, is to take all the resources. Big corporations are grabbing huge cultivable areas especially in the developing countries in order to control food production.  We have come now to the point where big corporations literally institutionalize land-grab to control the global food production.   As The Grayzone recently revealed [emphasis added]:  In June 2019, the office of UN General Secretary António Guterres, without previous discussion in the General Assembly or any other intergovernmental process, signed a strategic partnership with the World Economic Forum. [...] The 2021 UN Food Systems Summit was initiated through a partnership with the World Economic Forum, with limited participation of other UN bodies, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization or the Committee on World Food Secu

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.   The ruthless Western imperialist regime wants to punish the No1 real journalist in the world and make him an example for any Whistleblower or real journalist who will attempt to expose its big crimes in the future.   The only thing that stands between the ruthless imperialists and their plans to exterminate Julian Assange are the thousands of people protesting against his extradition to the US. Among them, famous names from the global political, economic, academic, intellectual and arts sectors.   More and more people should join the fight until full drop of charges against Julian Assange and his release.   So, until then, we should make sure that the clear message will reach the power centers of the worst liberal establishment ever: if you dare to harm Julian Assange, get ready for a non-

Going Underground   Lord Prem Sikka discusses the neoliberal structural problems in the economy that neither the Labour or Conservative Party are willing to address, the privatisation by stealth of the National Health Service (NHS) and the subsequent decline of the NHS’ standard of healthcare provision, the government’s main priority being to provide tax cuts to corporations and the rich as the poor lose out, corporate and super-rich tax avoidance in Britain as the #PandoraPapers are leaked, the auditing industry and the government’s refusal to crack down on malpractice, the refusal of both Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson to address income inequality and call for redistribution, ties between elected MPs and the financial sector, and how London is at the forefront of tax evasion and money laundering. 

Zach Dorfman, Sean D. Naylor and Michael Isikoff   Part 2 - After the publication of the Democratic Party emails, there was “zero debate” on the issue of whether the CIA would increase its spying on WikiLeaks   When WikiLeaks launched its website in December 2006, it was a nearly unprecedented model: Anyone anywhere could submit materials anonymously for publication. And they did, on topics ranging from secret fraternity rites to details of the U.S. government’s Guantánamo Bay detainee operations. Yet Assange, the lanky Australian activist who led the organization, didn’t get much attention until 2010, when WikiLeaks released gun camera footage of a 2007 airstrike by U.S. Army helicopters in Baghdad that killed at least a dozen people, including two Reuters journalists, and wounded two young children. The Pentagon had refused to release the dramatic video, but someone had provided it to WikiLeaks. Later that year, WikiLeaks also published several caches of classified and sensitive U