the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

French train drivers, teachers and refinery workers were among those who walked off their jobs on Thursday (19 January) in a nationwide day of strikes against government plans to raise the retirement age by two years to 64.   by EURACTIV.com with Reuters  Part 3 - Tax the rich? But with public sector workers often at the forefront of strikes, some seven out of 10 primary school teachers have said they will strike, their main union said. In Paris, students blockaded at least one high school in support of the strike action. EDF and grid operator RTE data showed electricity production was down by roughly 12% of total power supply, prompting France to raise its imports. Shipments were blocked at TotalEnergies’ refineries in France, union and company officials said. TotalEnergies chief executive Patrick Pouyanne said on Wednesday that one day of strikes would not disrupt refinery operations, but this could change if protests continued. The impact on air traffic was largely limited to a redu

Ukraine’s Western-backed leader Volodymyr Zelensky sent a love letter to US companies, thanking “ such giants of the international financial and investment world as BlackRock, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs ” for buying up his country’s assets. “ Everyone can become a big business by working with Ukraine ”, he enticed, claiming that the reconstruction of his nation “ will be the largest economic project of our time in Europe ”.  [...] Zelensky’s government has imposed some of the world’s most aggressive anti-worker policies, passing legislation that “ deprives around 73% of workers of their right to union protection and collective bargaining ”, which even the US government-funded Solidarity Center of the AFL-CIO labor federation condemned as a “ significant assault on worker rights in Ukraine “. Zelensky’s staunchly anti-worker, anti-union, and pro-corporate ideology came through clear in the neoliberal rhetoric of the speech he gave to the US chamber of commerce organization. He compared

Greece’s main opposition leader and former prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, requested a censure motion against the government after he revealed names of people who were tapped by the state intelligence unit. “ The last six months Mitsotakis is lying that he wasn’t aware, ” Tsipras told lawmakers Wednesday, accusing Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of being responsible for spying on the officials. Current labor minister Konstantinos Hatzidakis was being tapped from November 2020 to May 2021, when he was energy minister, while the head of armed forces and other military officials were spied on from July 2020 to May 22, according to Tsipras.    [...]   Tsipras’s comments came a day after he met with the head of the independent authority for Communication and Privacy, who handed him a letter with the findings of his investigation into who was under electronic surveillance from the state spy unit. The agency also sent the letter, which was classified, to all parliamentary party leade

BRICS is “developing a fairer system of monetary exchange” to challenge the “dominance of the dollar”, South Africa revealed. Saudi Arabia is considering selling oil in other currencies. Economist Zoltan Pozsar says the US “unipolar era” is over.   by Ben Norton  Part 2 - BRICS works to ‘develop a fairer system of monetary exchange’ as alternative to ‘dominance of the dollar’ South Africa’s Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor told Russia’s state media outlet Sputnik that the BRICS bloc is working to “ develop a fairer system of monetary exchange ”, to weaken the “ dominance of the dollar ”. Pandor’s comments were ignored by Western media outlets, but widely reported in the Indian press. “ We have always been concerned by the fact that there is a dominance of the dollar and that we do need to look at alternative [systems] ”, she said. “ The systems currently in place tend to privilege very wealthy countries and tend to be really a challenge for countries, such as ourselves, which have to ma

Western sanctions led Russia to greatly increase trade with Asia, while devastating Europe’s economy. The US tech war against China is damaging its own industry.   by Renate Bridenthal  Part 4 - Western sanctions on Russia backfire in Europe   By contrast, Germany is facing the most collateral damage from the loss to its markets and the sanctions on energy, notably bringing an end to the supply of cheap Russian gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. In 2020, U.S. Congress imposed secondary sanctions on banks that processed transactions related to the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines and on ship insurers that serviced them. When construction of Nord Stream 2 was finished in 2021, Washington imposed new sanctions on insurance and certification companies to keep it from opening. Finally, both pipelines were sabotaged in an undersea explosion in September 2022. As a result, the industries that had made Germany preeminent in Europe, such as steel, chemicals, machinery, and automotives, are su

Advancing global de-dollarization, China’s central bank is boosting its gold reserves while signing currency swap deals in yuan with countries like Argentina, encouraging the use of renminbi instead of US dollars.   by Ben Norton  Part 4 - China uses currency swap lines to help debt-burdened countries, while advancing de-dollarization China began conducted currency swaps with Argentina back in 2009, under left-wing President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Deals have been repeatedly renewed since then. But the South American nation is not the only country that has worked out a system like this with the East Asian giant. In December, the Wall Street Journal reported that Beijing’s central bank is using an “ unusual channel ”: “ currency-swap lines to support governments that borrowed heavily from Chinese banks ”. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has given hundreds of billions of dollars worth of yuan to dozens of countries in exchange for their domestic currencies, the newspaper repor

Democracy Now!   Former British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, famed linguist and dissident Noam Chomsky and others gave testimony Friday at the Belmarsh Tribunal in Washington, D.C., calling on President Biden to drop charges against Julian Assange.    The WikiLeaks founder has been languishing for close to four years in the harsh Belmarsh prison in London while appealing extradition to the United States. If convicted in the United States, Julian Assange could face up to 175 years in jail for violating the U.S. Espionage Act for publishing documents that exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Friday's event was held at the National Press Club and co-chaired by Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman.   

The Grayzone   The Grayzone 's Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate cover NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg's comment at the World Economic Forum that " weapons are the way to peace, " and discuss Washington's latest mad plans for escalating the Ukraine proxy war – even at the price of nuclear conflict. 

Some of the most incendiary accusations made against Iran’s government by corporate media, celebrity influencers and Western leaders in the past months are little more than fabrications. And most remain uncorrected.   by Setareh Sadeqi and Christopher Weaver   Part 2 - BBC Persian accuses Iran of killing more than Russia in Ukraine   On, November 18, BBC Persian posted an image Instagram and Facebook showing a crowd of Iranians cheering as a vehicle was set on fire. “The bloody crackdown on protests has left as many deaths as the war in Ukraine,” read the BBC Persian headline.  This was, at best, an act of journalistic malpractice, as the hyperbolic headline was only explained in the third paragraph of the BBC’s article as referring to two entirely different, arbitrarily chosen date ranges for Iran and Ukraine. The BBC continued, “ As human rights organizations report, between September 22 and October 17, 224 protesters died in Iran and in Ukraine between September 1 to September 25th,

by Sarantis Michalopoulos   Part 3 - The Commission’s silent anger   Syriza MEP Kostas Arvanitis said he would raise the issue with the relevant EU authorities as the opinion targets ADAE ” and the country’s rule of law ”. Arvanitis also said, “ no intimidation and no interference can stop the investigation either inside or outside the country. ” Greece is still waiting for the outcome of the European Parliament PEGA committee’s investigation over the “Greek Watergate” and a crucial visit to Athens by the LIBE committee. An EU official told EURACTIV that the European Commission, which has been quite sensitive regarding the role of independent national authorities, felt the matter “ would be for the national authorities to examine ”. “ Any attempts by national security services to illegally access data of citizens, including journalists and political opponents, if confirmed, is unacceptable, ” the EU official said. “ You know that we follow the situation in Greece, as well as other memb