the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

The Syrian Arab Army and its allies have taken the Palmyra ruins and Tadmor city next to them from the Islamic State. To the chagrin of the U.S. State Department (vid), the Islamic State occupiers pulled back into the eastern desert after losing some 500 men. The Syrian government can now use the air base in Palmyra and from there regain control of the eastern desert country up to Deir Ezzor and the Syrian/Iraqi border in the east and towards the Jordan border in the south. http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/03/ishtars-resurrection-palmyra-and-the-easter-walk.html Syrian troops recaptured the ancient city of Palmyra from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant on Sunday and pledged to build on the win with an advance against other jihadist strongholds. President Bashar al-Assad hailed the victory as an "important achievement" as his Russian counterpart and key backer Vladimir Putin congratulated Damascus for retaking the UNESCO world heritage s

Ο συριακός στρατός, με την υποστήριξη των ρωσικών αεροπορικών δυνάμεων, ανακατέλαβε την Παλμύρα μετά από σφοδρές μάχες με τους τζιχαντιστές του Ισλαμικού Κράτους, οι οποίοι τράπηκαν σε φυγή. Υπό τον έλεγχο του στρατού βρίσκεται τόσο η αρχαία πόλη, όσο και το κατοικημένο τμήμα της. Όπως ανακοινώθηκε μέσω της συριακής κρατικής τηλεόρασης ο στρατός και οι συμμαχικές πολιτοφυλακές, που ξεκίνησαν τις επιχειρήσεις στην Παλμύρα στις 7 Μαρτίου, «έχουν θέσει υπό τον πλήρη έλεγχό τους την πόλη». Την είδηση επιβεβαίωσε και στρατιωτική πηγή στο Γαλλικό Πρακτορείο, αλλά και το Συριακό Παρατηρητήριο για τα Ανθρώπινα Δικαιώματα, το οποίο έχει έδρα τη Βρετανία και καταγράφει τις εξελίξεις από την έναρξη του πολέμου στη Συρία. Η στρατιωτική ηγεσία της Συρίας ανέφερε πως η νίκη στην Παλμύρα σηματοδοτεί την αρχή της κατάρρευσης του Ισλαμικού Κράτους. Παράλληλα τόνισε πως αυτή η νίκη δείχνει ότι η συριακή κυβέρνηση και οι σύμμαχοί της είναι η μόνη ικανή δύναμη να καταπολεμήσει τ

For days now, American cable news has broadcast non-stop coverage of the horrific attack in Brussels. Viewers repeatedly heard from witnesses and from the wounded. Video was shown in a loop of the terror and panic when the bombs exploded. Networks dispatched their TV stars to Brussels, where they remain. NPR profiled the lives of several of the airport victims. CNN showed a moving interview with a wounded, bandage-wrapped Mormon American teenager speaking from his Belgium hospital bed. All of that is how it should be: That’s news. And it’s important to understand on a visceral level the human cost from this type of violence. But that’s also the same reason it’s so unjustifiable, and so propagandistic, that this type of coverage is accorded only to Western victims of violence, but almost never to the non-Western victims of the West’s own violence. A little more than a week ago, as Mohammed Ali Kalfood reported in The Intercept, “Fighter jets from a Saudi-led [U

globinfo freexchange This was probably the most impressive revelation derived by the documentary A Good American watched by the blog at the 18th Documentary Festival of Thessaloniki. The exceptional documentary by Friedrich Moser deconstructs completely the image of the National Security Agency, one of the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world. Through the revealing stories of former NSA employees who became whistleblowers - like William Binney , Diane Roark and Thomas Andrews Drake - the agency appears that it has become a field of personal ambitions and money hunting through huge funds from the central government. Moreover, the experienced, top analyst, William Binney (who is the central figure of the documentary), deconstructs the myth of an organization that is supposed to be pioneer in new technologies. He presents NSA as an organization which had certain difficulties to follow the explosive progress of the computer technology during 19

«Το προπέτασμα των θρησκευτικών αντιλήψεων για τα τρομοκρατικά απάνθρωπα χτυπήματα στην καρδιά των Βρυξελλών, δεν μπορεί να κρύψει την πραγματικότητα των αιτιών που δεν είναι τίποτα άλλο από τις πολεμικές επεμβάσεις και διαλύσεις χωρών και κοινωνιών που για τα συμφέροντα τους εδώ και 15 χρόνια πραγματοποιούν οι δυτικές συμμαχίες», τόνισε μιλώντας στο Ράδιο 9,84 ο δημοσιογράφος Άρης Χατζηστεφάνου. Η παρουσία στρατού για μήνες στο κέντρο των Βρυξελλών και το κλίμα σήμερα για στρατικοποίηση των ευρωπαϊκών πόλεων, σε τίποτα δεν εμπόδισε τους ισλαμοφασίστες τρομοκράτες να χτυπήσουν σε βάρος ανύποπτων πολιτών. «Είναι προφανές», είπε ο Άρης Χατζηστεφάνου, «πως το χτύπημα χρησιμοποιείται για νέα μέτρα αυστηροποίησης των κρατών και περιστολής ατομικών και κοινωνικών δικαιωμάτων με ότι αυτό συνεπάγεται για τις ευρωπαϊκές κοινωνίες». Οι οικονομικές κρίσεις, οι πόλεμοι και τώρα τα τρομοκρατικά χτυπήματα που η πολιτική των μεγάλων δυνάμεων εξέθρεψε, σήμερα χρησιμοποιο

globinfo freexchange A newsletter circulated after the Islamic State's November massacre in Paris, shows the objectives of Daesh, which is to break the EU unity and weaken economically the European states. From the TheIntercept : A newsletter circulated after the Islamic State’s November massacre in Paris sheds light on what the group believes yesterday’s [22/3] deadly attacks in Brussels will accomplish, including weakening unity on the continent and exhausting European states economically. An issue of the Islamic State newsletter al Naba, published weeks after the Paris attacks, boasted in one section that “the Paris raid has caused the creation of a state of instability in European countries which will have long-term effects.” It listed these as “the weakening of European cohesion, including demands to repeal the Schengen Agreement … which permits free traveling in Europe without checkpoin

An Israeli soldier was arrested on Thursday after a rights group published clear video images of him shooting a wounded, immobilized Palestinian suspect in the head following a knife attack in the West Bank city of Hebron earlier in the day. The graphic, distressing video was posted online by B’Tselem, an Israeli group that provides cameras to Palestinians to help them document human rights abuses in the West Bank territory that has been under military rule since Israel first occupied it in 1967. As the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports, the video was recorded just after another soldier was stabbed and moderately wounded at a checkpoint in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron’s Old City, and two Palestinian suspects were killed, including the one who was shot in the video. Full report and graphic video: https://theintercept.com/2016/03/24/israeli-rights-group-releases-video-soldier-executing-wounded-palestinian-suspect/

by George Mitralias After four years of apathy, lethargy and inactivity of French society, which coincide with the four years (2012-2016) of the presidency of Francois Hollande, everything suggests now that the ongoing rapid awakening will lead to one of those volcanic eruptions - for many decades now - by the youth and labor movement of France! And we dare to predict that this could happen in the next few weeks, in mid April or May 2016. So, "everything started" when the Hollande-Valls duo and the socialist-liberal government, made the most fatal mistake of an arrogant power: being sure that the French society was addicted to drink the bitter cup of their extreme neoliberal counter-reforms without reacting, they added a drop that made the glass to overflow. And because this fatal drop is fundamentally changing the "Labour Code" aimed at gnawing or even the complete elimination of the most basic labor rights been conquered in the last 100 y

του Γιώργου Μητραλιά Μετά από τέσσερα ολόκληρα χρόνια απάθειας, λήθαργου και αδράνειας της γαλλικής κοινωνίας, που συμπίπτουν με τα τέσσερα χρόνια (2012-2016) της προεδρίας του Φρανσουά Ολάντ, όλα δείχνουν πια ότι η υπό εξέλιξη ραγδαία αφύπνισή της θα μπορούσε να οδηγήσει σε μια από εκείνες τις ηφαιστειακές εκρήξεις στις οποίες μας έχει συνηθίσει -εδώ και πάρα πολλές δεκαετίες- το νεολαιίστικο και εργατικό κίνημα της Γαλλίας! Και τολμούμε να προβλέψουμε ότι αυτό μπορεί να συμβεί στις αμέσως επόμενες βδομάδες, μέσα στον Απρίλη ή το Μάη του 2016… «Όλα άρχισαν» λοιπόν όταν το δίδυμο Ολάντ-Βαλς και η σοσιαλφιλελεύθερη κυβέρνησή του, έκαναν το μοιραίο λάθος των αλαζονικών εξουσιών όλων των εποχών: Βέβαιοι ότι έχουν πια εθίσει τη γαλλική κοινωνία να πίνει το πικρό ποτήρι των ακραίων νεοφιλελεύθερων αντιμεταρρυθμίσεών τους χωρίς να αντιδρά, πρόσθεσαν τώρα τη σταγόνα που έκανε ξαφνικά αυτό το ποτήρι να ξεχειλίσει. Και επειδή αυτή η μοιραία σταγόνα είναι η εκ βάθρων α

War Crimes Around midday on March 15, fighter jets from a Saudi-led coalition bombed a market in Mastaba, in Yemen’s northern province of Hajjah. The latest count indicates that about 120 people were killed, including more than 20 children, and 80 were wounded in the strikes — perhaps the deadliest attack yet in a war that has killed more than 6,000 civilians. Local residents and health officials say the carnage was so great in Mastaba that most of the bodies could hardly be identified, and several were beyond recognition. The Saudi coalition consists of nine Arab states that have joined forces against Houthi rebels who have taken over large parts of Yemen. While U.S. fighter jets are not involved in the bombing campaign, the U.S. is providing intelligence and other forms of assistance, including weapons sales and aerial refueling of the Arab jets. After the latest attack, a top United Nations official, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the high commissioner for human ri

globinfo freexchange On March 16, 2016 WikiLeaks launched a searchable archive for 30,322 emails & email attachments sent to and from Hillary Clinton's private email server while she was Secretary of State. The 50,547 pages of documents span from 30 June 2010 to 12 August 2014. 7,570 of the documents were sent by Hillary Clinton. The emails were made available in the form of thousands of PDFs by the US State Department as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. The final PDFs were made available on February 29, 2016. A specific email under the title GERMANY AND THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC CRISIS that was sent to Hillary Clinton in May 2012, reveals that the Germans, and specifically the German Minister of Finance, Wolfgang Schäuble, had serious concerns about a potential dissolution of the eurozone. The revelations justify the whole sequence of events concerning Greece last year, when SYRIZA took over the leadership of the country. As described in the sp

The last decade has seen a remarkable coalescing of non-Western nations in both economic and political partnerships. These multilateral institutions have been championed as alternatives to Western organs of political and economic power such as NATO, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. From the growth of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to the establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union, China’s “One Belt, One Road” strategy to link much of the Eurasian landmass via trade and investment, and most recently the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, many have viewed these developments as essential for the decentralization of global power away from the imperial centers of Washington, Wall Street, London and Brussels. But perhaps none of the emerging Global South international groupings has been more promising in terms of both public relations and real economic partnership than that of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia

Taking a recent page from a Sweden’s playbook, a Democratic Senator in the United States has begun spreading fears of phantom Russian submarines "dangerously close" to US shores in an effort to secure increased military funding to his constituents. In October 2014, the Swedish military sounded the alarm over a suspicious object in the waters off Stockholm’s inner archipelago. Without evidence, this object was declared to be a Russian submarine. The paranoia spread to the US in October 2015, as Pentagon officials expressed concern over the possibility of Russian submarines severing underwater data cables in the Atlantic. " The United States increasingly resembles Sweden, often believing that Russian submarines are present in their territorial waters, " Vladimir Komoyedov, head of the Russian State Duma’s defense committee, told RIA Novosti at the time. " Although these data cables exist, we will definitely not damage them. "

globinfo freexchange From RT : A blast at the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels has killed at least 20 people according the Belgian television station VRT. The explosion took place less than an hour after a deadly airport bombing, which killed at least 14 people. The Belgian broadcaster, cited by Reuters, mentions that the death toll has reached at least 20 people. The Brussels mayor Yvan Mayuer also confirmed that at least 20 people had been killed following the blast on the metro. As already described in previous articles: Paris attacks, other attacks in Western soil. It is the new type of a full asymmetric war conducted by Islamic extremists inside Western urban areas. The West discovered that it has to face an unprecedented situation which seems to be very difficult to confront: suicide bombings. Although this situation has proven that the US imperialism has lost the control of its creation ca

Το Wikileaks την περασμένη εβδομάδα ανέβασε στη βάση του μια σειρά από αποχαρακτηρισμένα ηλεκτρονικά μηνύματα του υπουργείου Εξωτερικών των Ηνωμένων Πολιτειών από την εποχή που υπουργός ήταν η Χίλαρι Κλίντον. Το έγγραφο παρουσιάζει ιδιαίτερο ενδιαφέρον καθώς αναφέρεται στους σχεδιασμούς του Σόιμπλε σε περίπτωση που ο ΣΥΡΙΖΑ έπαιρνε τότε την κυβέρνηση. Ο Γερμανός υπουργός Οικονομικών, μολονότι υποστήριζε ότι « αν ο ελληνικός λαός ψηφίσει για μια κυβέρνηση στην οποία θα ηγηθεί ένα κόμμα κατά της λιτότητας, όπως ο ΣΥΡΙΖΑ, θα πρέπει να αντιμετωπίσει τις συνέπειες των πράξεων του » έβλεπε την ενδεχόμενη αποχώρηση της Ελλάδας ως ένα εξαιρετικά αρνητικό γεγονός, καθώς θεωρούσε ότι θα επηρέαζε Ισπανία, Πορτογαλία και Ιρλανδία . Ως απάντηση σκεφτόταν εκτός των παραπάνω λύσεων, να αντιμετωπίσει ένα Grexit με τη δημιουργία Ευρώπης δύο ταχυτήτων. Στο ηλεκτρονικό μήνυμα διαβάζουμε ότι « ο Σόιμπλε εξακολουθεί να πιστεύει ότι μια πλήρης κατάρρευση της νομισματικής ένωσης είναι μη αποδ

Since the Turkish Army began its operation against Kurdish militia in December, there has been an escalation of violence and “clear use of heavy weaponry” in residential areas, Andrew Gardner, a Turkey expert with Amnesty International, told RT. Gardner said the curfew imposed in the areas inhabited by Kurds is an “unacceptable limitation of rights of the people” there, limiting their ability to access food and necessary services each day. Earlier this month, RT launched a petition calling for a UNHRC-led investigation into claims of alleged mass killing of Kurdish civilians said to have been committed by the Turkish military during Ankara's crackdown on Kurds in the southeast.Amnesty International promised to examine the facts outlined in RT’s petition calling for a probe into alleged mass killings of Kurdish civilians by the Turkish military after the NGO’s “selective” approach was criticized by the Russian Foreign Ministry. On Monday, Gardner comm

A total of 50,411 refugees were stranded in Greece as of early Monday, RIA Novosti reported. The Greek migrant crisis coordination center said 1,662 people have arrived on the Greek coasts from Turkey since Sunday. Almost 700 of them arrived on the islands of Lesbos and Chios, according to officials. Macedonia last month closed its border with Greece after other states along the Balkan migration route - Serbia, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria - also closed their borders. https://www.rt.com/news/line/

The Rosenham experiment globinfo freexchange By the early 70s, psychiatrist R.D. Laing had become a celebrity in America, and was one of the leaders of what was called the "anti-psychiatry" movement. He was about to use his growing power to attack one of the most powerful professions in America, the medical and psychiatric establishment. The results would be dramatic. But the outcome would be very different from what Laing intended. His ideas would undermine the all-controlling medical elite. But far from liberating people, what would actually emerge would be a revolutionary new system of order and control, driven by the objective power of numbers. Psychiatry, Laing said, was a fake science, used as a system of political control to shore-up a violent collapsing society. Its categories of madness and sanity had no reality. Madness was simply a convenient label used to lock away those who wanted to break free. Hundreds of young psychiatrists came to Laing&

NY and California the next most crucial battlefields globinfo freexchange Although chances for Bernie to beat Hillary were reduced after Tuesday's primaries, the fight is not over yet. It appears that now, the most crucial states are New York and California. This is the last chance for the American people to bring in power a president who could really make the difference after a very long time. The establishment already feels to be threatened by a political movement that is willing to fight against Wall Street corruption, fight for real social justice and peace. The achievements so far are not insignificant. With the help of this movement, and especially the young people, Bernie managed so far to: Challenge the traditional 'big money' in the political campaigns, by funding his race from the people. Speak about Democratic Socialism, a concept which was considered nearly a 'hubris', even a few years ago, in the

As the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into the dieselgate scandali begins its work in Brussels, a leaked lobbying document from the European car manufacturers' lobby, ACEA (European Automobile Manufacturers' Association), reveals a sophisticated, multi-faceted behind-the-scenes lobbying strategy aimed at weakening new emissions tests. Corporate Europe Observatory Key points: ... the European Commission had known manufacturers were vastly exceeding limits back in 2011 and was designing new on-the-road tests, or 'Real Driving Emissions' (RDE) tests, to tackle the problem in diesel cars. But as the leak shows, ACEA and its members had other plans. Their intention: to weaken and delay the new tests, scheduled to be finalised in 2015 and introduced in 2017, which could prevent thousands of premature deaths every year but would most certainly dent profits if implemented in full. The document reveals how a secretive weekend meeting betwee