the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

The Grayzone   Max Blumenthal documents the deceptions behind the US government's accusation that China is committing "genocide" against Uyghur Muslims in its Xinjiang region, picking apart NED-funded studies that rely on botched statistics and exposing extremist Adrian Zenz and his error-filled research. 

With the potential comeback of Lula da Silva, Brazil may once again be on a path away from fascism and one that puts economic justice and anti-imperialism first.   by Alan Macleod   Part 1 Will the world’s sixth most populous country move away from fascism and towards a social democracy putting economic justice and anti-imperialism first once more? That is the question on Brazilian minds right now, as earlier this month the Supreme Court dismissed all charges against former President Luis Inácio “Lula” da Silva. A colossal figure in domestic and world politics, Lula was falsely convicted of fraud in 2017, and spent more than 18 months in prison, becoming, in the words of renowned academic Noam Chomsky, “ the world’s most prominent political prisoner. ” Yesterday, the Supreme Court also ruled that the judge who sentenced Lula, Sergio Moro, made a biased decision. Secret documents show that Moro was actually working with the prosecution to ensure Lula was convicted, paving ...

An investigative analysis takes apart a hackneyed piece of propaganda authored by an international alt-right clique with links to the Pentagon.   by Raul Diego   Part 8 - The authors A look at the authors´ backgrounds is enough to discern the real interests lurking behind the China-bashing document. American tax attorney Michael P. Senger tops the list of authors on the paper, itself. Senger claims to have advised the US on the “ domestic and international provisions ” of Trump’s corporate giveaway known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 in his Alston & Bird bio – the tax firm he left in April 2020, according to his Linked In page. The firm’s clients include Amazon, Microsoft and a host of other transnational corporations with considerable interests in China, especially in the realm of Alston & Bird’s core competency of intellectual property; notably, also at the center of Trump’s “trade war” with China. Since leaving Alston & Bird, Senger has been dedicated to ...

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) issued a report alleging Russian interference in the 2020 election, contradicting November statements that there was no meddling, while ignoring documented interference from top US ally Colombia.   by Dan Cohen   Part 2 - A 180-degree change of heart?   The very same intelligence agencies that somehow missed that a giant mob of Trump supporters were openly planning to storm the Capitol building on January 6th. Or that said there was going to be a QAnon attack on the Capitol on March 4th that never happened. Or that told us back in November that Russia didn’t influence the election – the polar opposite of what they’re telling us now. “ There was no fraud, there were no irregularities, ” commented former CIA chief of staff and CNN analyst Jeremy Bash. “ Various agencies have come out to say there was no widespread fraud in this election, ” remarked CNN White House correspondent Pamela Brown. “ This has been the safe...

The debt burden crushing poor countries will not be alleviated until creditors in rich countries are made to give up some of their wealth   by John Smith  Part 2 - Rescuing the rich But that's not all.    This debt 'relief' only applies to interest owed to governments, not what they owe private lenders. Even the World Bank has excluded itself from this minuscule generosity – David Malpass rejected calls to freeze $7bn in interest payments owing to it, saying that forbearance would harm the Bank’s ability to make new loans. As a result, only 41% of the $42.7bn that DSSI countries owed in debt payments in 2020 is eligible for relief. The suspension of interest payments to government creditors makes it easier for these desperately poor countries to service their debts to private creditors – such as Blackrock, JP Morgan, HSBC, UBS and the wealthy individuals they serve. In other words, rich countries’ governments are not rescuing poor countries, they are rescuing rich in...

by Kevin Tillman   Part 2 - Around the Globe, Generation after Generation   My own limited experience with American interventionism involves the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. After the September 11th attacks, I enlisted in the U.S. Army with Pat. We would be assigned to the 75th Ranger Regiment and our unit would in March 2003 be sent into Iraq, one of so many tools in the Bush administration’s war of aggression there. We would help remove Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein by force. It was hardly the mission I had in mind when I signed up, but I was naive when it came to foreign policy. Being part of illegal invasions, however, leaves lasting impressions. That particular intervention in Iraq began with a barrage of administration lies about Saddam’s supposed supply of weapons of mass destruction, his reputed links to al-Qaeda, and the idea that we were liberating the Iraqi people. Some of us actually were assigned to run around Baghdad, “ east, west, south, and north somewhat...

How did EU governments decide to oppose a global measure that could boost production of COVID vaccines and medicines for the global south? You won’t get the slightest hint from official EU sources. But leaked documents reveal that the Commission and member states see the real problem as a mere PR issue of how to deflect criticism. Given the pandemic, their position seems indefensible.   Corporate Europe Observatory   Part 3 - No minutes, no transparency   Perhaps the most obvious Council body to discuss global south proposals to relax WTO patent rules would be the Trade Policy Committee (TPC), where member state representatives meet with the Commission to agree on trade policy issues that are not brought up for debate at ministerial level. This Council body has been heavily criticised in the past for offering privileged access to big business via regular, informal meetings. The TPC has met more than 40 times in the past year, and while we could not find any sign that the ...

The Grayzone   Noam Chomsky weighs in on the Putin-Biden row; new US claims of "Russian interference"; the "savagery" of US sanctions on Cuba, Iran, Syria, Venezuela and other nations; US pressure on Brazil to reject Russia's COVID-19 vaccine and on Panama to reject Cuban doctors; and more. Chomsky's latest book is "Chomsky for Activists." 

globinfo freexchange   After one year, Greece has become one of the most characteristic cases of blatant failure concerning COVID-19 pandemic control. The situation is getting worse and the National Health System of Greece receives extreme pressure, while there are signs that it has already crashed. According to some recent reports , " A record number of patients with Covid-19 in Greece are on ventilators on Thursday. The total number of people undergoing the treatment has reached 706, breaking the previous record of 699, which was recorded on both the last two consecutive days, on Tuesday and Wednesday. " With the help of jodi.graphics we present a brief timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country: February 26, 2020: The first verified COVID-19 case in Greece. March 10, 2020: The government shuts down schools and universities. March 12, 2020: The first death in Greece from COVID-19.   March 23, 2020: The first lockdown in Greece.   March 28, 2020: COVID-19 cases i...

Moderate Rebels   Ben Norton was invited to give this talk on US imperialism in Latin America for the anti-war group Massachusetts Peace Action. He discusses the similarities in the aggressive foreign policy of Biden, Trump, and Obama, and talks about Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Honduras and "Plan  Biden" for Central America, Chile, Colombia, Peru, immigration in the United States, and more.  

New leaked documents show Reuters’ and the BBC’s involvement in covert UK FCO programs to effect “attitudinal change” and “weaken the Russian state’s influence,” alongside intel contractors and Bellingcat. by Max Blumenthal Part 6 - Bellingcat joins the Zinc Network, allegedly meddles in North Macedonia’s elections After Alexei Navalny’s poisoning, he collaborated with the UK-based “open source” journalism outfit Bellingcat to pin the crime on Russia’s FSB intelligence services. Though it is well established that Bellingcat is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, a US government entity that supports regime-change operations around the globe, the fact has never appeared in the reams of fawning profiles that corporate media outlets, including Reuters , have published about the organization. Bellingcat’s role as a partner in the Zinc Network’s UK FCO-funded EXPOSE Consortium may add an additional layer of suspicion about the outlet’s claim to independence. Indeed, Bellingcat wa...

An investigative analysis takes apart a hackneyed piece of propaganda authored by an international alt-right clique with links to the Pentagon.   by Raul Diego   Part 7 - Symptoms of a tall tale Cherry-picking WHO literature to make the claim that the notion of asymptomatic spread came from China, the authors rely on a quote from a July 2020 scientific brief: “ Early data from China suggested that people without symptoms could infect others. ” The data in question came from a WHO-China joint mission that “ consisted of 25 national and international experts from China, Germany, Japan, Korea, Nigeria, Russia, Singapore, the United States of America and the World Health Organization (WHO). The Joint Mission was headed by Dr. Bruce Aylward of WHO and Dr. Wannian Liang of the People’s Republic of China, ” according to the mission’s report cited in the paper quoted in the letter. Further, in the same July brief, multiple reports from Western sources were cited as evidence of asympto...

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) issued a report alleging Russian interference in the 2020 election, contradicting November statements that there was no meddling, while ignoring documented interference from top US ally Colombia.   by Dan Cohen   Part 1   Russiagate is back! That’s right. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) says Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei meddled in the 2020 U.S. election. But not only they: Lebanese Hezbollah, Cuba and Venezuela did it too.  I know what you’re thinking: Where is the evidence? Well, the ODNI report doesn’t show any. But phrases like “ we judge, ”“ we assess, ” “ probably, ” and “ likely ” are used dozens of times. Apparently for corporate media, that’s good enough. Never mind that, way down on the last page, the report says “ Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. ” So it’s the opinion, the estimation...

The debt burden crushing poor countries will not be alleviated until creditors in rich countries are made to give up some of their wealth   by John Smith  Part 1 In 2020, rich nations spent nearly $12trn , more than 31% of their combined GDP, to avert economic meltdown and cushion the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on their citizens. This ‘fiscal stimulus’ does not include monetary stimulus in the form of lower interest rates and central bank purchase of financial assets. In stark contrast, their response to the catastrophic economic effects of COVID on so-called developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America – described by World Bank president David Malpass as “ worse than the financial crisis of 2008 and for Latin America worse than the debt crisis of the 1980s ” – has been a kick in the teeth. In November, Ken Ofori-Atta, Ghana’s finance minister, commented that “ The ability of central banks in the West to respond [to the pandemic] to an unimaginable extent, and ...

by Kevin Tillman   Part 1   Just about everyone was shocked by what happened at the Capitol building on January 6th. But as a former soldier in America’s forever wars, horrifying as the scenes were, I also found what happened strangely familiar, almost inevitable. I thought that, if only we had taken our country’s imperial history seriously, none of us would have found that day either shocking or unprecedented.   Honestly, it could only seem that way if you imagined our domestic politics as completely separate from our foreign policy. But if we’re to learn anything from that maladroit attempt at a government-toppling coup, it should be that they are anything but separate.    The question isn’t whether then-President Donald Trump incited the assault on the Capitol — of course he did. It is rather: Since when have we cared if an American president lies to incite an illegal insurrection? In all honesty, our commanders-in-chief have been doing so abroad for generati...

How did EU governments decide to oppose a global measure that could boost production of COVID vaccines and medicines for the global south? You won’t get the slightest hint from official EU sources. But leaked documents reveal that the Commission and member states see the real problem as a mere PR issue of how to deflect criticism. Given the pandemic, their position seems indefensible.   Corporate Europe Observatory   Part 2 - Secretive working groups   The Council is where the 27 member states have their say on the direction and detail of EU policy is ludicrously secretive on many matters, including those of utmost public interest. Corporate Europe Observatory checked the available agendas of five specific EU Council working parties Sidenote to try to understand member state positions on global access to COVID vaccines and the wider debate on patents. A few relevant discussions were identified. At the 16 December 2020 meeting of the Council Working Party on Intellectual P...

The cops and the district attorneys want people to see what we are going through — the conditions of our arrests, our experiences in jail, and our legal battle — and to think that this is what you risk when you stand up against them. – Lillian House, Aurora Activist and Defendant   by Alan Macleod   Part 4 - Radio silence While the national media are happy to cover the persecution of political actors, such as Russia’s Alexey Navalny or the leaders of the Hong Kong protest movement, in enemy nations halfway around the world, there has been near silence on this case far closer to home. A search for “Lillian House” elicits zero relevant results on the websites of The New York Times , CBS News, CNN, MSNBC, or USA Today. There is also no mention of House’s case from Fox News, although one article from last summer described her as part of an “ anti-cop mob, ” full of “ tyrannical, left-wing anarchists [who] hate free speech, ” according to the then-Acting Deputy Homeland Securi...

As it conducted its analysis of the vaccine in December, the European Medicines Agency’s systems were targeted by unknown hackers.   Following this, more than 40 megabytes of classified information from the agency’s review were published on the dark web and several journalists, including those from the British Medical Journal, were sent copies of the leaks.   In a review of the documents, the BMJ said they showed concerns over unexpectedly low quantities of intact mRNA in batches of the vaccine developed for commercial production. Early commercial batches of Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine had lower than expected levels of intact mRNA. According to the BMJ EMA scientists ensuring the manufacturing quality of the product found “ truncated and modified mRNA species present in the finished product ”. The information was in an email sent in late November by a high ranking EMA official, which outlined a raft of issues. As a result the EMA filed two “major objections” with Pfizer...

From the new documentary Can 't Get You Out of My Head by Adam Curtis   globinfo freexchange   The first settlers had come from Europe to America to flee from the corruption of power in the Old World. But although they had got away from the old power, they hadn't got away from their suspicious minds, and alone, out in the vast wilderness of the new America, that led them to imagining dark, hidden conspiracies in their own government, far away in Washington.    One of the first of these, in the early 19th century, said that a secret group from Europe, called the Bavarian Illuminati, were running a giant conspiracy in America to destroy the new democracy. In reality, the Illuminati had been a utopian movement who wanted to replace religion with reason. But instead, they now became the first of a series of frightening suspicions that fed off the isolation of the settlers in the New World.    One night (in 1958, somewhere in the vicinity of Whittier, Califo...

Moderate Rebels   Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton speak with Daniel Dumbrill, a Canadian immigrant and YouTuber who has lived in China for over a decade. They discuss Western corporate media propaganda and the US-led new cold war on Beijing. 

New leaked documents show Reuters’ and the BBC’s involvement in covert UK FCO programs to effect “attitudinal change” and “weaken the Russian state’s influence,” alongside intel contractors and Bellingcat. by Max Blumenthal Part 5 - The UK covertly funded and managed a network of Russian YouTubers and “activated” anti-government protest content In a document marked “private and confidential,” Zinc revealed the Consortium’s role in setting up a “YouTuber network” in Russia and Central Asia designed to propagate the message of the UK and its NATO allies. According to Zinc, the Consortium was “ supporting participants mak[ing] and receiv[ing] international payments without being registered as external sources of funding, ” presumably to circumvent Russian registration requirements for foreign-funded media outfits. Zinc also helped the YouTube influencers “ develop editorial strategies to deliver key messages ” while working “ to keep their involvement confidential. ” And it carried out it...

An investigative analysis takes apart a hackneyed piece of propaganda authored by an international alt-right clique with links to the Pentagon.   by Raul Diego   Part 6 - Wuhan’s best friends The passing mention of one of the central figures and research labs in the entire Covid narrative reveals a reluctance to pry further into the WIV and its close connections to American health, scientific and intelligence circles, including direct funding from Fauci’s NIAID, as mentioned in the introduction of this series. These links, however, extend far beyond a few research contracts and tie back into the actual laboratory work done on bat-borne coronaviruses over decades in collaboration with agencies like NIH, DARPA, and USAID. Shi Zhengl, a.k.a ¨Bat Woman¨, herself was a protagonist in both the initial discovery of the virus and the first to offer up her laboratory (and her government, by inference,) as its source when she publicly admitted early on to the possibility of the pathogen...