the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

Multipolarista   In response to Western sanctions, Russia's central bank is dropping the US dollar and plans to buy Chinese yuan on the foreign exchange market. The yuan's share of trading on Russia's currency market increased from 1% to 40-45% in less than a year, while dollar trade halved from 80% to 40%. Moscow has quickly become the world's fourth-biggest offshore trading center for renminbi.

The Jimmy Dore Show  Joe Biden and Valerie Nuland said the U.S. wouldn’t allow the Nord Stream pipeline to go forward if Russia invaded Ukraine, then Russia invaded Ukraine, the pipeline got blown up and Secretary of State Antony Blinken called it a “great opportunity.” Yet the New York Times remains puzzled by this one question: who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline??? At least that’s the only conclusion one can draw from a recent Times piece in which the writers seem genuinely confused why Russia would blow up its own pipeline. Jimmy and Revolutionary Black Network’s Nick Cruse discuss the borderline comical Times story and how anyone could keep a straight face while reading, to say nothing of writing, it.

globinfo freexchange     Remember when US workers in fast-food industry were fighting for higher minimum wages? In September, there has been some news circulation about such a prospect concerning the state of California. Yet, while workers struggle hard to achieve even a small raise, the fast-food industry is at least three steps ahead using robots and hyper-automation as what appears to be an unbeatable competitor against human workforce!   Indeed, the first almost fully automated McDonald's opened recently in Texas:   At one McDonald’s location in Texas, robots are now serving up Big Macs. Amid a growing desire for fast food giants to automate their processes, the first mostly robot-run McDonald’s restaurant is currently being tested in Fort Worth, Texas. At this location, there are no human cashiers in sight. Even the restaurant itself is smaller and has no seating, designed to serve the grab-and-go crowd, rather than sit-down diners.   Upon entry, digital t...

Multipolarista  The CIA is using the intelligence agencies of a European NATO ally to launch sabotage attacks inside Russian territory, according to a report by journalist Jack Murphy.

by Kit Klarenberg    Part 2 - Who watches the watchers? Ever since Bitcoin’s launch in 2009, anonymity has been an absolutely fundamental tenet of cryptocurrency. The ability to make and receive payments incognito through a secure, decentralized platform without needing to register a named bank account, or even interact with established financial gatekeepers at any stage, was and remains a unique selling point for the asset. The principle of anonymity is taken so seriously by crypto practitioners and aficionados alike that industry platforms are graded according to their levels of privacy. Many crypto entrepreneurs, some of whom manage hundreds of millions of dollars for clients, conduct business without ever disclosing their names, or any identifying information at all. Venture capital firms have even invested vast sums in crypto ventures with wholly pseudonymous founders, an unprecedented sectoral development. In recent years, however, there have been several clear indicati...

At least 14 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have condemned the coup in Peru, backing President Pedro Castillo. The unelected regime, which has killed dozens of protesters, has the staunch support of the US and the region’s right wing.   by Ben Norton  Part 2 - Peru’s US-backed coup regime imposes brutal authoritarian rule, bringing back elements of Fujimori dictatorship Since Castillo was overthrown in the December 7 coup, Peru’s unelected de facto leader Dina Boluarte has cracked down harshly, sending the military and police to kill protesters. State security services have raided the offices of social movements, labor unions, and left-wing political parties and arrested their leaders, targeting the Campesino Confederation of Peru, the Peruvian Socialist Party, and the leftist party Nuevo Perú. Numerous activists have reported that the coup regime is planting weapons and other materials in order to falsely accuse protesters of “terrorism.” Peru’s US-backed coup re...

The Jimmy Dore Show   With US power around the world waning, certain African countries are beginning to exhibit an impertinent independence from the global hegemon, and chart a path that embraces other partners including China, India and Russia. In response, the US is attempting a diplomatic full court press, most recently in a speech from Vice President Kamala Harris who uttered her usual platitudes, this time about how the United States only wants the very best for Africa.

Glenn Greenwald   Allen Dulles was probably the second or third most powerful person in Washington - maybe the most powerful in 1950s - when he ran the CIA until JFK fired him in 1961 because he blamed Dulles for the failed fiasco in the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. And Dulles had every reason in the world to want to kill Kennedy, as did a lot of people in the CIA.  

Katie Halper   Vijay Prashad discusses how much of the fracturing of the Left can be traced back to the Syrian conflict and how it's now divided over the war in Ukraine. Vijay and Katie also discuss the destructive "politics of condemnation."

Public ownership isn’t just more effective, it’s more democratic – it’s time to take vital services like rail, mail, energy, and water out of the control of remote CEOs and unaccountable shareholders.   by Jeremy Corbyn  On Thursday, the Royal College of Nursing went on strike for the first time in their 106-year history. Understaffed, underpaid, and overworked, tens of thousands of NHS nurses walked out after being denied decent, liveable pay rises. Hailed as heroes one year, forced to use foodbanks the next, nurses’ wages have fallen more than £3,000 in real terms since 2010; three in four now say they work overtime to meet rising energy bills. 2022 will be remembered as the year that the Conservative Party plunged this country into political turmoil. However, behind the melodrama is a cost of living crisis that has pushed desperate people into destitution and the so-called middle-classes to the brink. 2022 should be remembered as the year in which relative child poverty rea...

failed evolution   On 11 April 2019, the Ecuadorian government of traitor Lenin Moreno, invited the Metropolitan Police into the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and they arrested Julian Assange . Since then, Assange is kept in Belmarsh high security prison in London, without actual charges.   The real reason world's number one political prisoner is still kept in this high security prison, is because he exposed 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.   And the Anglo-American axis has now become officially a fascist coalition , framed by the rest of its Western pets. UK's Home Secretary Priti Patel, one of the most ruthless ever, decided to extradite Julian Assange to US. No surprise of course. The only question we had...

Multipolarista   The West opposed the rest of a planet in United Nations General Assembly votes that called for a new international economic order based on sovereign equality, sustainable development, and biological diversity. 

EU leaders are furious that the US is making lots of money from the proxy war in Ukraine by selling weapons and exporting expensive natural gas. Meanwhile European industries are being destroyed as high energy prices and US subsidies push its companies to go overseas.   by Ben Norton   Part 4 - Companies leaving Europe for United States   In a November report titled “ European industry pivots to US as Biden subsidy sends ‘dangerous signal,’ ” the Financial Times reported the same: the Inflation Reduction Act “ is moving momentum a lot from Europe to the US. ” The FT wrote:     The combination of the Biden Administration’s $369bn package and high energy costs in Europe, where even after recent declines gas prices remain five times more expensive than in North America, is sounding alarm bells in EU capitals.     “I think we need a European wake-up on this point,” French president Emmanuel Macron told executives from domestic industrial compani...

We must be vigilant about the warmongering lies about China.   by Wei Yu To encourage Congress to authorize the largest defense budget ever, the Pentagon just released its annual report on China, which dangerously misrepresents the country’s defense strategy. Such deliberate lies about China to drum up justification for more US war spending need to be urgently addressed.  Let’s debunk these lies: On Nuclear Weapons: The Pentagon reports that China possesses around 400 nuclear warheads with no clear plan on how to use them. If this estimation of China’s arsenal is correct, it’s still trivial compared to the US’s almost 6,000 warheads. China is the only nuclear power with an unconditional “no first use” policy, and has been clear that it only intends to use its nuclear power for assurance and defense. Meanwhile, the United States is the only country to have used nuclear weapons in war and has also flirted with escalating tensions into a nuclear war with Russia this year. Who is ...

by Kit Klarenberg    Part 1 Leaked files reviewed by MintPress expose how intelligence services the world over can track cryptocurrency transactions to their source and therefore identify users by monitoring the movements of smartphone and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, such as Amazon Echo. The contents comprehensively detonate the myth of crypto anonymity, and have grave implications for individuals and states seeking to shield their financial activity from the prying eyes of hostile governments and authorities. The documents are among a trove related to the secret operations of Anomaly 6, a shadowy private spying firm founded by a pair of U.S. military intelligence veterans. The company covertly embeds software development kits, or SDKs, in hundreds of popular apps, then slices through layers of “anonymized” data in order to uncover sensitive information about any individual it chooses anywhere on Earth, at any time. In all, Anomaly 6 can simultaneously monitor roughly ...

At least 14 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have condemned the coup in Peru, backing President Pedro Castillo. The unelected regime, which has killed dozens of protesters, has the staunch support of the US and the region’s right wing.   by Ben Norton  Part 1 More than a dozen countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have condemned the coup in Peru and backed democratically elected President Pedro Castillo. Meanwhile, the US government has staunchly supported the coup regime, which has suspended civil liberties, imprisoned Castillo for 18 months without trial, and unleashed extreme violence on Peruvian protesters, killing dozens and wounding hundreds. At least 14 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have publicly expressed support for Peru’s President Castillo, including:     Mexico (the second-most populous country in Latin America)     Colombia (the third-most populous country)     Argentina (the fourth-mos...

An Australian university has unearthed millions of Tweets by fake ‘bot’ accounts pushing disinformation on the Ukraine war.    by Peter Cronau   Part 7 - Wars and lies in our pockets   With the rise of the internet, war and armed conflict will never be the same again. Others have noted that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has ushered in ‘ a new digital era of military, political and economic conflict ’ being manipulated by ‘ laptop generals and bot armies ’. ‘ In all dimensions of this conflict, digital technology plays a key role – as a tool for cyberattacks and digital protest, and as an accelerator for flows of information and disinformation, ’ wrote one. ‘ Propaganda has been a part of war since the beginning of history, but never before could it be so widely spread beyond an actual conflict area and targeted to so many different audiences. ’ Joshua Watt, one of the lead researchers on the University of Adelaide team that conducted the landmark study, summed it u...

On Tuesday, a joint press release from the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the department’s National Nuclear Security Administration announced that scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) have achieved a controlled nuclear fusion reaction which resulted in a net energy gain. Data from the facility show that 2.05 megajoules (Mj) of input energy—just under 0.6 kilowatt hours—was used to produce 3.15 Mj of output fusion energy.   To produce the results, nuclear physicists at the NIF used 192 spherically arranged lasers aimed at a half-centimeter target vessel containing deuterium and tritium, two heavy variants of the element hydrogen. An extremely brief and powerful pulse of light from the lasers is channeled by the target to produce a symmetrical explosion about the inner hydrogen fuel, imploding and heating it to the extreme conditions where nuclear fusion takes place. This process, of “burning” hydrogen into helium, powers stars like our Sun over billions of years, bu...

Katie Halper   Clare Daly and Mick Wallace explain the hypocrisy of Russia being labeled as a terrorist state.  Mick Wallace is an Irish politician who has been a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Ireland for the South constituency since July 2019. He is a member of Independents 4 Change, part of The Left in the European Parliament – GUE/NGL. Clare Daly is an Irish politician who has been a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Ireland for the Dublin constituency since July 2019. She is a member of Independents 4 Change, part of The Left in the European Parliament – GUE/NGL. 

On the left, a UN General Assembly vote on advancing “toward a new international economic order”. On the right, a UNGA vote on “combating the glorification of Nazism”. This is no accident. Capitalism, colonialism and imperialism are the economic basis of fascism. pic.twitter.com/da3AILxcd9 — Paweł Wargan (@pawelwargan) December 17, 2022

failed evolution   On 11 April 2019, the Ecuadorian government of traitor Lenin Moreno, invited the Metropolitan Police into the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and they arrested Julian Assange . Since then, Assange is kept in Belmarsh high security prison in London, without actual charges.   The real reason world's number one political prisoner is still kept in this high security prison, is because he exposed 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.   And the Anglo-American axis has now become officially a fascist coalition , framed by the rest of its Western pets. UK's Home Secretary Priti Patel, one of the most ruthless ever, decided to extradite Julian Assange to US. No surprise of course. The only question we had...

A protesting Peruvian farmer tells elite, pro-coup media she supports elected President Pedro Castillo because, “All my life, those foreigners who have governed have discriminated against us” “It pains them that we are governed by a teacher, a farmer,” who is “humble, like us” pic.twitter.com/YFHRI7Zn8m — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 13, 2022

EU leaders are furious that the US is making lots of money from the proxy war in Ukraine by selling weapons and exporting expensive natural gas. Meanwhile European industries are being destroyed as high energy prices and US subsidies push its companies to go overseas.   by Ben Norton   Part 3 - Energy prices in Europe rise 500%, threatening to bankrupt industries   As recently as the beginning of 2022, Russia was the largest exporter of both gas and oil to Europe. But in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the US and EU imposed harsh sanctions on Moscow and vowed to boycott its energy. This has blown back on Europe, and hard. In August, Bloomberg published an article titled “European Power Prices Reach Records as Industry Starts to Buckle.” It noted that electricity prices in Germany have risen as much as 500% in the past year. The report warned the “ magnitude of the crisis isn’t comparable to anything in the past few decades. ”   “ Countries acro...

Renew Europe MEP Giorgos Kyrtsos and investigative journalist Tasos Teloglou are the latest victims of the ‘Greek Watergate’, a wiretapping scandal that has been shaking Athens for months. Sources close to the matter told EURACTIV that a team of the Hellenic Authority for Communication Security and Privacy (ADAE) visited on Thursday (15 December) telecommunication’s company Cosmote. ADAE, an independent authority whose function is provided in the Greek constitution, wanted to carry out an audit following requests submitted to the authority by MEP Kyrtsos and Teloglou who wanted to find out whether they were under surveillance by the secret services. EURACTIV has learnt that the audit confirmed that both men were under surveillance by secret services, but the reasons were not disclosed citing ‘ national security ’.  Meanwhile, the independent authority faced difficulties in carrying out the audit control. Greece’s Prosecutor of the Supreme Court allegedly attempted to block the co...

Multipolarista   In this joint stream of Multipolarista with Ben Norton, the Left Lens with Danny Haiphong, and Friends of Socialist China with Carlos Martinez, we discuss the latest developments in China, including: - the government's response to protests, - relaxation of its zero-Covid policy, - President Xi Jinping's historic visit to the Persian Gulf, - Beijing's plan to buy oil and gas in its currency the yuan, directly challenging the petrodollar

Glenn Greenwald   Glenn Greenwald sits down with WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson, to discuss the ongoing political persecution of Julian Assange. 

An Australian university has unearthed millions of Tweets by fake ‘bot’ accounts pushing disinformation on the Ukraine war.    by Peter Cronau   Part 6 - Origins of the Twitter bot accounts   The researchers report that the overwhelming level of Twitter disinformation that was anti-Russian was from bots ‘ likely [organised] by pro-Ukrainian authorities ’. The researchers asserted no further findings about the origin of the 5-million tweets, but did find that some bots ‘ are pushing campaigns specific to certain countries [unnamed], and hence sharing content aligned with those timezones ’. The data does show that the peak time for a selection of pro-Ukrainian bot activity corresponded with being between 6pm and 9pm across US timezones. Some indication of the origin and the target of the messages, could be deduced from the specific languages used in the 5-million tweets. Over 3.5-million tweets, or 67 percent, were in the English language, with fewer that 2 percent in ...

Eurocrats worry about the reputation of the EU on the occasion of the revelations concerning bribes given by Qatar to influence European Parliament. They are the same people surrounded by lobbyists who flooded every EU mechanism. https://t.co/O1vODtlDN4 — failedevolution (@failedevolution) December 12, 2022

Several regions march for third day demanding closure of Congress and new general elections. In the cities of Arequipa, Andahuaylas, Trujillo, Tacna, Iquitos, Madre de Dios, Huaura, among others, the demonstrators demanded the resignation of the current president Dina Boluarte, as well as the release of Pedro Castillo.   A group of residents of the district of Santa Rita de Siguas blocked the Panamericana Sur, at the height of the pampas of Siguas, where the protesters have taken the road, placing a large amount of stones and burning tires to prevent the passage of any vehicular unit. The inhabitants have declared an indefinite strike against the Congress of the Republic, demanding the closure of the Parliament, the resignation of President Dina Boluarte, the calling of new elections and the release of former President Pedro Castillo. There are an average of 200 inhabitants of the area, mostly farmers, who have taken the main entrance and exit road to the city of Arequipa. The poli...

Joe Friendly   International Human Rights Day Vigil across the street from the British Consulate Dec 10, 2022 to free Julian Assange.   Master of Ceremonies: Comedian Randy Credico.    Speakers, in order: Chuck Zlatkin, Bundestag New Left Party's Sevim Dagdelen, Garland Nixon, Margaret Kunstler,  Elizabeth Maldonado reading John Pilger,  Joe Lauria,  Steve Donziger, Roger Waters, Ben Cohen, Max Blumenthal, Katie Halper, and Nick Brana.  

failed evolution   On 11 April 2019, the Ecuadorian government of traitor Lenin Moreno, invited the Metropolitan Police into the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and they arrested Julian Assange . Since then, Assange is kept in Belmarsh high security prison in London, without actual charges.   The real reason world's number one political prisoner is still kept in this high security prison, is because he exposed 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.   And the Anglo-American axis has now become officially a fascist coalition , framed by the rest of its Western pets. UK's Home Secretary Priti Patel, one of the most ruthless ever, decided to extradite Julian Assange to US. No surprise of course. The only question we had...

The Biden administration took a public stand last year against the abuse of spyware to target human rights activists, dissidents and journalists: It blacklisted the most notorious maker of the hacking tools, the Israeli firm NSO Group. But the global industry for commercial spyware — which allows governments to invade mobile phones and vacuum up data — continues to boom. Even the U.S. government is using it. The Drug Enforcement Administration is secretly deploying spyware from a different Israeli firm, according to five people familiar with the agency’s operations, in the first confirmed use of commercial spyware by the federal government.   At the same time, the use of spyware continues to proliferate around the world, with new firms — which employ former Israeli cyberintelligence veterans, some of whom worked for NSO — stepping in to fill the void left by the blacklisting. With this next generation of firms, technology that once was in the hands of a small number of nations is n...