the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

globinfo freexchange   The Israelis are waging am extermination campaign in the north of Gaza. For the past two weeks they've surrounded the area and they've intensified it after the killing of Yahya Sinwar. No food or medicine of any kind has reached most parts of the north.    At least 80 people have been killed tonight in a horrifying set of attacks. Children are being shredded like meat in a butcher shop.  How any of us can watch this genocide unfold in real time and watch the pontificating of the politicians running for president and not just cry out this has to stop.  We are watching a genocide in real time and on this network also there are people who have promoted propaganda from Israel. There are people cheerleading for those running for office who are lying to the American people about concern for the Palestinians.    Yahya Sinwar is also in many ways the story of Gaza. Yes, this was a violent man but his violence was routed in the fact that he was born in a refuge ca

The Grayzone   Video released by the Israeli army showing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar just moments before his death, dressed in a keffiyeh and fatigues, flinging a stick in defiance at a quadracopter drone, and fighting to his last breath, galvanized international support for Palestinian armed resistance to Israel - and drove a surge of respect for Sinwar. As the Harris-Biden administration trumpeted Sinwar’s killing as an opportunity for peace, Western outlets like the New York Times quoted anonymous Palestinians celebrating his death.  To get a better sense of what Palestinians in Gaza really thought about Sinwar, The Grayzone sent a reporter into the streets of Khan Younis, near where the late leader was raised, to ask what locals with no affiliation with Hamas to comment on his death and the legacy he left behind.

For over a year, the US and UK media have refused to identify Israel’s war as a genocide. Mainstream outlets are only willing to regurgitate their governments’ soft criticisms of Israel, which serve to mask the West’s complicity in the slaughter.  by Justin Schlosberg   Part 1   According to John Newsinger’s A People’s History of the British Empire , it was the outsourcing of genocide that gave Britain the edge over its European imperial rivals. By ensuring an arm’s length distance from the mass slaughter carried out on its behalf, the British state was able to project the image of a more benevolent empire, even at times publicly criticizing the brutality of its client regimes.  It was an unprecedented feat of propaganda, and it’s not hard to spot its enduring legacy in how atrocities against the Palestinian people have been widely reported over the last year. Much like the crime boss on an image cleanup mission to disassociate from the thugs on his payroll, the US and UK governments h

Profits have plummeted at an Israeli arms firm targeted by Palestine Action.   by Huda Ammori   Part 2 - Rising security costs   The drop in profits could be due to all the extra security hired by UAV Engines to protect its Shenstone site. I was personally involved in Palestine Action’s first occupation of the factory. At that time, there was one security guard on shift from 6am to 6pm. Since then, the actions have multiplied at the site and so has the damage. In response, the factory steadily increased the amount of barbed wire, security cameras, barriers and guards. All that costs money. Not only did they change the number of guards, they also upgraded their calibre. By 2022, there were six full time security guards, most of whom were ex-military.  They wore balaclavas 24/7 and seemed to have little hesitation using disproportionate force against protestors. Higher security costs could be reflected in the accounts under increased “administrative expenses” of approximately £1m. Source

When video games went mainstream, the Pentagon realized their potential as a promotional tool, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on war-based games. Now the wheel has come full circle as they use game-style interfaces for real-life tools of war.   by Marijam Did  Part 2 - Telling Stories Many kids who grew up with games between the 1970s and 1990s became important players in this new billion-dollar industry. By the time the new millennium rolled over, the technology in games had become sufficiently advanced to focus not only on the exciting mechanics of the game; storytelling could begin to truly take center stage. What kind of stories were to be told, of course, was up for debate. At the same time, a certain stratification was under­way, too. A few popular game genres could be trusted to release a signifi­cant dose of endorphins. Shooter games like Duke Nukem, horror titles like Resident Evil, platformer games like Super Mario World, racing games, sports games, strategy games,

Kamala Harris recently called Iran a “destabilizing, dangerous force” in the Middle East. The appropriate context for understanding this remark is the US’s own decades-long history of destabilizing Iran.   by Seraj Assi    Part 3 - Just the Beginning In the name of fighting Communism, the United States helped sabotage a thriving democracy in the Middle East. To cite American historian Douglas Little: “ Having convinced themselves that Iran was about to fall to communism, Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers had encouraged pro-American forces to overthrow a democratically elected Iranian leader and place an increasingly autocratic ruler back on the Peacock Throne. ” The 1953 coup, known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup d’état, was a prelude to a long history of US covert regime change operations against democratically elected leaders across the Global South. Two decades later, in Chile, the United States infamously conspired to overthrow the elected socialist president Salvador Allende, hel

Geopolitical Economy Report   BRICS plans to challenge US dollar dominance and transform the international monetary and financial system by developing infrastructure for cross-border payments using local currencies. Russia made a detailed proposal for the October Kazan summit.    Ben Norton analyzes the report, explaining how the US-dominated financial system benefits rich Western countries at the expense of the Global South -- which is why BRICS is pushing to change it. 

BreakThrough News   As Israel unleashes a catastrophic war on Lebanon, many are perplexed by the country’s politics, divisions and potential for civil war. To discuss this and more, Rania Khalek was joined by Lebanese medical doctor and public health researcher Anis Germani. 

The Grayzone   The Grayzone 's Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate discuss the potentially disastrous consequences of the Biden-Harris administration's decision to send 100 US troops to Israel to man the THAAD anti-ballistic missile system as part of a joint military operation against Iran. 

The Jimmy Dore Show  

Owen Jones   When US leaders and officials are tried for their complicity in genocide, this letter will be key evidence.   Don't Be Fooled By Letter To Israel.

Democracy Now!  As the official death toll in Gaza passes more than 42,400, the true number may be impossible to know until Israel's war is over. But medical workers who witnessed the carnage in Gaza's hospitals are speaking out.    Democracy Now! spoke with Dr. Feroze Sidhwa about his op-ed in The New York Times that features harrowing stories from dozens of healthcare workers and CT scans of children shot in the head or the left side of the chest. The Times called the corresponding images of the patients too graphic to publish.    " I personally wish that Americans could see more of what it looks like when a child is shot in the head, when a child is flayed open by bombs, " says Sidhwa. " I think it would make us think a little bit more about what we do in the world. "    Democracy Now! also spoke with Palestinian nurse Rajaa Musleh, who worked at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. " I will never forget the dogs were eating the dead body inside Shifa

Double Down News   The Footage The BBC Won’t Show You  

Profits have plummeted at an Israeli arms firm targeted by Palestine Action.   by Huda Ammori   Part 1   Israel’s largest arms firm Elbit Systems is finally losing money at its drone engine factory near Birmingham, England. This follows years of campaigning by Palestine Action, a group I co-founded in 2020. Back then, Elbit’s subsidiary UAV Engines was making millions of pounds in profit with an £11m turnover. That was until we showed up. Palestine Action has staged over 20 protests at the firm’s factory in Shenstone, blockading the gates, occupying the roof and smashing up equipment. We did this because Elbit makes 85% of Israel’s drone fleet terrorising Gaza, including the Hermes armed drones from which even British aid workers are not safe.   And although UAV Engines claim that it produces components solely for the British army, trade licence data shows it exports drone parts to Israel. For decades this business, which Elbit turned from a motorbike manufacturer to an arms firm in th

When video games went mainstream, the Pentagon realized their potential as a promotional tool, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on war-based games. Now the wheel has come full circle as they use game-style interfaces for real-life tools of war.   by Marijam Did  Part 1 By the 1990s, video games were mainstream, both as a creative product delivering new and profound moments of joy and as a space for political actors to create political realities. As profits soared, this creative industry succumbed to the claws of financial­ization and corporatization. It was a decade of bursting creativity and the calcification of business practices. Games like Cosmology of Kyoto (1993) or Vib-Ribbon (1999) were revered by art critics, and even acquired by institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art for their pro­found aesthetic and conceptual aspects. On the flip side, studio sizes grew, leading to a bloated managerial class, with their lingo and auditing of certain creative ambitions. The or

Kamala Harris recently called Iran a “destabilizing, dangerous force” in the Middle East. The appropriate context for understanding this remark is the US’s own decades-long history of destabilizing Iran.   by Seraj Assi    Part 2 - A Long, Violent History For those familiar with this history, it’s hard to hear such statements without hearkening back to New Year’s Eve, 1977, a year before the Iranian Revolution broke out. In the heat of growing civil unrest in Iran, US president Jimmy Carter attended a lavish state dinner with the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, where Carter toasted, “ Iran, because of the great leadership of the Shah, is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world. ” Ironically, the toasts were preceded by a long US history of destabilizing Iran — a history marred with covert operations and clandestine interventions. Twenty-four years earlier, during “Operation Ajax,” the CIA, in collaboration with the British MI6, had orchestrated a coup

The Jimmy Dore Show   According to mainstream outlets like the Associated Press and Haaretz , Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering a plan to eject all Palestinian civilians from northern Gaza and starve out any who choose to remain. In fact it’s quite likely that the IDF is already undertaking the plan, which explains why Israel is actively bombing aid trucks trying to enter Gaza.   Related:    U.N. Experts Accuse Israel of "Starvation Campaign" in Gaza & Demand End to Western Complicity

The Jimmy Dore Show   Israel has long defended the worst of their crimes against Gaza by claiming that Hamas uses “human shields,” which requires the IDF to target civilians. Now the New York Times is reporting that the IDF routinely grabs up Palestinian teenagers and forces them to act as human minesweepers, sent into buildings and other areas that are suspected of being booby-trapped. 

On October 11, journalist Jeremy Loffredo was ordered released from Israeli jail. Israeli soldiers arrested the Jewish-American reporter and three other journalists at a checkpoint in the West Bank on October 8. According to one of the jailed reporters, @the_andrey_x, the soldiers blindfolded them tightly, roughed them up, drawing guns on them at one point, and hauled them off to detention in Jerusalem. “The soldiers… illegally requested that the journalists hand in their phones, and when they refused, the soldiers pointed a gun at one of the journalists, hit him with their hands and the barrel of a gun, then dragged him out of the car and slammed him onto the concrete. When lying on the ground, they pointed 2 guns at his head. The rest of the journalists exited the car and the military raided it, confiscating phones, cameras, and personal items,” said @the_andrey_x. Andrey recalled that in the course of abusing the journalists, “The soldiers told the female Israeli photographer that s

A number of Palestinians were burned alive and dozens of others injured after Israel targeted tents of displaced people inside the premises of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah city with incendiary bombs in the early hours of Monday, October 14. Four people have been confirmed killed so far, though more fatalities are expected to be confirmed. At least 70 people were injured in the attack. The rapid spread of the fire was likely fueled by the flammable materials used for the construction of the tents, such as plastic and wood, essentially turning the camp into a furnace. Horrifying scenes from the site of the incident were captured by people nearby, many of whom were unable to rescue people burning alive in the tents due to lack of water and other substances needed to extinguish the fire. The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have unsurprisingly claimed that the deadly airstrikes targeted fighters of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) that were hiding out among c

Democracy Now!   Israel is facing international condemnation after repeatedly attacking U.N. peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon. At least five members of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, have been injured in recent days. The U.N. also accused Israel of forcibly entering and destroying part of a UNIFIL base near the Israeli border after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called to remove the peacekeeping forces from the region.    " The message of Israel is we don't care about anything except Israel, and we will destroy the whole region if we need to, " says Rami Khouri, a Palestinian American journalist and senior public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut. This comes as the U.S. sends troops to Israel in anticipation of a conflict with Iran. " This is a terrible trajectory, and people will fight back against it. " 

Owen Jones   How can anyone defend this? 

The Jimmy Dore Show   Jimmy Dore was recently approached by a reporter from NBC news to comment on his alleged spreading of Russian propaganda over a story from a few months ago regarding an alleged assassination attempt on Tucker Carlson. After correcting the reporter’s misinformation about how he reported on the story, Jimmy followed up with a litany of stories NBC News covered and flagrantly misinformed viewers about to push a pro-war agenda. He ended the email by saying “ Good luck pushing pro-war propaganda for a living and whitewashing the latest genocide being funded & enabled by the United States in Gaza. Maybe someday you’ll have a hard time looking in the mirror and you’ll resign. ” 

Glenn Greenwald  

DiEM25   On October 7th, 2023, the global narrative surrounding Palestine underwent a profound shift. In this powerful video, Yanis Varoufakis unpacks the media and political bias that portrays events in Gaza as isolated incidents, ignoring the ongoing realities of occupation and the struggle for Palestinian freedom. Varoufakis emphasizes the critical need to distinguish between legitimate resistance to oppression and actions that breach international law. He delves into the escalating violence faced by Palestinians and critiques the international community’s complicity, particularly the role of the U.S. in enabling the ongoing genocide of Palestinians by Israel. Drawing on historical parallels with colonialism in the U.S., South Africa, and Australia, Varoufakis calls for a fundamental re-evaluation of Western perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He argues that the fight for Palestinian liberation is not just a regional issue but a crucial step toward global justice and h

Kamala Harris recently called Iran a “destabilizing, dangerous force” in the Middle East. The appropriate context for understanding this remark is the US’s own decades-long history of destabilizing Iran.   by Seraj Assi    Part 1 For twelve months since last October, US leaders have cheered on Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza, even as the genocide there — funded and armed by the United States — has killed over forty thousand Palestinians, roughly half of them women and children. The cheers have continued as Israel has expanded its bombardments to, now, three other Arab countries:  Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria. Still unsatisfied, some are now rooting for Israel to bomb Iran. Joe Biden has been reportedly “discussing” the prospect of an Israeli attack on Iran’s oil fields, the lifeline of Iranian economy, which has been languishing under a devastating US embargo for decades. Following Iran’s missile barrage into Israel last week, carried out in retaliation for Israel’s assassinations

Geopolitical Economy Report   Countries across the Global South are denouncing Israel's Western-backed genocide in Gaza. Nicaragua's Sandinista government cut off diplomatic relations with Israel, condemning it as a "fascist" regime.    Ben Norton discusses how Latin America is demonstrating solidarity with the Palestinian people, rebelling against the West's neocolonialism and imperialism. 

Owen Jones   A new United Nations report exposes the key pillar of what it describes Israel's "crime against humanity of extermination".

Glenn Greenwald  

The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel   Author George Monbiot joins host Chris Hedges to discuss the book “Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism,” written by Monbiot and Peter Hutchinson. Together, they tackle the truths of neoliberalism, including its origins in colonialism and how it became the dominant ideology in the most powerful countries in the world.    Related: The peculiar fascism of the extreme center

It was an honour to catch up with Julian Assange and celebrate his long overdue freedom. After years of relentless campaigning, Julian has finally been recognised as a political prisoner - a pivotal victory. Now we must focus on the next step: securing his pardon. pic.twitter.com/OqBvcPzuVv — Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) October 11, 2024

Legitimate Targets   Jackson Hinkle interviews Spokesman & Senior Political Officer of Yemen's ANSAR ALLAH (Houthis), Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, on the anniversary of October 7th.   https://rumble.com/embed/v5fnp99/?pub=4    

Secular Talk  

Owen Jones   Where is the media outrage?  

According to Politiken, US warships were operating in the region with their transponders turned off   by Al Mayadeen English  Prior to the explosions that destroyed the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea, US Navy ships were present at the location, according to a local harbormaster quoted in the Danish newspaper Politiken . The Nord Stream 2 pipelines, a major infrastructure project aimed at delivering natural gas from Russia to Europe, were targeted in an act of sabotage in September 2022, with Moscow pointing fingers at the West or Ukraine. In August, The Wall Street Journal reported that Ukrainian businessmen had funded the attack on the project, although Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had ordered to halt the attack at the CIA's request. Russia, however, insisted that the reports shared by WSJ were a mere tactic to divert attention from the actual perpetrators, saying its findings were improbable. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov affirmed that Russian Int

The Jimmy Dore Show / Sabby Sabs  

globinfo freexchange   US imperialists' obsession with Iran won't end. They are now again on the path of starting a war with Iran by any means. As we wrote back in 2020:   Former CIA deputy director, Michael Morell, describes a probable scenario according to which the Iranians and their proxies could retaliate further. And therefore, this will naturally and eventually lead the US to start a war with Iran. As Morell points out:                       Hopefully, that can de-escalate now, but that doesn't mean the covert war is over. [...] There are two things we need to think about here. One is, still, down the road, at some point, an assassination of a senior US official, somewhere in the world, could be months from now , to get revenge. And then, two, we still have to worry about those Iranian proxies. They may still attack US military bases ...   New reports show that the warm up for a war with Iran has started:

Owen Jones  

Al Jazeera English   This feature length investigation by Al Jazeera ’s Investigative Unit exposes Israeli war crimes in the Gaza Strip through the medium of photos and videos posted online by Israeli soldiers themselves during the year long conflict. The I-Unit has built up a database of thousands of videos, photos and social media posts. Where possible it has identified the posters and those who appear.  The material reveals a range of illegal activities, from wanton destruction and looting to the demolition of entire neighbourhoods and murder. The film also tells the story of the war through the eyes of Palestinian journalists, human rights workers and ordinary residents of the Gaza Strip. And it exposes the complicity of Western governments – in particular the use of RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus as a base for British surveillance flights over Gaza. “ The west cannot hide, they cannot claim ignorance. Nobody can say they didn’t know, ” says Palestinian writer, Susan Abulhawa.This is “ the

Democracy Now!   A new documentary from Al Jazeera takes a look at evidence of war crimes in Gaza in the form of social media posted by Israeli soldiers recording and celebrating their own attacks on Palestinians.    Democracy Now! speaks to two of the journalists involved in its production, director Richard Sanders and Gaza-based correspondent Youmna ElSayed. “ Israelis themselves were telling us precisely what they were doing and why they were doing it, ” says Sanders about the evidence the team reviewed. “ They don’t think it’s complicated. They don’t think it’s nuanced. Their rhetoric is often overtly genocidal. ” ElSayed adds, “ They’ve had all the courage to do that because they know that they are not even going to be condemned. ”

The Grayzone   ‘People are sick of the bullsh*t in here, it is a genocide’ — The Grayzone 's Liam Cosgrove confronts The US State Department’s Matthew Miller's endless doublespeak. Cosgrove: This administration has financed a genocide in Gaza for the last year and every day you’re up there denying it. Miller: There’s plenty of places in Washington where you can give a speech. 

Leaks expose a secret effort by retired National Endowment for Democracy leader Carl Gershman to consolidate war-hungry neoconservative control over Iran’s opposition, while channeling US government funds into his own pet regime change initiatives.   by Kit Klarenberg and Max Blumenthal  Part 5 - A rogue’s gallery of regime change operatives   Gershman’s proposal also provided an accompanying list of “individuals involved or to be involved” in the IFC. Those assembled as the leaders of the longtime NED leader’s coalition represent a veritable rogue’s gallery of neoconservative chickenhawks, pro-war think tankers, and Western-backed Iranian regime change activists. A full proposed membership list appears at the end of this article. Mahnaz Afkhami – Afkhami was Minister of Women’s Affairs under the Shah from 1976 to 1978, at a time when the Shah’s brutal Savak security forces were disappearing, torturing and killing thousands of protesters. William “Bill” Kristol – Kristol is perhaps the

What did you do during the genocide? pic.twitter.com/7U2rymsWbz — Roger Waters ✊ (@rogerwaters) October 8, 2024

Owen Jones   We said what would happen. There's no excuses, no legitimate claims of 'we didn't know what was really happening'. Now, there must be accountability. 

Geopolitical Economy Report   Israel enjoys bipartisan support from both the Democratic and Republican Parties in Washington, as it brutally bombs Gaza, invades Lebanon, and attacks Iran, Syria, and Yemen. Ben Norton shows how Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, JD Vance, Tim Walz, and other US politicians facilitate Israel's war crimes, which are being investigated by the International Court of Justice.

Owen Jones   This is a crucial case: the Hind Rajab Foundation has launched a legal complaint at the ICC against 1,000 Israeli soldiers, with over 8,000 pieces of evidence. But will Israel's impunity protect them from justice?

Al Jazeera English   Al Jazeera has investigated thousands of posts from social media documenting war crimes by Israeli soldiers in Gaza. What does this database expose about the last year of war – what’s being called the first “livestreamed genocide”? 

Glenn Greenwald 

Glenn Greenwald     Related:  A unique moment where the establishment admits that is losing control over the narratives!

The Grayzone   In an exclusive new documentary, Max Blumenthal rips the cover off the media deceptions and atrocity hoaxes Israel pushed after October 7 to create political space for its gruesome assault on the Gaza Strip. Blumenthal exposes the US mainstream media's role as a megaphone for the Israeli government, introducing new lies even after their initial ones were debunked. Atrocity Inc raises serious questions about the official narrative of October 7, while revealing how Israel's army has consciously engaged in the same hideous atrocities which it falsely accused Palestinian militants of committing.  

The Grayzone   The Grayzone 's Aaron Mate and Max Blumenthal on a stunning report by the Financial Times conceding that Zelensky faces a terrible reckoning for extreme right forces in Ukraine if he negotiates an end to the war. 

Leaks expose a secret effort by retired National Endowment for Democracy leader Carl Gershman to consolidate war-hungry neoconservative control over Iran’s opposition, while channeling US government funds into his own pet regime change initiatives.   by Kit Klarenberg and Max Blumenthal  Part 4 - Gershman seeks US funds for defunct protest movement   Attached to Gershman’s email to Díaz-Balart was a document setting out his vision for the Iran Freedom Coalition. Touting the defunct Movement as somehow continuing to “ represent momentous challenges to the Iranian theocracy and its clerics, ” the file called for a “ new approach to dealing with Iran. ” This was considered particularly urgent in light of the coming termination of the Iran nuclear deal, and what he believed was the Islamic Republic’s “ burgeoning military assistance to Russia ”: “ The confluence of these factors urgently requires…a focus on building international support for the Iran protest movement and holding the regime

by Alan Macleod    Part 7 - Is Your Identity Safe?   Internet secrecy is a serious business. Over a billion individuals trust VPNs to hide their identities online. However, the background of Kape Technologies, from its beginnings as an adware company spamming users with advertisements to its key figures’ close connections to Israeli intelligence, raises serious concerns about its clients’ privacy. At best, a worrying set of conflicts of interest arises when giving your data to a company with such an ethical background. But given that many of the key figures highlighted here have close connections to groups such as the Duvdevan and Unit 8200, both of which carry out wide-scale spying operations, and ExpressVPN’s former CTO reportedly working to spy on users and pass that information on to foreign governments, one cannot rule out the possibility that this is a gigantic sting operation to gather data on vast amounts of individuals, akin to what Unit 8200 is already known to do. While Ex

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of European cities over the weekend of October 5-6, responding to an international call in support of Palestine, only days ahead of the date that marks the anniversary of the beginning of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Solidarity groups marched in London, Madrid, Rome, Dublin, Berlin, Belgrade, and dozens of other locations, once again reaffirming their call for an immediate ceasefire and an arms embargo on Israel—a demand they have been voicing for an entire year. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the United Kingdom reported that approximately 300,000 people marched through London, with the police stating that turnout seemed “ to be greater than other recent protests. ” Among the speakers was Jeremy Corbyn, who urged attendees to continue advocating “ for the only path to a just and lasting peace: an end to the occupation of Palestine. ”   Rallies were held in over 40 cities in Spain, echoing the general