the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

Glenn Greenwald    

Democracy Now!   As a wave of student protests against Israel’s war on Gaza continues to spread from coast to coast, schools and law enforcement have responded with increasing brutality to campus encampments.    One of the most violent police crackdowns took place at Emory University in Atlanta on Thursday, when local and state police swept onto the campus just hours after students had set up tents on the quad in protest against Israel’s war on Gaza as well as the planned police training center known as Cop City.    Police used tear gas and stun guns to break up the encampment as they wrestled people to the ground, and are accused of using rubber bullets. Among those arrested were a few faculty members.    Democracy Now! spoke with two of the arrested professors: Noëlle McAfee, chair of the philosophy department, and Emil’ Keme, professor of English and Indigenous studies. Also with Palestinian American organizer and medical student Umaymah Mohammad, who describes how Emory has repeat

Al Jazeera English   As Israel’s war on Gaza continues for a seventh month, killing more than 34,000 Palestinians and 200 humanitarian workers, the United States just approved roughly $15bn in military aid to Israel. But is this transfer of weapons against both domestic and international law? A scathing report released this week argues that by providing weapons that may be used in war crimes, the Biden administration may have acted in violation of not just international law, but its own regulations.   Marc Lamont Hill talks to the authors of this report, lawyer and scholar Noura Erakat and former senior official at the US Department of State Josh Paul.

New court documents reveal that ministers David Cameron and Kemi Badenoch authorised UK arms sales to Israel right after an airstrike killed three British charity workers in Gaza. by John McEvoy   Part 2 - ‘Killed with British weapons’   Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) and Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq challenged the UK government today in court over arms sales to Israel. Documents provided to the court show that the UK government has conducted five legal assessments of the situation in Gaza since 18 December. One of those assessments, which covered the period 18 December to 29 February, was delivered to UK foreign secretary David Cameron on 28 March. On 3 April, two days after the Israeli airstrike on the aid workers, Cameron used this assessment to recommend that the UK continue arms sales to Israel. Five days later, UK trade secretary Kemi Badenoch authorised the continuation of extant licences and new licences to Israel, according to GLAN’s press statement. The court doc

Al Jazeera English   In Gaza's Rafah district, Palestinian civil defense officials discuss mass grave discoveries near Nasser and al-Shifa hospitals. Yemen Abu Solaiman, head of civil defence in Khan Younis, reveals three graves at Nasser Hospital, expressing concerns over signs of executions. Of 392 bodies found, only 65 are identified due to decomposition or mutilation. Abu Sulaiman urges global action to halt aggression and allow access for scrutiny.  

Smears from the press and pro-Israel influencers are a dangerous distraction from real threats to our safety.   by Jonathan Ben-Menachem *   “Reprehensible and dangerous.” “Terrorist sympathizers.” “It’s not 1938 Berlin. It’s 2024, Columbia University, NYC.” The White House, Congressional Republicans, and cable news talking heads would have you believe that the Columbia University campus has devolved into a hotbed of antisemitic violence – but the reality on the ground is very different. As a Jewish student at Columbia, it depresses me that I have to correct the record and explain what the real risk to our safety looks like. I still can't quite believe how the events on campus over the past few days have been so cynically and hysterically misrepresented by the media and by our elected representatives.     Last week, the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition, representing more than 100 student organizations, including Jewish groups, organized the Gaza Solidarity Enca

Democracy Now!   Student protests calling for university divestment from Israel and the U.S. arms industry have rocked campuses from coast to coast. The nonviolent protests, which have been characterized as “antisemitic” for their criticism of Israel, have been met with an intensifying police crackdown as university administrators threaten academic discipline and arrests.    On Wednesday, local and state troopers violently arrested dozens at the University of Texas at Austin. Meanwhile, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson visited Columbia University in New York City, the site of a high-profile student encampment and one of the first to be met with police action, where he called on university president Minouche Shafik to resign.    Democracy Now! spoke with two Jewish students involved in protests at their schools. Joshua Sklar, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin and an organizer with Jewish Voice of Peace Austin, says concern over campus antisemitism is insincer

The Grayzone   The gangland assassination of Fernando Villavicencio was a key factor in preventing socialist-oriented Citizens' Revolution candidate Luisa González from winning the elections. The Grayzone spoke with Luisa Gonzales about that disturbing intrigue and the malign activities of the US embassy inside her country.  

Geopolitical Economy Report   US President Joe Biden signed a law that will force TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance to sell the app, or it will be banned in the US. Ben Norton explains how this is part of Washington's economic war, aimed at protecting Big Tech monopolies in Silicon Valley.

Amid the internal battle over the New York Times’s coverage of Israel’s war, top editors handed down a set of directives. by Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim     Part 3 - “Words Like ‘Slaughter’” The Times memo outlines guidance on a range of phrases and terms. “ The nature of the conflict has led to inflammatory language and incendiary accusations on all sides. We should be very cautious about using such language, even in quotations. Our goal is to provide clear, accurate information, and heated language can often obscure rather than clarify the fact, ” the memo says. “ Words like ‘slaughter,’ ‘massacre’ and ‘carnage’ often convey more emotion than information. Think hard before using them in our own voice, ” according to the memo. “ Can we articulate why we are applying those words to one particular situation and not another? As always, we should focus on clarity and precision — describe what happened rather than using a label. ” Despite the memo’s framing as an effort to not employ incen

globinfo freexchange   It seems that the declining Western superpower is losing ground and tries hardly to avoid the inevitable.    The US imperialist beast, despite all the destruction that causes, is failing to fulfill its utter objectives. Which in short, are the dissolution of Russia and China, looting their vast resources, as well as the full expansion of the destructive neoliberal model throughout these areas and other countries allied with the Sino-Russian bloc.   Most importantly, the wounded beast is loosing much of its strength due to the rapid de-dollarization that has started approximately ten years ago, as dollar had become the front line of the US imperialist sweeping force since the early 70s.   As if nothing has changed, the beast insists on using the same tools to prevail in the global geopolitical field, ignoring the unprecedented changes and complexities under current circumstances.    In a move (as it seems) of desperation, the United States House of Representative

The UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, has said he was “horrified” by reports of mass graves containing hundreds of bodies at two of Gaza’s largest hospitals. Palestinian civil defence teams began exhuming bodies from a mass grave outside the Nasser hospital complex in Khan Younis last week after Israeli troops withdrew. A total of 310 bodies have been found in the last week, including 35 in the past day, Palestinian officials have said. “We feel the need to raise the alarm because clearly there have been multiple bodies discovered,” said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN high commissioner for human rights. She described bodies “buried deep in the ground and covered with waste”, adding that “among the deceased were allegedly older people, women and wounded”, including some bound and stripped of their clothes.   “Some of them had their hands tied, which of course indicates serious violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, and these need t

Democracy Now!   Palestinian solidarity protests and encampments are appearing on college campuses from Massachusetts to California to protest Israel's attacks on Gaza and to call for divestment from Israeli apartheid. This week, police have raided encampments and arrested students at Yale and New York University.    Palestinian American scholar and New York University professor Helga Tawil-Souri describes forming a faculty buffer to protect students, negotiating with police, and the ensuing crackdown that led to over 100 arrests Monday night.    Uptown in New York City, the encampment at Columbia University is entering its seventh day despite mass arrests of protesters last week. "In my opinion, the NYPD were called in under false pretenses by the president of the university," says Joseph Slaughter, professor at Columbia University. "The university is being run as a sort of ad-hocracy at this point, the senior administration making up policies and procedures and pro

New court documents reveal that ministers David Cameron and Kemi Badenoch authorised UK arms sales to Israel right after an airstrike killed three British charity workers in Gaza. by John McEvoy   Part 1   On 1 April, Israeli forces launched a series of airstrikes on a convoy of aid workers in Gaza, killing three Britons, a Polish national, a Palestinian, an American-Canadian dual citizen, and an Australian. The Israeli Air Force carried out the bombing with a Hermes 450 drone. According to Campaign Against the Arms Trade, this drone may be powered by a R902(W) Wankel engine produced in Britain by UAV Engines Limited (UEL). New court documents show that the UK government decided to continue arms exports to Israel on 8 April, one week after the strike on the aid workers who were employed by the charity World Central Kitchen (WCK). The revelation will put additional pressure on the Foreign Office to justify its decision not to suspend arms sales to Israel.   Source, links:   https://www.

A uniquely Ukrainian strain of Neo-Nazism is spreading throughout Europe, which openly advocates violence against minorities while seeking new recruits. With Kiev’s army collapsing and a narrative of Western betrayal gaining currency, the horror inflicted on residents of Donbas for a decade could very soon be coming to a city near you.   by Kit Klarenberg   Part 3 - Portrait of a British-trained Neo-Nazi Underlining the extent of the neo-Nazi penetration of Western military apparatuses, NAA cadet Kyrylo Dubrovskyi, attended an 11-month Officer Training Course at Britain’s esteemed Sandhurst Royal Military Academy in 2020. Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs celebrated his graduation while the NAA published a 12-minute video profile of the new graduate’s path to military leadership. IERES noted that Dubrovskyi “ showed very keen interest in Centuria matters ” while attending the Academy. Dubrovskyi appears to have narrated a Centuria promotional video circulated on Telegram in May 202

failed evolution   For any artist who would like to incarnate pure evil through their art, here is an idea of how it might look like:  

Lubna Ahmad Abu Sitta   Our new camp in Rafah, after our third displacement, is located in a graveyard near the Egyptian border. Each day the tents of new arrivals – of those forcibly displaced by Israeli attacks – creep closer to the graves. After every Israeli massacre, both graveyard and camp expand, crawling toward the outer edges of the desert. We’ve been here since December 2023. Nine of us share a tent that is 16 square meters. We are in the desert, but sometimes it does not feel that way because of the density and the near-constant sounds of Israeli explosions and drones. There are so many people in the camp, all of us in tents that do not protect from heat or cold.   Winds sometimes uproot tents. There are stray dogs everywhere. Every day we line up for drinking water. Sometimes the water runs out and we return to our tents empty-handed. My family’s tent is in the middle of the camp. Next door is a medical point that supports those who have been displaced here. I’ve seen docto

Democracy Now!   Columbia University canceled in-person classes Monday as campus protests over the war in Gaza enter a sixth day. The protests have swelled after the school administration called in the police to clear a student encampment last week, resulting in over 100 arrests.    Solidarity protests and encampments have now sprouted up on campuses across the country, including at Yale, MIT, Tufts, NYU, The New School and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.    Palestinian reporter Jude Taha, a journalism student at Columbia University, describes events on campus as " an unprecedented act of solidarity " that student organizers are modeling on antiwar protests in 1968. She says Columbia University President Minouche Shafik's claims of an unsafe environment on campus are contradicted by the generally calm and productive atmosphere among the protesters, adding that the school's heavy-handed response, including suspensions and evictions, is being seen as "

DawnNews English   Pro-Palestine protests have surged globally, showcasing widespread solidarity with the Palestinian people. From Columbia University in the US to cities across Europe, Asia, and beyond, demonstrators have voiced their support for Palestine and condemned the violence in Gaza. At Columbia University, New York, and Yale University, Connecticut, students and activists gathered to express their solidarity.    Across the UK, from Leicester to Swansea and Lancashire, people joined rallies to stand with Palestine.   In front of the US Embassy in London, protesters demanded justice, while similar sentiments echoed in Marseille, France, and Mannheim, Germany. Demonstrations spread to Melbourne, Australia, and Gothenburg, Sweden, as well as Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Istanbul, Turkey, where protesters gathered in solidarity. In Tokyo, Japan, and Barcelona, Spain, people voiced their support for Palestine's cause, while similar protests took place in Madrid, Spain, and Ottaw

Amid the internal battle over the New York Times’s coverage of Israel’s war, top editors handed down a set of directives. by Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim     Part 2 - WhatsApp Debates Almost immediately after the October 7 attacks and the launch of Israel’s scorched-earth war against Gaza, tensions began to boil within the newsroom over the Times coverage. Some staffers said they believed the paper was going out of its way to defer to Israel’s narrative on the events and was not applying even standards in its coverage. Arguments began fomenting on internal Slack and other chat groups. The debates between reporters on the Jerusalem bureau-led WhatsApp group, which at one point included 90 reporters and editors, became so intense that Pan, the international editor, interceded. “ We need to do a better job communicating with each other as we report the news, so our discussions are more productive and our disagreements less distracting, ” Pan wrote in a November 28 WhatsApp message viewed by

The Hill   Julian Assange's brother Gabriel Shipton weighs in on Assange's possible extradition to the U.S.  

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fears that the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague may issue arrest warrants against him and other officials due to violations during the aggression on Gaza, Israeli Channel 12 reported on Thursday. The channel said that three ministers and several government legal experts held an ’emergency discussion” at the Prime Minister’s Office on Tuesday regarding how to fend off the feared imminent issuing of such arrest warrants. The meeting was convened after information reached Jerusalem indicating that such warrants could be issued in the near future, it added. The highest political and legal elite in Israel were present at the discussion, according to the channel.   It pointed out that the background to the issuance of international arrest warrants is the war in Gaza. The channel confirmed that Netanyahu asked the Foreign Ministers of Britain and Germany during their visits to Israel to intervene to prevent the issuance of arrest warra

BreakThrough News   BreakThrough News is streaming LIVE on Friday, April 19th from Columbia University as students are protesting for a third day, fighting for transparency and divestment from Israel. 

Owen Jones   The US denied that agreed to permit Israel invade Rafah in return for not carrying out large Iran strike. The consequences of such an invasion would be beyond catastrophic.      Related: Zionazis exterminate Palestinians in Rafah

A uniquely Ukrainian strain of Neo-Nazism is spreading throughout Europe, which openly advocates violence against minorities while seeking new recruits. With Kiev’s army collapsing and a narrative of Western betrayal gaining currency, the horror inflicted on residents of Donbas for a decade could very soon be coming to a city near you.   by Kit Klarenberg   Part 2 - A secret Western-backed Nazi network Centuria is seemingly not the only Azov-related Ukrainian movement seeking to infiltrate Europe. An apparently separate but identically named Centuria is doing the same, with help from an entrenched structure of elite European support. In September 2021, George Washington University’s Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES) published a detailed and deeply unsettling report which documents how a once-secret order called Centuria was nurtured by a “ self-described order of ‘European traditionalist’ military officers that has the stated goals of reshaping the country’s

Ahead of the United Nations Security Council action to consider the Palestinian Authority’s application to become a full member of the international body, the United States is lobbying nations to reject such membership, hoping to avoid an overt “veto” by Washington. The lobbying effort, revealed in copies of unclassified State Department cables obtained by The Intercept, is at odds with the Biden administration’s pledge to fully support a two-state solution. In 2012, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution granting Palestine the status of a non-member observer state.   The diplomatic cables detail pressure being applied to members of the Security Council, including Malta, the rotating president of the council this month. Ecuador in particular is being asked to lobby Malta and other nations, including France, to oppose U.N. recognition. The State Department’s justification is that normalizing relations between Israel and Arab states is the fastest and most effective way to achieve

by Tamino Dreisam, Peter Schwarz   Since hundreds of police officers broke up a Palestine Congress in Berlin last Friday, new details have come to light every day about the arbitrariness and ruthlessness with which the police disregarded the law and trampled on democratic rights.   The German government employs the same police brutality against opponents of the genocide it supports in Gaza that it usually accuses its enemies, such as Russian President Putin, of using. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (Social Democrats, SPD) backed the brutal police action on Friday. She wrote on Twitter that it was “ right and necessary ” for the Berlin police to “ crack down on the so-called Palestine Congress. ” A collective of lawyers advising the organisers of the congress published a statement April 13 detailing the preparations for the congress and the course of events. It reveals that there had already been several security talks between the organisers and the police in the run-up to the congress

The war's aims won't be achieved. The hostages won't be returned through military pressure. Security won't be restored. Israel's international ostracism won't end.    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-11/ty-article-magazine/.premium/saying-what-cant-be-said-israel-has-been-defeated-a-total-defeat/0000018e-cdab-dba9-a78e-efef6ba10000  

Democracy Now!   As Germany intensifies its crackdown on pro-Palestinian voices, Democracy Now! spoke with Greek economist and politician Yanis Varoufakis, one of the planned speakers at a conference in Berlin last weekend that was forcibly shut down by police. The Palestine Congress was scheduled to be held for three days, but police stormed the venue as the first panelist spoke.    Germany's Interior Ministry had also banned some conference speakers from even entering the country, including Varoufakis, the Palestinian British surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah and the Palestinian researcher Salman Abu Sitta.    " This is not about protecting Jewish lives and Jews from antisemitism. It's all about protecting the right of Israel to commit any war crime of its choice, " says Varoufakis.    Varoufakis speaks also about freeing Julian Assange and his new book Technofeudalism .      Related: Germany again on a dark path towards fascism

Owen Jones   Germany is persecuting Jews in the name of combating antisemitism. The world is turned upside down.  

Amid the internal battle over the New York Times’s coverage of Israel’s war, top editors handed down a set of directives. by Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim     Part 1 The New York Times instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept . The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine “ except in very rare cases ” and to steer clear of the term “ refugee camps ” to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by displaced Palestinians expelled from other parts of Palestine during previous Israeli–Arab wars. The areas are recognized by the United Nations as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees. The memo — written by Times standards editor Susan Wessling, international editor Philip Pan, and their deputies — “ offer

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE                                The United States has issued a non-assurance in relation to the First Amendment, and a standard assurance in relation to the death penalty. It makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution's previous assertion that Julian has no First Amendment rights because he is not a U.S citizen. Instead, the US has limited itself to blatant weasel words claiming that Julian can "seek to raise" the First Amendment if extradited. The diplomatic note does nothing to relieve our family's extreme distress about his future -- his grim expectation of spending the rest of his life in isolation in US prison for publishing award-winning journalism. The Biden Administration must drop this dangerous prosecution before it is too late.   https://twitter.com/Stella_Assange/status/1780258878237667377    

globinfo freexchange   The International Court of Justice heard oral arguments from Nicaragua, which has brought a case against Germany alleging that in providing political, financial & military support to Israel, Germany is facilitating the commission of genocide & has failed in its obligation to prevent genocide.   Nicaragua also alleges Germany is facilitating Israel's serious breaches of IHL & other peremptory norms of general international law in Gaza, including Palestinians' right to self-determination and right to not be subjected to a regime of apartheid. Nicaragua has requested provisional measures against Germany, including an order that Germany shall: -- immediately suspend aid to Israel, in particular military assistance; -- immediately make efforts to ensure that weapons already delivered are not used to facilitate genocide; -- reverse its decision to defund UNRWA; -- cooperate to bring to an end the serious breaches of peremptory norms of internationa