the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

Progressive International   Today, nine nations convene in The Hague to discuss their shared commitment to upholding international law, responding to threats against the International Criminal Court and defending Palestinian rights. Following the meeting, nations are set to form The Hague Group and announce coordinated legal, economic, and diplomatic measures to hold Israel accountable for its violations of international law, including its ongoing actions in Gaza. Convened by the Progressive International, the meeting between state representatives of Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa will explore collective action at both national and international levels to support Palestinian rights. 

Breaking Points  

Owen Jones  

A senior BBC editor at the center of an ongoing scandal into the network’s systematic pro-Israel bias is, in fact, a former member of a CIA propaganda outfit, MintPress News can reveal. Raffi Berg, an Englishman who heads the BBC’s Middle East desk, formerly worked for the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a unit that, by his own admission, was a CIA front group. Berg is currently the subject of considerable scrutiny after thirteen BBC employees spoke out, claiming, among other things, that his “entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel” and that he holds “wild” amounts of power at the British state broadcaster, that there exists a culture of “extreme fear” at the BBC about publishing anything critical of Israel, and that Berg himself plays a key role in turning its coverage into “systematic Israeli propaganda.” The BBC has disputed these claims.   by Alan Macleod    Part 7 - Cheering on a Genocide   In recent y...

globinfo freexchange     The exact question was: Will China fully decouple from US dollar? The analysis we got in just 19 seconds is pretty impressive:   The question of whether China will "fully decouple" from the U.S. dollar is complex and hinges on geopolitical, economic, and strategic factors. While China has been actively diversifying its financial systems and reducing reliance on the dollar, a complete decoupling in the near term appears unlikely. Here's a balanced analysis: 1. Trends Toward Reduced Dollar Dependence De-dollarization Efforts : China has promoted the use of its currency, the  renminbi (RMB) , in international trade and finance. Initiatives like bilateral currency swaps (e.g., with Russia, Argentina, and others), the  Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) , and the digital yuan (e-CNY) aim to reduce dollar dependency. Commodity Trade : China increasingly settles energy and commodity trades (e.g., with Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia) ...

Geopolitical Economy Report   Chinese AI company DeepSeek shocked the West with a groundbreaking open-source artificial intelligence model that beats huge Silicon Valley Big Tech monopolies. The US government is already trying to ban it, like TikTok, using "national security" as an excuse. Ben Norton explains. 

Double Down News  You Won't Believe How It Ended

From rolling back the pandemic-era social safety net, to overseeing the largest inflationary crisis in decades, Biden’s legacy was one of economic despair   by Natalia Marques  Part 3 - “How does it feel to have your legacy be genocide?” Throughout Israel’s fifteen-month long genocide in Gaza, the US proven that Israel would simply be unable to carry out this genocide without the material and political support of the bigger country. Biden’s administration supplied Israel with billions in aid, while US officials threatened international institutions that sought to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against humanity. In response, the people of the US mounted a powerful Palestine solidarity movement which put Biden’s administration in a domestic political bind. Arab and Muslim voters in key swing states such as Michigan turned away from the Biden, and then Harris campaign in droves, refusing to vote for an administration that facilitated genocide. Biden’s administration has a...

Britain’s ‘public service broadcaster’ is keeping the public in the dark about UK support for Israel’s assault on Gaza, new research finds. Declassified researched the BBC’s online coverage of 16 aspects of UK policy towards Israel and the pro-Israel lobby. “It is high time for the corporation to be truly held to account and be reformed in the public interest”, leading media professor says. by Mark Curtis  Part 4 - Voluntary censorship   Neither has the BBC covered the possible role of UK spy agency GCHQ or the army’s special forces, the SAS, in facilitating Israeli military operations. These are live issues given that GCHQ operates an extensive intelligence operation on Cyprus, from where the RAF planes are flown over Gaza. GCHQ is known to have aided past Israeli combat operations in Gaza. Yet Declassified could find no reports on the BBC website mentioning GCHQ in the context of Gaza. Reporting on the SAS was subject by the government to a D-Notice – a voluntary gagging or...

by Caitlin Johnstone   Well that didn’t take long. President Trump has said he wants to “clean out” Gaza and relocate its population to US client states Egypt and Jordan, which would of course be a textbook case of ethnic cleansing. It would also align perfectly with longstanding Israeli agendas to remove Palestinians from their homeland so that their territory can be seized and settled by Jews. Speaking with the press on board Air Force One on Saturday, Trump said he talked to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about taking in large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza, and said he plans to speak with Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi about doing the same. “I’d like Egypt to take people and I’d like Jordan to take people,” Trump told reporters, saying the Gaza Strip is “a real mess” and “literally a demolition site”. “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said.  The president said that this new arrangement could be ...

🚨 Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day… 🇮🇱 Why isn’t GENOCIDAL NETANYAHU in prison yet? pic.twitter.com/NMBfYqG6bw — Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 (@jacksonhinklle) January 27, 2025

Geopolitical Economy Report   Donald Trump threatened Colombia with sanctions and tariffs after it rejected his abuse of immigrants. Colombian President Gustavo Petro hit back against the US attacks, declaring, "We are not a colony!" Ben Norton analyzes Latin America's resistance to meddling by Trump and his neoconservative Secretary of State Marco Rubio. 

In a matter of days governments across the EU will have the power to deploy AI-powered technologies that track citizens in public spaces, conduct real-time surveillance to monitor refugees in border zones and use facial recognition tools against people based on their suspected political affiliations or religious beliefs. These are just some of the loopholes and national security exemptions forced through in the European Artificial Intelligence Act, the world’s first set of laws targeting the sector. The legislation is designed to mitigate the myriad bias and privacy fears surrounding the use of AI technologies and algorithms, with the EU saying the law will create “an AI ecosystem that benefits everyone.” But several controversial parts of the regulation will take effect from 2 February 2025, thanks in part to secret lobbying by France and a host of European states. Internal documents obtained from the negotiations by Investigate Europe reveal member states successfully campaigned to ...

🧵Greek public broadcaster ERT, under the control of PM @kmitsotakis , failed to cover the demonstrations (26.1.2025) regarding the 2023 Tempi train crash in central Greece, which killed 57 people and injured dozens of others. ❗However, the BBC programme “The Newsroom” covered… pic.twitter.com/x79yCRlbRe — Reporters United (@reporters_gr) January 27, 2025

A senior BBC editor at the center of an ongoing scandal into the network’s systematic pro-Israel bias is, in fact, a former member of a CIA propaganda outfit, MintPress News can reveal. Raffi Berg, an Englishman who heads the BBC’s Middle East desk, formerly worked for the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a unit that, by his own admission, was a CIA front group. Berg is currently the subject of considerable scrutiny after thirteen BBC employees spoke out, claiming, among other things, that his “entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel” and that he holds “wild” amounts of power at the British state broadcaster, that there exists a culture of “extreme fear” at the BBC about publishing anything critical of Israel, and that Berg himself plays a key role in turning its coverage into “systematic Israeli propaganda.” The BBC has disputed these claims.   by Alan Macleod    Part 6 - CIA-Affiliated Media   The implicati...

The Electronic Intifada ’s executive director Ali Abunimah was arrested by Swiss police ahead of a speaking event in Zurich on Saturday afternoon. He is currently being detained and has had access to legal counsel. The arrest came one day after Abunimah arrived in Zurich for a speaking tour. When he arrived at Zurich airport on Friday, Abunimah was questioned by police for an hour before being allowed to enter the country. Abunimah’s arrest appears to be part of a growing backlash from Western governments against expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Last year, several activists and journalists in Britain were arrested, raided or charged using “counter-terror” powers. These include Asa Winstanley, an associate editor with The Electronic Intifada , whose home was raided and his computers and phones seized. Winstanley has not been charged with any crime. The Electronic Intifada team stands in solidarity with Ali Abunimah. Speaking out against injustice in Palestine is n...

Meanwhile, crises of economy, climate and conflict mean the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990. Most billionaire wealth is taken, not earned - 60% comes from either inheritance, cronyism and corruption or monopoly power. Our deeply unequal world has a long history of colonial domination which has largely benefited the richest people. The poorest, racialized people, women and marginalized groups have and continue to be systematically exploited at huge human cost. Today’s world remains colonial in many ways. The average Belgian has 180 times more voting power in the World Bank than the average Ethiopian. This system still extracts wealth from the Global South to the superrich 1% in the Global North at a rate of US$30million an hour. This must be reversed. Reparations must be made to those who were brutally enslaved and colonised. Our modern-day colonial economic system must be made radically more equal to end poverty. The cost should be borne by the richest ...

From rolling back the pandemic-era social safety net, to overseeing the largest inflationary crisis in decades, Biden’s legacy was one of economic despair   by Natalia Marques  Part 2 - Working people struggle under high costs As Biden oversaw this massive rollback of the pandemic-era social safety net, people in the US were experiencing the worst inflationary crisis in decades during his administration. This crisis was experienced by many other Western nations, and was exacerbated by corporate price gouging and existing economic difficulties such as a lack of affordable housing and stagnant wages. In the final days of Biden’s term, working people in the US are still suffering under a cost of living crisis, contrary to the positive spin of the mainstream media. According to AP VoteCast, a survey of over 120,000 registered voters conducted from October 30 to November 5, 96% of these voters said “high prices for gas, groceries and other goods” factored into who they voted for in...

Britain’s ‘public service broadcaster’ is keeping the public in the dark about UK support for Israel’s assault on Gaza, new research finds. Declassified researched the BBC’s online coverage of 16 aspects of UK policy towards Israel and the pro-Israel lobby. “It is high time for the corporation to be truly held to account and be reformed in the public interest”, leading media professor says. by Mark Curtis  Part 3 - Arms exports   In sharp contrast to other UK government policies concerning Israel, the BBC has published many articles mentioning British arms exports to Israel. In these reports, the BBC has occasionally cited concerns by human rights groups and MPs about the possible use by Israel of these arms, at the same time as citing pro-Israel figures. However, article headlines have rarely been critical of these weapons sales. The only overtly disapproving headlines Declassified could find were: ‘Brother of aid worker killed in Gaza criticises arming Israel’ and ‘Amnesty c...

This unprecedented slaughter could not have happened without powerful cheerleaders. Hold them to account   by Owen Jones Unless those complicit in the Gaza genocide are held to account, the brutal consequences will be felt far beyond that shattered land. The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas offered a respite for traumatised survivors. But Donald Trump’s declaration that he is not confident it will last has prompted renewed terror. From the new president’s decision to lift the pause on shipments of 2,000lb bombs to Israel, which were dropped repeatedly on civilians in so-called safe zones, to his pick for the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who once said there was “really no such thing as a Palestinian”, those hoping for lasting peace are right to worry that the carnage will soon begin again. The assault on Gaza is normalising an almost limitless violence against civilians, all facilitated and justified by multiple western governments and media outlets. It is worth recalli...

Hakim

Emmanuel Macron’s government gave tax breaks for France’s wealthiest while counting on purchase taxes paid by ordinary consumers. Now saying it has a budget hole to fill, his administration is again expecting working-class people to pick up the bill.   by Marlon Ettinger Part 3 - Attacking the Postwar Model Dupont is a fiscal moderate who sees cutting government ministries and shrinking the state as the way out of France’s financial cul-de-sac. But his explanation for the dire financial situation of France’s local authorities is similar to one made by David Guiraud, who is the France Insoumise MP for the Northern city of Roubaix. Guiraud told Jacobin that the funding shortfall for the state budget can be explained by tracking where VAT has been going under Macron. Five years ago, he explained, 90 percent of the revenue from that tax went to the state budget. Now just about half of it does . That’s despite revenue from VAT soaring in recent years. In 2017, it raised €163 billion. I...

The Israeli military bombed and stormed Jenin on Tuesday as it launched a major assault on the northern occupied West Bank city, days after a ceasefire in Gaza took hold. The attacks killed at least seven Palestinians and wounded 35 others, according to the Palestinian health ministry. The bombing accompanied a large-scale ground assault by Israeli forces, which is expected to last several days, a military source told the Times of Israel . Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces - who have been besieging and attacking Jenin since early December - withdrew from the city as the Israeli offensive was starting. Reporters on the ground told Middle East Eye that Israeli forces are besieging both al-Amal Hospital and Jenin Governmental Hospital.   Full report:   https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-launches-major-iron-wall-assault-jenin-days-after-gaza-ceasefire 

Owen Jones / Secular Talk  

A senior BBC editor at the center of an ongoing scandal into the network’s systematic pro-Israel bias is, in fact, a former member of a CIA propaganda outfit, MintPress News can reveal. Raffi Berg, an Englishman who heads the BBC’s Middle East desk, formerly worked for the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a unit that, by his own admission, was a CIA front group. Berg is currently the subject of considerable scrutiny after thirteen BBC employees spoke out, claiming, among other things, that his “entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel” and that he holds “wild” amounts of power at the British state broadcaster, that there exists a culture of “extreme fear” at the BBC about publishing anything critical of Israel, and that Berg himself plays a key role in turning its coverage into “systematic Israeli propaganda.” The BBC has disputed these claims.   by Alan Macleod    Part 5 - A Worldwide Network   Whatever the v...

Owen Jones   Jones' speech at Saturday's Palestine protest in London, which suffered an outrageous attempt by the police to suppress it.

In an exclusive interview with Drop Site News , a senior Hamas official said that the group intends to uphold its side of the “ceasefire” deal—despite claims by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he received assurances from both President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump that Israel can resume its war against Gaza after the first phase of the agreement. “We are committed to this deal. We will exert the maximum efforts to give this deal a chance to succeed. We are looking for how to prevent the war again, how to protect our people. We will do the best to protect this deal,” said Dr. Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau. “What kind of side deals they have done, this is their business. But what I can say here: the American administration led by Biden, we consider complicit—directly complicit—in the genocide.”   [...]   Naim said that Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, as well as other resistance groups, are prepared to resume fighting if Is...

#Trump invited the world's richest billionaire oligarchs to sit at the center of his #inauguration , showing you what your even darker future will look like at the beginning of the fourth decade of 21st century, with the direct establishment of the new corporate feudalism pic.twitter.com/Lija0FiUf8 — failedevolution (@failedevolution) January 20, 2025

Geopolitical Economy Report   Donald Trump invited the world's richest billionaire oligarchs to sit at the center of his inauguration for second term as US president. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg symbolically sat next to Trump's cabinet picks, along with the CEO of Google and Alphabet, Sundar Pichai. At least 13 billionaires will have important positions in the Trump administration. Ben Norton reports. 

Drop Site News is publishing a landmark investigation about the BBC’s coverage of Israel’s unrelenting assault on Gaza by British journalist Owen Jones. His report is based on interviews with 13 journalists and other BBC staffers who offer remarkable insights into how senior figures within the BBC’s news operation skewed stories in favor of Israel’s narratives and repeatedly dismissed objections registered by scores of staffers who, throughout the past 14 months, demanded that the network uphold its commitment to impartiality and fairness.    by Owen Jones   Part 8 - The BBC’s Response   In response to this story’s allegations surrounding BBC’s coverage of Israel and Palestine and Berg’s role and background, a spokesperson for the network told Drop Site News : “We reject your attack on an individual member of staff. Like every journalist at the BBC, they must adhere to the BBC’s editorial guidelines which ensure that we report impartially and without fear or favor.” ...