the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

globinfo freexchange Recently, the German parliament passed an unprecedented legislation through which the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) is now considered illegal! As Sharmini Peries of the Real News reported: The German parliament (Bundestag), has just passed an unprecedented piece of legislation condemning the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, known as BDS. They deemed BDS as anti-Semitic and illegal. This makes Germany the first and only country in the world to criminalize the BDS movement. The legislation was passed at lightning speed in Germany. The bill itself was well kept secret until only two days before the vote. It was initially promoted by the far-right pro Israeli parties, both the neoliberal Party FDP and the racist anti-immigrant party AFD. But members of all German parties ended up supporting it, even from the far left. Peries spoke with the Real News correspondent, Shir Hever, who gave impressive details about the peculiar cir...

by Brian Barrett On Thursday, the Department of Justice unsealed new charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Unlike the previous indictment—which focused narrowly on an apparent offer to help crack a password—the 17 superseding counts focus instead on alleged violations of the Espionage Act. In doing so, the DOJ has aimed a battering ram at the freedom of the press, whether you think Assange is a journalist or not. The indictment, which you can read in full below, alleges that Assange published classified information over a dozen times, an act expressly forbidden by the Espionage Act, which Congress first passed in 1917. But the Espionage Act has only rarely, and never successfully, been applied to the recipient of a leak. “ For the first time in the history of our country, the government has brought criminal charges against a publisher for the publication of truthful information, ” says Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, ...

by Ajamu Baraka U.S. ships are involved in provocative “freedom of navigation” exercises in the South China Sea and other ships gather ominously in the Mediterranean Sea while National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo along with convicted war criminal Elliot Abrams conspire to save the people of Venezuela with another illegal “regime change” intervention. But people are drawn to the latest adventures of Love and Hip-Hop, the Mueller report, and Game of Thrones. In fact, while millions can recall with impressive detail the proposals and strategies of the various players in HBO’s latest saga, they can’t recall two details about the pending military budget that will likely pass in Congress with little debate, even though Trump’s budget proposal represents another obscene increase of public money to the tune of $750 billion.   This bipartisan rip-off could not occur without the willing collusion of the corporate media, which slants coverage to s...

The first to suffer was Syria and since then the gruesome effects have been spreading in the region and beyond, to Africans and Europeans, writes Mark Curtis.   by Mark Curtis  Part 1 Eight years on from NATO’s war in Libya in 2011, as the country enters a new phase in its conflict, I have taken stock of the number of countries to which terrorism has spread as a direct product of that war. The number is at least 14.  The legacy of the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi — pursued by U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and U.S. President Barack Obama — has been gruesomely felt by Europeans and Africans. Yet holding these leaders accountable for their decision to go to war is as distant as ever. The 2011 conflict, in which NATO worked alongside Islamist forces on the ground to remove Gaddafi, produced an ungoverned space in Libya and a country awash with weapons, ideal for terrorist groups to thrive. But it was ...

by the UndebtedWorld Collective The citizens of the European Union are called to vote this week for the European Parliament. It is not a real parliament, and it lacks prospects for becoming one, since all important decisions are taken by the unelected heads of the European Commission and the European Central Bank, dubbed “ the worst-run Central Bank in the world ”. These elections capture however the general mood of exasperation with current policies. Conservative and extreme Right parties will rise, reflecting widespread scepticism as to the economic course of the EU and its lack of benefits for the common people. The mainstream Left unfortunately neglects these issues, and it will pay the price.  The conservatives generally blame the weak and scapegoat the refugees, the immigrants, the women, and the poor, while promising to save the middle class from the onslaught of big capital. They create false hopes of easy reform, and they never denounce the exploitation inherent in to...

Glenn Greenwald interviews Lula da Silva from prison globinfo freexchange Lula da Silva on Operation Car Wash : Operation Car Wash has been selective most of the time it’s been running. Who made donations to PSDB [the Brazilian Social Democracy Party], and who made donations to PT? How much did PSDB receive, and how much did PT receive? And what about other parties? Why only [João] Vaccari of PT was sentenced for campaign finances. What about the other treasurers from the other parties? Operation Car Wash has been gradually changing into a political operation that benefits whoever participates in it. Not long ago, we found out that there was an agreement made by the US Department of Justice with what Dallagnol was handling for the Federal Public Ministry, for Operation Car Wash, to the tune of $600 million. And afterwards, it surfaced that Sérgio Moro had authorized another agreement to the tune of $1.6 billion from Odebrecht , here in Brazil. We also know that th...

globinfo freexchange Kyle Kulinski gives you the scenario in a few lines: They're gonna keep trying to build a case for Iran.  They're gonna do some sort of staged BS, or just flat-out lie.  They will present no evidence.  The dipshit mainstream media will run with it as if it's true and they will build the case further for an actual war with Iran.  They literally drew up plans of 120,000 ground troops to go do war with Iran. Bolton wants to do it.  Now, he's just got to build the case, and the mainstream media is gonna go right along with his nonsense.

New information released by the FBI has brought fresh scrutiny to the possibility that the “Dancing Israelis,” at least two of whom were known Mossad operatives, had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Center. by Whitney Webb Part 2 - One of the 9/11 loose-ends coverups? If images 5 and 7 were indeed taken the day prior to the attack, the question then becomes why the FBI officially concluded that the arrested Israelis had no prior knowledge of the attacks? One report from ABC News dated June 2002 suggests that the Bush administration intervened in the investigation. That report states that “ Israeli and U.S. government officials worked out a deal — and after 71 days, the five Israelis were taken out of jail, put on a plane, and deported back home [to Israel]. ” If the Bush administration had cut a deal with Israel’s government to cover up the incident, it certainly would not have been the first time a U.S. presidential administration had done so on Isra...

The intimidation tactics by the pro-coup embassy besiegers not only failed to deter the peace activists around the embassy, they left Venezuela’s D.C.-based opposition with a serious PR problem. After a week of hateful outbursts, a handful of marketing strategists emerged as de facto spokespeople for the mob. by Jeb Sprague and Alexander Rubinstein  Part 2 - The well-groomed spokespeople for regime change Dilianna C. Bustillos (also known as Dillianna Bustillos Vivas) has become a poster child for the pro-Guaidó mob. A senior manager at Oracle , she previously worked for MarketBridge and for the advocate marketing firm Influitive. Oracle , a computer technology corporation and one of the largest companies in the world, also works closely with aerospace and defense companies. In 2018 it had global revenues of $39.83 billion. Bustillos previously volunteered with Visión Democrática , a pro-opposition Venezuelan lobbying outfit in D.C. that claims to focus on “democr...

This study by Swiss Propaganda Research was first published in 2016, it is presented by off-guardian.org in English for the first time. Translated by Terje Maloy. It is one of the most important aspects of our media system – and yet hardly known to the public: most of the international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three global news agencies based in New York, London and Paris. The key role played by these agencies means that Western media often report on the same topics, even using the same wording. In addition, governments, military and intelligence services use these global news agencies as multipliers to spread their messages around the world. A study of the Syria war coverage by nine leading European newspapers clearly illustrates these issues: 78% of all articles were based in whole or in part on agency reports, yet 0% on investigative research . Moreover, 82% of all opinion pieces and interviews were in favor of the US and NATO intervention , ...