the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

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 1   The BBC is facing an internal revolt over its reporting on Israel’s war on Gaza. Their primary battlefield has become the online news operation. Drop Site News spoke to 13 current and former staffers who mapped out the extensive bias in the BBC’s coverage and how their demands for change have been largely met with silence from management. At times, these journalists point out, the coverage has been more...

Part 4 - Killing and causing serious bodily or mental harm   Amnesty International documented the genocidal acts of killing and causing serious mental and bodily harm to Palestinians in Gaza by reviewing the results of investigations it conducted into 15 air strikes between 7 October 2023 and 20 April 2024 that killed at least 334 civilians, including 141 children, and wounded hundreds of others. Amnesty International found no evidence that any of these strikes were directed at a military objective. In one illustrative case, on 20 April 2024, an Israeli air strike destroyed the Abdelal family house in the Al-Jneinah neighbourhood in eastern Rafah, killing three generations of Palestinians, including 16 children, while they were sleeping.   While these represent just a fraction of Israel’s aerial attacks, they are indicative of a broader pattern of repeated direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects or deliberately indiscriminate attacks. The attacks were also conducted...

The Jimmy Dore Show   The Irish government has hit back after Israel accused it of antisemitism and closed its embassy in Dublin. On Sunday Gideon Saar, Israel's foreign minister, announced the closure of the Israeli embassy in Dublin. The move came after Ireland recognised a Palestinian state in May, and announced last week it would formally intervene at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to support South Africa's genocide case against Israel.  In his announcement, Saar claimed that the " actions, double standards, and antisemitic rhetoric of the Irish government against Israel are rooted in efforts to delegitimise and demonise the Jewish state. " Irish Taoiseach (prime minister) Simon Harris hit back, arguing that the antisemitism charge is just meant as a distraction from Israel’s horrific crimes in Gaza. 

The Jimmy Dore Show  

White House–curated stories of performative outrage and feigned helplessness provided cover for an administration arming death on an industrial scale.  by Adam Johnson and Othman Ali Part 5 - Third-Partying   Third-Partying is a PR tactic used by the White House. But it also should be understood as a standard reporting practice, driven by media chauvinism, that simply takes for granted, as a matter of course, that US motives are peace-seeking in nature—despite the fact that the United States is an active participant in the conflict. Let’s look at eight prominent examples from just The New York Times from each month beginning in March 2024:     March 5, 2024: “Biden Expresses Hope on Cease-Fire Talks, but Hamas Appears to Reject Latest Offer”     April 29, 2024: “Biden Team Sees Narrow Window for Deal on Cease-Fire and Hostages in Gaza”     May 1, 2024: “Blinken Turns Up Pressure on Hamas to Accept Gaza Cease-Fire Deal”   ...

by Alan Macleod  Part 2 - A Discredited Book   The 100 million figure originates with the notorious pseudoscience text, “The Black Book of Communism.” A collection of political essays, the book’s central claim is that 100 million people have perished as a result of the communist ideology. However, even many of its contributors and co-writers have distanced themselves from it, claiming that the lead author was “obsessed” with reaching the 100 million figure, to the point that he simply conjured millions of deaths from nowhere. Its methodology was also universally panned, with many pointing out that the tens of millions of Soviet and Nazi losses during World War II were attributed to communist ideology. This means that both Adolf Hitler himself and many of his victims are counted towards the vastly overinflated figure. The book was condemned by Holocaust remembrance groups as whitewashing and even lionizing genocidal fascist groups as anti-communist heroes. The principal organiz...

Democracy Now!   As the official death toll in Gaza tops 45,000 and Israel's wars throughout the Middle East continue, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in court for a long-awaited corruption trial, making him the country's first sitting leader to face criminal charges. He is charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate cases.    For more on this extraordinary case, Democracy Now! spoke with acclaimed filmmaker Alex Gibney, whose latest documentary The Bibi Files features leaked behind-the-scenes footage of police interrogations of Netanyahu, his wife and those accused of bribing him. The film has been banned in Israel, and Netanyahu even tried unsuccessfully to stop it from screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, but Gibney says it is being widely shared inside Israel through unofficial channels.    " Strictly speaking, this is a film about corruption, " Gibney tells Democracy Now! " It starts with petty corrupt...

Caitlin Johnstone   " The way he stumbled and stuttered when trying to answer the question gives a lot of insight into how terrified such people are of the public turning against them one day. " 

Sabby Sabs  

UK trade department approved 34 military export licences to Israel in the two months since David Lammy announced a partial arms embargo, new data shows.   by John McEvoy  Part 2 - Israel’s compliance with IHL Chaired by Labour MP Liam Byrne, the committee heard from trade minister Douglas Alexander, foreign minister Stephen Doughty, defence minister Lord Coaker and civil servants Kate Joseph and Stephen Lillie. The ministers confirmed that the UK government’s earlier judgment on Israel’s non-compliance with IHL centred on the mistreatment of detainees and restrictions of aid to Gaza. However, they emphasised that a conclusion had still not been reached on whether Israel’s air strikes in Gaza amounted to a violation of IHL. This was despite officials being reminded that Israeli forces have dropped 2,000lb bombs on densely-populated residential areas, rendered a large part of Gaza uninhabitable, and killed tens of thousands of civilians. Speaking for the Foreign Office, Doughty ...