the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

As Newsguard’s project advances, it will soon become almost impossible to avoid this neocon-approved news site’s ranking systems on any technological device sold in the United States. by Whitney Webb Part 6 - Financial censorship Another Newsguard service shows that this organization is also seeking to harm independent media financially by targeting online revenue. Through a service called “Brandguard,” which it describes as a “ brand safety tool aimed at helping advertisers keep their brands off of unreliable news and information sites while giving them the assurance they need to support thousands of Green-rated [i.e., Newsguard-approved] news and information sites, big and small. ” At the time the service was announced last November, Newsguard co-CEO Brill stated that the company was “ in discussions with the ad tech firms, leading agencies, and major advertisers ” eager to adopt a blacklist of news sites deemed “ unreliable ” by Newsguard . This is unsurprising

The Integrity Initiative has mobilized an international disinformation campaign across Europe. Now, with government and right-wing foundation money, this massive “political smear unit” is infiltrating the US. by Max Blumenthal and Mark Ames Part 6 - Grants from the neocons’ favorite foundation An Integrity Initiative memo states that the right-wing Smith Richardson Foundation has also committed to ponying up funding for its US network as soon as the group receives 501 c-3 non-profit status. The foundation has already provided it with about $56,000 for covert propaganda activities across Europe. The Smith Richardson Foundation has old ties to the US intelligence community and controversial cold war influence operations. According to reporter Russ Bellant, the foundation was secretly bankrolling radical right-wing “ indoctrination campaigns for the American public on cold war and foreign policy issues ”— programs that got the attention of Senator William Fulbrig

The memo shows the advice Hillary Clinton was getting to plunge the U.S. deeper into the Syrian war. As Trump seeks to extricate the U.S. the memo has again become relevant, writes Daniel Lazare. by Daniel Lazare Part 4 - Insurgency Mix By August 2012, a secret Defense Intelligence Agency report found that Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al Qaeda were already “ the major forces driving of the insurgency ” and that the U.S. and Gulf states backed them regardless. The report warned that the U.S. and some of its allies were supporting the establishment of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria to pressure Assad that could turn into an “Islamic State”–two years before the Islamic State was declared in 2014. Clinton was among senior Obama administration officials who had to have seen the report as it was sent to the State Department among several other agencies . In 2016, then Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed this policy in a leaked

Historian and U.K. analyst Mark Curtis checks out the Twitter accounts of journalists whose names have been associated with the Integrity Initiative, a British “counter disinformation” program. By Mark Curtis Part 4 - Need for further research There are some key points to be made about this analysis. First, some of the tweets made by these individuals on Corbyn and Assange, not all of which are included here, are fair comment, even if, in my view, they are usually wrong. But others go beyond this, inferring that Corbyn (and Assange) are in effect agents of Russia and/or are willingly and knowingly amplifying Russia’s agenda, as little more than “tools” – with no evidence provided (understandably, since there is none). There is also sometimes the association of Corbyn with former communists. These areas are held to constitute smearing. Second, it is not known and certainly not proven that these tweets are associated with the Integrity Initi

With Tories in power Brexit would be meaningless globinfo freexchange As has been mentioned in previous article , Brexit could play a much more critical role in the future course of Europe, apart from being treated just as a result of national pride - wounded Britons alarmed by the sirens of patriotism. While the Brussels-Berlin axis will seek to implement all the conditions of the Greek experiment inside the EU, the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn could become an example against this dark future. While the Greek PM, Alexis Tsipras, suffered a heavy defeat as went unprepared in the battle with the ruthless neoliberal priesthood, Corbyn should go to the battle with the neoliberal regime after a good preparation and a well-constructed plan. Costas Lapavitsas explains why only outside the EU, the UK will have a chance to turn left - with a Labour government under the Corbyn leadership - in order to implement progressive policies for the benefit of the

The United States and allied nations in Latin America are ratcheting up pressure on Venezuela in what appears to be a coordinated effort to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from office. Maduro was sworn in last week to a second 6-year term following his victory in last May’s election, which was boycotted by the opposition. Days before Maduro was sworn in, opposition figure Juan Guaidó became head of the National Assembly, which soon voted to declare Maduro a “usurper” in an effort to remove him from office. The United States, Brazil and other nations have welcomed the effort. As the political crisis intensifies, Maduro has reached out to the United Nations to help establish a peace dialogue in Venezuela. https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14239

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says more than 250 Palestinians have been killed and over 23,000 injured by Israeli forces since the Great March of Return rallies began along the border between the besieged Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied territories on March 30, 2018. The UN body said in a report published on Monday that at least 254 Palestinians had been killed in the besieged Palestinian coastal enclave between March 30 and December 31. Among those killed were 44 children and four women. “ Since March 30, 2018, the Gaza Strip has witnessed a significant increase in Palestinian casualties in the context of mass demonstrations and other activities along Israel’s perimeter fence with Gaza, taking place as part of the Great Return March, as well as during hostilities and access related incidents, ” the report said. In addition, 23,603 Palestinians were injured in the same period, including 5183 boys, 46

Bombarded by disinformation campaigns, many British Jews are being misled into seeing Corbyn as a threat rather than as the best hope of inoculating Britain against the resurgence of right-wing anti-Semitism menace by Jonathan Cook End-of-year polls are always popular as a way to gauge significant social and political trends over the past year and predict where things are heading in the next. But a recent poll of European Jews – the largest such survey in the world – is being used to paint a deeply misleading picture of British society and an apparent problem of a new, left-wing form of anti-semitism. Part 8 - Israel's role Not only does Corbyn offer an inclusive domestic political agenda, unlike the Orbans of Europe but, worse, he also refuses to shy away from confronting the legacy of European racism and colonialism. The chief historic victims of that racism in Europe were Jews. But today that same European racism is channelled both into fervent support for

Some troubling connections contradict Amnesty’s image as a benevolent defender of human rights and reveal key figures at the organization during its early years to be less concerned with human dignity and more concerned with the dignity of the US and UK’s image in the world. by Alexander Rubinstein Part 2 - A conflicted beginning Amnesty’s Benenson, an avowed anti-communist, hailed from a military intelligence background. He pledged that Amnesty would be independent of government influence and would represent prisoners in the East, West, and global South alike. But during the 1960s the U.K. was withdrawing from its colonies and the Foreign Office and Colonial Office were hungry for information from human-rights activists about the situations on the ground. In 1963, the Foreign Office instructed its operatives abroad to provide “discreet support” for Amnesty’s campaigns. Also that year, Benenson wrote to Colonial Office Minister Lord Lansdowne a proposal to prop u

For Thierry Meyssan, one of the consequences of the successive ends of the bipolar and unipolar world is the re-establishment of colonial projects. One after the other, the French, Turkish and English have publicly declared the return of their colonial ambitions. We still need to know what form they will adopt in the 21st century. by Thierry Meyssan Part 2 - The Ottoman Empire Three months after the attempted assassination and aborted coup d’état of July 2016, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan gave his inaugural speech from the university which bears his name (RTEÜ). He delivered a list of the ambitions of the Turkish Republic since its creation and those of his new régime. Making an explicit reference to the «National Oath» (Misak-ı Millî), which was adopted by the Ottoman Parliament on 12 February 1920, he justified his irredentism. This Oath, which was the foundation of the passage of the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic, lays claim to the territory in the