the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

Trump’s allies will try to paint Iran as a threat, as they did with Iraq. We must not fall into step with their prefab bloodlust by Owen Jones We know how the story goes. The decision for war is made long in advance. That becomes the end point, and the evidence must be marshalled to achieve that goal. A long-lasting regime suddenly becomes an imminent threat. Exiles with minimal connections to their country of origin, but with fat bank balances, extensive links with rightwing thinktanks, multinational companies and western security services are wheeled out to solemnly declare that war must be waged on their homeland.  A litany of never-ending human rights abuses is endlessly detailed: the sort ignored by our elites if they are committed by our allies, like the Saudi dictatorship, which has plunged Yemen into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Critics of war are demonised as stooges or useful idiots of an enemy that imperils national security and menaces its own people,

Trump officials are promoting a narrative that Iran is involved with Al Qaeda terrorists, in what seems to be an echo of the Bush administration’s pretext for the invasion of Iraq. According to The New York Times , Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has briefed members of Congress about a pattern of ties between the parties dating back to 2001. Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) both told the publication that senior Trump officials have repeatedly raised concerns regarding Iran’s relationship with the terrorist cell, and speculated the White House may invoke 2001’s war authorization as basis for military action against Tehran. Former President George W. Bush promoted a similar narrative when he said Iraq had “numerous contacts” with Al Qaeda, even after the commission tasked with investigating the September 11th terrorist attacks found no “credible evidence” that Saddam Hussein’s regime was responsible. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Congress passed

Former Vice President Joe Biden told affluent donors Tuesday that he wanted their support and -- perhaps unlike some other Democratic presidential candidates -- wouldn’t be making them political targets because of their wealth. [...] Former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and former Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman, both of whom spent decades on Wall Street, were among the attendees at the event. Invoking Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’s goal of political “revolution,” Biden suggested that he would be the antidote by making marginal changes that would improve the lives of working and middle class Americans without slapping onerous taxes on the rich .  [...] “ You’re not the other, ” Biden told the assembled group, most of whom were wearing suits. “ I need you very badly. ” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-19/biden-tells-elite-donors-he-doesn-t-want-to-demonize-the-rich Joe Biden just told a bunch of super rich donors eating lobste

globinfo freexchange Sometimes it's quite surprising how fast some estimations appear to be confirmed. Only four days ago, we wrote that the US imperialists know that an all-out war with Iran would equal a suicide. The goal is probably a 'surgical' invasion on the south shores of the country that would last just as long as to permit the US and allies to control the Strait of Hormuz, and therefore, the global oil market. The first step towards such an operation would be the mine-clearing of the strait . This probably explains why the Western media insisted to circulate the scenario of the 'naval mine'. They want to drag Western leaderships behind US in an operation to clear the mines in the Strait of Hormuz, in the name of global energy security. Well, we were quite close actually. Three days later, the US leadership attempted a broader global alignment - including rival countries like China - towards the protection of "freedom of navigation in the reg

corbettreport 1) PATRICK CLAWSON ON “CRISIS INITIATION” 2) ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI WARNS OF “A TERRORIST ACT BLAMED ON IRAN” 3) GARY HART WARNS IRAN ABOUT “ANOTHER GULF OF TONKIN” 4) SEYMOUR HERSH: CHENEY’S PLAN TO STAGE AN INCIDENT

RT UK [Picked from YouTube comments]: Is this the 21st century or are we totally now in the Dark Ages? Is nothing sacred, spiritual, ethical. Souls are lost to plastic fiat or digital figures that don't t exist, and minds of masses don't care. Is the human species worth nothing. Thank you for speaking for us to save this wonderful man Julian.

Last week, the Intercept exposed Lula’s persecution for the farce that it was. Now journalist Glenn Greenwald, his family, and the Intercept are under attack by Bolsonaro and his followers. They deserve our solidarity. by Todd Chretien  Journalist Glenn Greenwald is once again rocking international politics by exposing state violations of civil liberties. This time, his reporting targets the highest levels of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s cabinet. In the United States, Greenwald is best known for publishing whistleblower Edward Snowden’s disclosure of illegal National Security Administration surveillance programs in the Guardian in 2013. At the time, several Republican Congressmen called for Greenwald’s prosecution, including Mike Rogers, then chair of the House Intelligence Committee. This time around, political hacks in Brazil, where Greenwald has lived for years, are calling for his head. This has resulted in “grotesque” threats against not just Greenwald’s life, bu

The FBI relied on CrowdStrike’s “conclusion” to blame Russia for hacking DNC servers, though the private firm never produced a final report and the FBI never asked them to, as Ray McGovern explains. by Ray McGovern Part 1 CrowdStrike , the controversial cybersecurity firm that the Democratic National Committee chose over the FBI in 2016 to examine its compromised computer servers, never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the government because the FBI never required it to, the Justice Department has admitted. The revelation came in a court filing by the government in the pre-trial phase of Roger Stone, a long-time Republican operative who had an unofficial role in the campaign of candidate Donald Trump. Stone has been charged with misleading Congress, obstructing justice and intimidating a witness. The filing was in response to a motion by Stone’s lawyers asking for “unredacted reports” from CrowdStrike in an effort to get the government to prove tha

Top media outlets turn to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) for figures on deaths and detentions, never noting the group’s seamless connection to Syria’s opposition, the support it receives from states that waged war on the country, or its open lobbying for US military intervention. by Max Blumenthal Part 2 - An ‘independent monitoring group’ run by the Syrian opposition On May 11, The New York Times published an exposé claiming to provide new details of a “ secret, industrial-scale system of arbitrary arrests and torture prisons ” in Syria. Filed from Turkey by reporter Anne Barnard, this article centered around the eyebrow-raising claim that 128,000 people have never emerged from Syrian prisons, “ and are presumed to be either dead or still in custody. ” The Times ’ source for this shocking statistic was the Syrian Network for Human Rights, which Barnard described as an “ independent monitoring group that keeps the most rigorous tally. ” SNHR also supplied

“The fact that we are handing over the keys of American democracy to the military-industrial complex — it’s like giving the keys to the henhouse to a fox and saying, ‘here come in and take whatever you want.’ It’s obviously dangerous.” — Investigative journalist Yasha Levine by Whitney Webb  Part 6 - Microsoft’s ties to Israeli military intelligence ElectionGuard is currently being promoted as a key step towards preventing the “interference” of a foreign government or state actor in U.S. elections in the future. Yet, there is no guarantee that ElectionGuard itself is free from foreign influence, given that Microsoft has deep ties to the military intelligence community of a foreign nation: Israel. Microsoft’s links to the Israeli military intelligence unit known as Unit 8200, which will be discussed momentarily, are troubling for more than a few reasons. The first is the fact that the main developer of a new election software system aimed at protecting U.S. electio