the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

The Grayzone   Max Blumenthal reports from the final rally of the governing PSUV party in Caracas ahead of December 6 legislative elections, witnessing an address by President Nicolas Maduro and speaking to leaders of progressive social movements. The vote took place despite threats from Washington and the US-backed opposition's attempts to undermine the election through boycotts and sabotage.  

When Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission announced it was investigating Labour’s treatment of its Jewish members, many of Jeremy Corbyn’s opponents claimed this as proof of his supposed antisemitism. But the inquiry is itself a political weapon — and as the Commission publishes its much-hyped, long-delayed report today, the attacks against the Left are only intensifying.   by Daniel Finn   Part 8 - Wrestling With Shadows Labour’s disciplinary process could not possibly address an “antisemitism crisis” that existed primarily at the level of media discourse, any more than a man can wrestle his own shadow to the ground. There are sure to have been structural flaws in that process, compounded by individual failings, as one would expect in any large bureaucratic organization. The challenge of addressing those flaws and failings on the hoof were compounded by bad-faith actors spamming the complaints system with spurious allegations of antisemitism, and by hostile party officials t

Much will certainly change in the world of U.S. foreign policy when Joe Biden enters the White House. There will be a more measured tone, and less reliance upon Twitter to announce U.S. policy. Trump is brusque, as illustrated by the way he shoved aside Montenegro’s Prime Minister Dusko Markovic at the 2017 NATO meeting; Biden might not push and shove his way to the front of the group, but his silvery smile will camouflage as ruthless a set of aims. On foreign policy, Biden will appear to be different from Trump, but the broad outlines of their policy will be identical.   by Vijay Prashad  Part 4 - Cold War on China Looms Since 2015, not one U.S. Silicon Valley CEO has made a robust statement for comity between the United States and China. Apple’s Tim Cook held a meeting with Trump in August 2019 merely to allow Apple to better compete with Samsung, which was not hit by the U.S. tariffs. There was no broad statement about Trump’s “trade war,” with which Cook seemed quite pleased. Silic

The Grayzone   Israel's assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist is the latest act of aggression in the Trump-Netanyahu campaign to undermine the Iran nuclear deal. Although President-elect Joe Biden has voiced support for returning to the JCPOA, longstanding US-Israel hostility to Iranian sovereignty will continue under his watch.   Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter debunks the myths about Iran's nuclear program and discusses the next phase of the US and Israeli campaign against Iran under Biden.

Double Down News   “This is something that can take place in every corner of the globe & it needs to take place because we face the same problems”      

There is only one Cornel West. For years, Professor West has been one of the sharpest minds on the American left, and perhaps our greatest moral critic of capitalism and inequality.   A scholar in the Harvard Divinity School, West began his political life in the tumult of the civil rights movement — becoming a Christian radical and later a socialist who served for years as a chair of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).  Part activist, part political philosopher, West remains a singular voice in the wilderness of American politics and brings an indispensable compassion to the position of public intellectual. In a recent conversation with Daniel Denvir for his Jacobin podcast, The Dig , West discusses Donald Trump, Black Lives Matter, the Bernie Sanders campaign, and the power that can be generated when regular people are brought together in common cause.  [...]                          The neoliberal versions of identity politics are exactly what Brother Adolph Reed has taught

 “The Oxford vaccine is… striking, since the point was to pay researchers, but not to rely on patent monopolies to generate large profits.” – Economist Dean Baker   by Alan Macleod   Part 3 - More advantages   Apart from their willingness to share it with the world freely, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has other benefits over its competitors.  Firstly, they aim to make and sell it for $3-4 per shot, rather than the $20 Pfizer charges, or the $25 for Moderna’s offering. Oxford and AstraZeneca have committed to selling the vaccine to developing countries at cost price. And unlike the costlier Pfizer vaccine, it does not have to be stored at -94 degrees Fahrenheit but can be kept in an ordinary refrigerator, making its storage and distribution straightforward everywhere. Further trials of the vaccine involving 60,000 people in the United States, Kenya, Japan, and India are ongoing. The vaccine is based on a weakened version of a common cold virus and that has been genetically engineered

Jonathan Cook dissects the investigation by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission into the U.K. Labour Party.  by Jonathan Cook Part 6 - Outward Appearances Let us focus instead on the other person named: a minor Labour party figure named Pam Bromley, who was then a local councillor for the borough of Rossendale, near Bolton. First, we should note that the “harassment” she was deemed to have carried out seems to have been limited to online comments posted to social media. The commission does not suggest she expressed any hatred of Jews, made threats against any Jews individually or collectively, or physically attacked anyone Jewish. I don’t know anything about Bromley, apart from the handful of comments attributed to her in the report. I also don’t know what was going on inside her head when she wrote those posts. If the commission knows more, it does not care to share that information with us. We can only judge the outward appearance of what she says. One social media post, it is

globinfo freexchange   In a recent article in his blog, Glenn Greenwald revealed some astonishing details from a 2010 WikiLeaks exposé related with some CIA PsyOps that could make people in the West approve the US invasion in Afghanistan and the presence of the US forces in the region.   As Greenwald describes:  ... it was one WikiLeaks document that particularly caught my attention at first: a classified 2010 CIA “Red Cell Memorandum,” named after the highly secretive unit created by Bush/Cheney CIA Director George Tenet in the wake of the 9/11 attack.  What made this document so fascinating, so revealing, is the CIA’s discussion of how to manipulate public opinion to ensure it remains at least tolerant if not supportive of Endless War and, specifically, the vital role President Obama played for the CIA in packaging and selling U.S. wars around the world. In this classified analysis, one learns a great deal about how the “military industrial complex,” also known as the “Blob” o

Sweden’s longtime refusal to impose a general lockdown has seen it portrayed as an alternative “model” for coping with the pandemic. Yet death rates in its care homes have been appalling — and as a scandal that broke last month highlighted, much of the blame lies with the breakup and privatization of the country’s once-mighty public services.   by Anton Ösgård   Part 6 - Back to Socialized Health Care!   The strategy of isolating risk groups and letting everyone else live on as usual might have worked in the Sweden of the past — the social-democratic Sweden that was well prepared for crisis and could act in coordination. But the Sweden of new public management, privatizations, and an increasingly precarious labor market has fared far worse than its neighbors. One estimate has it that if Sweden had imposed a lockdown on par with its neighbors, the number of infections could have been halved, and deaths could have been a third lower. This does not seem to have dented the public’s captiva