the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens

A key coup-plotter in the May 2020 botched invasion of Venezuela said she met with FBI and DEA officials. She admitted Colombia’s intelligence services were aiding them and “knew everything,” adding that President Iván Duque and far-right political kingpin Álvaro Uribe helped.   by Ben Norton   Part 2 - Colombia’s intelligence agency turns on failed Venezuelan coup-plotter   Yacsy Álvarez was much more than just Jordan Goudreau’s translator; she was a crucial figure in plotting the botched May 2020 invasion. Álvarez helped to traffic large sums of weapons into Colombia for use in Operation Gideon, working closely with former General Cliver Alcalá. She also connected Jordan Goudreau and two of his former US Green Beret colleagues with the defectors from the Venezuelan military and police who carried out the coup attempt. According to Álvarez, Colombian intelligence agencies were intimately involved in the operation. And after the invasion failed, Colombian spies spent months protecting

Team Biden is planning to hold on to what it apparently sees as its “Trump card”— the Trump administration’s sanctions against Iran oil exports that have gutted the Iranian economy.   by Gareth Porter  Part 3 - Learning the wrong lesson from Obama’s coercive diplomacy Biden’s foreign policy team is comprised largely of Obama administration officials who either initiated nuclear deal talks in 2012-2013 or who were involved in the later stages of the negotiations. NSC Director Sullivan and CIA Director William Burns were key figures in the early talks with Iran; Blinken oversaw the later phase of the negotiations as Deputy Secretary of State, and Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman was in charge of day-to-day negotiations with Iran on the JCPOA until the final round in Vienna in 2015. So it should be no surprise that the Biden team is pursuing an Iran strategy similar to the one that the Obama administration followed in its negotiations with Iran on the JCPOA itself. The Obama administ

Secretive Cabinet Office 'Clearing House' for Freedom of Information requests also accused of “blacklisting” journalists; openDemocracy launching a legal bid for transparency   Peter Geoghegan/Jenna Corderoy/Lucas Amin   Part 2 - 'Art of Darkness’: the worst offenders   The new report published by openDemocracy paints a disturbing picture of the state of Freedom of Information in Britain.  In 2019, central UK government departments granted fewer and rejected more FOI requests than ever before. In the last five years, the Cabinet Office – as well as the Treasury, Foreign Office and Home Office – have all withheld more requests than they granted, according to the report. The Cabinet Office – which is the government department responsible for Freedom of Information policy – has one of the worst records on access to information. Last year, Michael Gove’s department was the branch of Whitehall most likely to have its decisions referred to the Information Commissioner’s Office, w

globinfo freexchange   A year ago we pointed out that the US imperialists will probably start a war with Iran as soon as possible after the 2020 presidential election. They will rush to do it because they don't want to give Iran enough time to build nuclear weapons.    We wrote that the deep state won't find difficult to drag any weak establishment Democrat into another war, by orchestrating some typical false flag operations. And we estimated that the deep state has scheduled to start a war with Iran sometime between the mid February and mid March of 2021.  And our estimation is remarkably close to the timeline that appears to be set by Biden's warhawks.   According to recent statements by the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, " Iran could be weeks away from producing enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon if it continues to lift restraints installed by the 2015 nuclear deal. Blinken noted that he has not yet seen the actual intelligence, but public report

The Grayzone   Ben Norton reports from Ecuador on the eve of the February 7 election. Protesters flooded the streets of the major city of Guayaquil to demand a return to the leftist Citizens' Revolution of former President Rafael Correa, represented by presidential candidate Andrés Arauz and his vice president Carlos Rabascall.

Redacted Tonight   YouTube has been on a demonetization binge silencing independent media. Jordan Chariton, the founder of Status Coup, came on the show to discuss the latest threat to open journalism.

RT America   RT’s Murad Gazdiev reports on new evidence of links between MI6 and Russian opposition figure and activist Alexei Navalny. Then author and professor of international human rights Dan Kovalik joins Rick Sanchez to discuss the role of the US and UK in fomenting political discord in Russia and other countries.  

Why Cori Bush's victory is exceptionally decisive for the progressive army and its struggle to take over the Democratic Party   Identity Politics on steroids: how the liberal elites will use their favorite Obama female version to crush progressive resistance within and outside the Democratic Party    Corporate Dems give podium to Republicans and war criminals while trying to bury their own progressives - they will lose again   At last: Nina Turner blows up the liberal machine, clearly pointing both neofascism and neoliberalism as the evils that the Left must fight until final victory     

by Andrea Mazzarino Part 3 - A Gaping Hole in Our Knowledge   My colleagues and I have started to examine the indirect costs of war through interviews with people who have born witness to war or lived through it, as has the U.S. government through its own limited collection of statistics. For example, in 2018, some 18 American active-duty military personnel or veterans died by suicide each day. (Yes, daily.) But all we really know so far is this: self-inflicted deaths from violence, car accidents, substance abuse, and chronic stress that can be traced back to this country’s post-9/11 wars are problems that plague military communities, and they didn’t exist at this magnitude before Washington decided to respond to the 9/11 attacks by invading Afghanistan and then Iraq. Still, we have remarkably little information about the scope and nature of such problems. I’ll tell you what I do know with certainty, though: the only consistent and cohesive institutions sustaining troops home from Amer

by Jonathan Cook   Part 6 - Illicit collusion   Assange’s decision to seek asylum in the embassy has, of course, been entirely vindicated by the fact that the US did indeed seek his extradition – as soon as they could get their hands on him. Baraitser even let the cat out of the bag herself at the bail hearing, disrupting her own narrative that he had “absconded” in 2012, when she stated – as evidence against Assange! – that he entered the embassy to evade the threat of extradition to the US. In doing so, she undermined the narrative promoted for years by every corporate media outlet in the UK that Assange had “ holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy to flee the Swedish investigation ”. (In fact, that statement was typically corrupted even further by the media, including notably the Guardian , which repeatedly referred not to an investigation, one going nowhere, but to entirely imaginary “rape charges”.) Baraitser exploited and accentuated Assange’s suffering to make her court look good, t