Articles by RD
We found 3633 results.
‘It Breaks Down Innocent People’: The Interrogation Method at Center of Ava Duvernay Lawsuit
Sam Levin – The Guardian,
21 Oct 2019
16 Oct 2019 – Police consulting firm behind widely criticized ‘Reid interrogation technique’ claims Netflix drama When They See US misrepresents method. The Central Park Five case is one of the most notorious examples of police coercing people into giving false confession. The five teens went to prison and were eventually exonerated by DNA evidence.
→ read full articleWhen Is It ‘Politically Correct’ to Be Politically Correct?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Oct 2019
Only a day after I published ‘In Praise of Kamila Shamsie’ [posted in TRANSCEND Members below], the Nobel Committee awarded their 2019 Literature Prize to Peter Handke, the Austrian novelist known for his support of ultra-nationalist behavior and endorsement of the crimes of Serbian leaders during the Bosnian War. By contrast, in Shamsie’s case her sin was to honor her conscience by supporting the nonviolent BDS-Boycott Divestment Sanctions Campaign that seeks an end to the violation of the basic rights of the Palestinian people.
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Without Encryption, We Will Lose All Privacy. This Is Our New Battleground
Edward Snowden – The Guardian,
21 Oct 2019
15 Oct 2019 – The vulnerability of our computers and computer networks has been ranked the number one risk in the US Intelligence Community’s Worldwide Threat Assessment – that’s higher than terrorism, higher than war. Your bank balance, the local hospital’s equipment, among many, many other things, all depend on computer safety. The US, UK and Australia are taking on Facebook in a bid to undermine the only method that protects our personal information.
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Iran’s Gulf Peace Proposal: HOPE
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Oct 2019
7 Oct 2019 – As I understand President Hassan Rouhani’s plan it concentrates upon regionalizing the protection of navigation and safeguarding of energy flows in the Persian Gulf with a particular emphasis on providing security for oil tanker traffic. The proposal comes against a background of months of warmongering threats, harsh sanctions, and dangerous incidents that pose unacceptable risks of provoking violent incidents, and even war.
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Why We Need Resistance Studies
Richard Jackson | Waging Nonviolence – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Oct 2019
5 Oct 2019 – The challenges we face are daunting. That’s why we need Resistance Studies now more than ever. This could be the Golden Age for the study of resistance. For starters, we are going to need a great deal of nonviolent resistance to cope with the coming climate warming crisis.
→ read full articleThe Climate Crisis (and Other Crises) Require the Transformation of the Basic Cultural Structure of the Modern World (Part 1)
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Oct 2019
It is in the news that millions of people around the world –inspired by a Swedish teenager so honest that looking at a picture of her will cure a headache—have taken to the streets demanding that something must be done. I will use this editorial to offer an answer to the question what must be done: The basic cultural structures of the modern world must be transformed. I will not try to prove this thesis here. I will try to state clearly the thesis to be proven.
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Revealed: The 20 Firms behind a Third of All Carbon Emissions
Matthew Taylor and Jonathan Watts – The Guardian,
14 Oct 2019
9 Oct 2019 – New data from world-renowned researchers reveals how this cohort of state-owned and multinational firms are driving the climate emergency that threatens the future of humanity, and details how they have continued to expand their operations despite being aware of the industry’s devastating impact on the planet.
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Will Confronting Iran Lead to War or Peace?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Oct 2019
1 Oct 2019 – This is a slightly modified version of an interview published in The Nation on 25 Sep following the 14 Sep attack on Saudi oil facilities. It follows a pattern, with respect to Iran, of accusations, denials, and public uncertainties. This combination of elements, given the leadership in Washington and Tehran, one blustering, the other inflexible, can easily produce an unintended stumble into war.
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(Castellano) Eventos actuales en una perspectiva histórica
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Oct 2019
Pretoria: Cyril Ramaphosa, anteriormente presidente de la Unión Nacional de Mineros, y ahora presidente de la República de Sudáfrica, ha estado hablando recientemente mientras dormía: “no entiendo lo que me pasó. No entiendo lo que me pasó. No entiendo lo que me pasó”. Un ratón, que se abrió paso debajo de sus mantas y estaba en condiciones de morder uno de sus dedos de los pies, al escuchar sus gemidos, como el Daily Maverick y el Globe and Mail, y aparentemente por razones similares, decidió no atacar.
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Public Notices/Private Questions/Musical Dreams
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Oct 2019
3 Oct 2019 – Throughout our days we all notice many things that elicit questions that quickly pass through us as in a dream. Here are some questions that I caught on the fly before they melted from my mind, and when I asked myself what the answers were, only songs came to me, songs that didn’t exactly answer the questions but set me to dreaming. This is an invitation to dream along.
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Wall Street Is Killing Local Newspapers
Olivia Snow Smith | Other Words – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Oct 2019
We can’t put a price tag on our free press — but unless we stop them, predatory investors can.
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Those Fancy Tea Bags? Microplastics in Them Are Macro Offenders
Adrienne Matei – The Guardian,
7 Oct 2019
30 Sep 2019 – “The tea bag… is in the process of a large-scale reinvention.” So reads a 2006 New York Times article on the rise of nylon mesh tea bags, an innovation that diversified the tea market. New study finds nylon tea bags leech billions of microplastics into every single cup of tea.
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Dark Clouds and the Human Condition: Youth to the Rescue!
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Sep 2019
25 Sep 2019 – If the young and old act together this kind of UN can be nurtured. In the meantime, we should resist the temptation to pretend that this UN of the peoples already exists, but we should never forget that we have it within our potential collective power to make it happen, and by doing, to make the sort of difference that youth are rightfully demanding.
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Why Does Chris Hedges Hedge His Bets?
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Sep 2019
27 Sep 2019 – The CIA’s mind control operations need to be exposed, as Hedges does to a degree in this latest article. But revealing while concealing is unworthy of one who condemns “creeps who revel in human degradation, dirty tricks, and murder.” It itself is a form of mind control. Perhaps he will see fit to publicly explain why he has done this.
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(Português) A Destruição das “Indias Brasileiras”
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Sep 2019
17 set 2019 – Em função do Sínodo panamazônico de outubro, comvém relembrar o que foi a destruição das Indias Brasileiras, no linguajar de Bartolomé de las Casas. Com a dizimação de mais de mil povos, em 500 anos de história brasileira, desapareceu para sempre uma herança humana construída em milhares de anos de trabalho cultural, de dialogação com a natureza, de invenção de línguas e de construção de uma visão do mundo, amiga da vida e respeitosa da natureza.
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Amazon: The Common Wealth of the Earth and Humanity
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Sep 2019
17 Sep 2019 – The Amazonian biome covers an area of 8,129,057 square kilometers in nine countries: Brazil (67%), Peru (13%), Bolivia (11%), Colombia (6%), Ecuador (2%), Venezuela (1%), Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana (0.15%). It has over 37,700,000 inhabitants, of which 2.8 million are Indigenous, from 390 different nations, who speak 240 languages, of the rich matrix of 49 linguistic branches, a unique phenomenon in the history of world linguistics.
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“Never Be Ashamed:” Why I Decided Not to Delete My Old Internet Posts
Edward Snowden – The Intercept,
23 Sep 2019
21 Sep 2019 – While working for the National Security Agency, Edward Snowden helped build a system to enable the United States government to capture all phone calls, text messages, and emails. Six years ago, he provided documents about this electronic panopticon to journalists, and the shocking revelations that ensued set off massive changes — changes in attitudes and behaviors, in policies and technologies, across private industry and the public sector, in the U.S. and around the world.
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US Drone Strike Kills 30 Pine Nut Workers in Afghanistan
Reuters – The Guardian,
23 Sep 2019
19 Sep 2019 – A US drone strike intended to hit an Islamic State hideout in Afghanistan has killed at least 30 civilians who were resting after harvesting pine nuts. Forty were also injured in the Wednesday [18 Sep] attack which struck farmers and labourers who just finished work. The UN says nearly 4,000 civilians were killed or wounded in the first half of the year. Afghan Government and NATO Killing More Civilians than the Taliban
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Chained to Its Past: A German Recipe for Injustice toward the People of Palestine
Hans von Sponeck and Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Sep 2019
17 Sep 2019 – The Bundestag resolution that condemned the BDS Campaign as contributing to a rising threat of antisemitism in Europe is a grave cause of concern. It brands the BDS, a nonviolent Palestinian initiative, anti-Semitic and takes this stand pointing out Germany’s special responsibility toward Jews, without any reference at all to Israel’s prolonged abuse of the most fundamental of human rights, that of self-determination, of the Palestinian people.
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On the Precipice: The Collective Asteroid of Human History
Tom Engelhardt - TomDispatch,
23 Sep 2019
17 Sep 2019 – From Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro to the CEOs of all those fossil-fuel companies, we’re still left with the pyromaniacs largely in charge. If they have their way, they will undoubtedly take their pleasures and profits and not give a damn about turning much of this world into an oven for the Greta Thunbergs of the future. Think of this as a planet on the precipice. If Pyromaniacs, Inc., succeeds, if the arsonists are truly able to persevere, there will have been no crime like this in history, none at all.
→ read full articleCurrent Events in an Historical Perspective
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Sep 2019
To rebuild the world, to build a world that works, we do not need ‘other economists’ as much as we need people trained in other fields who are able to look at problems now classified as ‘economic’–like ‘unemployment’–from other perspectives using different conceptual and mathematical tools.
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The 5G Electromagnetic “Mad Zone” Poised to Self-Destruct: The 5G “Dementors” Meet the 4G “Zombie Apocalypse”
Claire Edwards – Global Research,
23 Sep 2019
Incisive Research and Carefully Documented Analysis of the Impacts of 5G Electromagnetic Radiation
→ read full articleDonald Trump’s Foreign Policy Sows Confusion
Richard E. Rubenstein – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Sep 2019
If Democrats are unable to recognize Trump’s (and their own) addiction to power as the sole means of dealing with conflicts, they will not understand that “toughness” and “softness” constitute a false dichotomy in foreign affairs. Power does not solve the social problems that generate war. Creativity, empathy, analysis, and determination are needed to solve those problems and generate effective options for conflict resolution. We have reason to believe that younger members of the opposition, in particular, have already begun to understand this.
→ read full articleWill NPR Now Officially Change Its Name to National Propaganda Radio?
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Sep 2019
Back in the 1960s, the CIA official Cord Meyer said the agency needed to “court the compatible left.” He knew that drawing liberals and leftists into the CIA’s orbit was the key to efficient propaganda. Right-wing and left-wing collaborators were needed to create a powerful propaganda apparatus that would be capable of hypnotizing audiences into believing the myth of American exceptionalism and its divine right to rule the world.
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India: Almost 2 Million People Left Off Assam Register of Citizens
Rebecca Ratcliffe and Kakoli Bhattacharya – The Guardian,
16 Sep 2019
31 Aug 2019 – Almost 2 million people in north-east India face the threat of statelessness and detention after they were excluded from an official list designed to root out illegal immigrants. Rights groups warn of possible humanitarian crisis as those left off list face statelessness and detention.
→ read full articleBurning Amazonia, Denying Climate Change, Devastating Syria, Starving Yemen, Ignoring Kashmir
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Sep 2019
5 Sep 2019 – What is suggested is the dependence of human wellbeing on the emergence of a transnational activist movement that demands major structural reforms of world order that seek a favorable resolution of the bio-ethical crisis. If this seems utopian, you are quite right to react as if there is no plausible path leading from here to there. Yet I believe it is more illuminating to insist that activating the utopian imagination is the only source of a transformed realism that is sensitive to the distinctive challenges and opportunities of the 21stcentury.
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It’s Coming Soon: Can the UN Rethink Its Future in a Few Months?
Richard Ponzio and Cristina Petcu | PassBlue – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Sep 2019
On 26 Jun 2020 the international community will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations Charter. That doesn’t leave much time to hammer out a “concise, substantive, forward-looking and unifying declaration” that captures member states’ commitment to multilateralism and to the UN before the world leaders’ summit meeting on Sept. 21, 2020 — as the General Assembly resolved this month.
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Inside Exarcheia: The Self-Governing Community Athens Police Want Rid of
Alex King and Ioanna Manoussaki-Adamopoulou – The Guardian,
9 Sep 2019
26 Aug 2019 – The central Athens neighbourhood of Exarcheia, which has helped house refugees, is in the crosshairs of a government crackdown. Ringed by university buildings, Exarcheia has long been the home of Greece’s intellectual left, antiauthoritarian and anarchist movements.
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(Português) O legado de Chico Mendes para o Sínodo Panamazônico
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Sep 2019
27 ago 2019 – Chico Mendes é um lídimo filho da floresta, identificado com ela. Cedo se deu conta de que o atual desenvovlvimento prescinde da natureza e que se faz contra ela, pois a vê antes como um estorvo que como um aliado. Foi um dos poucos que entendeu a sustentabilidade como equilíbrio dinâmico e autoregulador da Terra. Chico Mendes será para o Sínodo Panamazônico a realizar-se em outubro de 2019 em Roma, um exemplo paradigmático e uma fonte de inspiração.
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Bolivian Fires Are Threatening People and Wildlife–It’s Not Just Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest That’s Ablaze
Claire F.R. Wordley – The Conversation,
2 Sep 2019
23 Aug 2019 – Up to 800,000 hectares of the unique Chiquitano forest were burned to the ground in Bolivia between August 18 and August 23. That’s more forest than is usually destroyed across the country in two years. Experts say that it will take at least two centuries to repair the ecological damage done by the fires, while at least 500 species are said to be at risk from the flames.
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Amazon’s Indigenous Warriors Take on Invading Loggers and Ranchers
Fabiano Maisonnave – The Guardian,
2 Sep 2019
29 Aug 2019 – Trincheira Bacajá indigenous land: Under threat from fire, deforestation and Bolsonaro, Xikrin people take matters into own hands.
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(Français) Google est ton ami… Ou pas, en fait
Philippe Huysmans | Le Vilain Petit Canard – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Aug 2019
18 août 2019 – Tous les éditeurs de médias alternatifs pourraient vous le dire, Google pratique une censure féroce, sous couvert de lutter contre les « fake news ». Ce n’est même plus un secret de polichinelle, chacun peut bien le voir. Voici presque trois ans, un ami qui se trouve être aussi un éditeur de presse m’avait demandé si je serais prêt à écrire un bouquin sur le sujet.
→ read full articleWill Trump’s War-Mongering Lead to War with Iran?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Aug 2019
12 Aug 2019 – This is an edited version of an interview on 11 Aug 2019 by Iranian journalist Nozhan Etezad and published in Iran News. It addresses various aspects of the troubled recent Iran/U.S. relationship.
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Speaking for the Silenced: The Holy Inquisition in Portugal
Richard Zimler | Tikkun – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Aug 2019
Prisoners in Inquisitorial prisons who refused to accept Jesus as the Messiah and make a full confession of their Jewish practices would be burnt at the stake in a public ceremony known as an auto-da-fé, meaning act of faith. In 1560, Portugal imposed this same religious dictatorship in Goa, where tens of thousands of converted Hindus and their descendants were arrested and tortured – and hundreds burnt alive – by the Inquisition from 1560 to 1820. The Inquisition was also a diabolically effective money-making scam, since all the assets of its victims were confiscated and given to the Church.
→ read full articleJeffrey Epstein and the Spectacle of Secrecy
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Aug 2019
21 Aug 2019 – When phrases such as “the deep state” and “conspiracy theory” become staples of both the corporate mainstream media and the alternative press, we know the realities behind these phrases have outlasted their usefulness for the ruling elites and for their critics. These phrases are bandied about so often that they have become hackneyed and inane.
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How the Western Media Support State Terror – While Millions Die
Matthew Alford, Florian Zollman, Alan Macleod, Jeffery Klaehn and Daniel Broudy | Peace News – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Aug 2019
Issue Aug/Sep 2019 – Five academics examine our media’s coverage of foreign affairs, in a piece censored (and then rejected) by a leading liberal publication.
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Banning U.S. Congresspersons from Israel
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Aug 2019
18 Aug 2019 – The decision to ban, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, two sitting members of the U.S. House of Representatives, disgraces the leaders of both the United States and Israel, confirms the illegitimacy of both political parties by their tepid responses, and confirms once more the unhealthy relationship that has evolved between Trump and Netanyahu, these two most reactionary of political figures, and badly reflects on the political atmosphere in the countries they represent.
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‘A New Hawaiian Renaissance’: How a Telescope Protest Became a Movement
Michelle Broder Van Dyke – The Guardian,
19 Aug 2019
17 Aug 2019 – On Hawaii’s Big Island, a protest against a $1.4bn observatory on Mauna Kea, a mountain considered sacred by many Native Hawaiians, is entering a second month. In that time, the protest site has swelled from a few hundred to several thousands, attracted celebrity visitors, and built a community of Native Hawaiians who see it as a pivotal moment.
→ read full articleFrom Legitimacy Wars to the Politics of Impossibility: Horizons of Hope
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Aug 2019
The Palestinian people are being cruelly pushed hard against walls of submission by violence and threats, which amounts to what has become ‘a lost cause’ somewhat along the lines of Tibet, Western Sahara, and the fates that have befallen most indigenous peoples. This is what Trump is promoting as ‘the deal of the century’ and seems to be what the Arab dynastic autocrats would like to see happen so that they can get on with their business of confronting Iran and keeping their own peoples forever captive.
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(Français) Comment les médias occidentaux soutiennent le terrorisme d’Etat qui fait des millions de victimes
Florian Zollman, Alan Macleod, Jeffery Klaehn, Daniel Broudy and Matthew Alford | Peace News – Le Grand Soir,
19 Aug 2019
21 juillet 2019 – Quatre universitaires examinent la couverture médiatique des affaires étrangères dans un article censuré (puis refusé) par une grande publication libérale.
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“That Was Then, This Is Now.” “Oh, yeah?” The Problem of Anti-Relativism in Political Morality
Richard E. Rubenstein – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Aug 2019
Anti-relativist thinking insists that certain values approved by the speaker are constant and unchangeable. This means that behaviors that we now believe are wrong were ‘always’ unacceptable, and should always have always been recognized as such. Anti-relativism’s opposite, moral relativism, can be summed up in the phrase, “Other times, other customs.” Historical eras, social conditions, and cultural environments change, altering commonly accepted definitions of right and wrong.
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(Português) A Naturalização do Horror no Brasil
Frei Betto | Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Aug 2019
10 ago 2019 – Em 1934, o embaixador José Jobim (assassinado pela ditadura em 1979) publicou o livro Hitler e os Comediantes onde descreve a ascensão do líder nazista e a reação do povo alemão diante de seus abusos. Não se acreditava que ele haveria de implantar um regime de terror. E sabemos todos que deu no que deu. Estou convencido de que Bolsonaro sabe o que quer, e tem projeto de longo prazo para o Brasil. Adota uma estratégia bem arquitetada. Enumero 10 táticas mais óbvias.
→ read full articleA Dreaming Stranger on a Train
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Aug 2019
“Perhaps that’s what I feel, an outside and an inside and me in the middle, perhaps that’s what I am, the thing that divides the world in two, on the one side the outside, on the other the inside, that can be as thin as foil, I’m neither one side nor the other, I’m in the middle, I’m the partition, I’ve two surfaces and no thickness, perhaps that’s what I feel, myself vibrating, I’m the tympanum, on the one hand the mind, on the other the world, I don’t belong to either.” — Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
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Toni Morrison
Lyn Innes – The Guardian,
12 Aug 2019
Toni Morrison (Chloe Anthony Wofford), writer, born 18 Feb 1931; died 5 Aug 2019. Nobel prizewinner and author whose stories have a strong historical and cultural base and a style, structure and tone that is specifically African American.
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How to Shift to a More Plant-Based Diet, without the Guilt
Leslie Crawford | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Aug 2019
Wellness activist Kathy Freston takes a compassionate, no-guilt and shame-free approach to omnivores who try to reduce their meat consumption, but who may not be on board the vegan train.
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How Trees Talk to Each Other
Suzanne Simard | TED – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Aug 2019
“A forest is much more than what you see,” says ecologist Suzanne Simard. Her 30 years of research in Canadian forests have led to an astounding discovery — trees talk, often and over vast distances. Learn more about the harmonious yet complicated social lives of trees and prepare to see the natural world with new eyes.
→ read full articleContext Matters Except for the Palestinians
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Aug 2019
2 Aug 2019 – Palestinians could and should have done better in setting forth their own vision of peace. The extreme one-sidedness of the Trump approach handed Palestinians a golden opportunity to declare as forcibly as possible the urgent and immediate need for a new peace intermediary that was a facilitator, and not a partisan as past American presidents, or an imposer as this one seems to be. The United States had long overplayed its hand as ‘honest broker.’
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Amazon Deforestation: Bolsonaro Government Accused of Seeking to Sow Doubt over Data
Jonathan Watts – The Guardian,
5 Aug 2019
1 Aug 2019 – The Amazon forest is being burned and chopped down at the most alarming rate in recent memory, but the Brazilian government of Jair Bolsonaro is focused on reinterpreting the data rather than dealing with the culprits, monitoring groups have said.
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Geopolitical Crimes: A Revolutionary Proposal
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jul 2019
23 Jul 2019 – International criminal law has developed a framework for judging the criminal conduct of states with respect to armed conflict but is silent about even the most severe crimes of diplomacy. It is these ‘geopolitical crimes’ that are more responsible for inflicting mass suffering on civilian populations than are most of the forms of international behavior currently criminalized. I am aware that criminalizing acts of diplomacy is a revolutionary idea, but no less for that, deserving of commentary and debate.
→ read full articleWhen Warriors Become Saints
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jul 2019
As I sit on the small balcony on the top floor of an old house in Lisbon, Portugal, it is early evening, the time for wine and voices wafting on the fragrant breeze… Wherever you go, the monuments and statues glorifying humanity’s violent history are always presented as a form of liberation. Tourist attractions. Generals, princes, and kings atop horses, brandishing swords and guns, “grace” squares and monuments as a reminder to the common folk.
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The Secret Language of Trees
Camille Defrenne and Suzanne Simard | TED-Ed – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jul 2019
1 Jul 2019 – Learn how trees are able to communicate with each other through a vast root system and symbiotic fungi called mycorrhizae. Most of the forest lives in the shadow of the giants that make up the highest canopy. These are the oldest trees, with hundreds of children and grandchildren. They check in with their neighbors, share food, supplies and wisdom gained over their lives, all while rooted in place. How do they do this?
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Amazon Deforestation Accelerating Towards Unrecoverable ‘Tipping Point’
Jonathan Watts – The Guardian,
29 Jul 2019
25 Jul 2019 – Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has surged above three football fields a minute, according to the latest government data, pushing the world’s biggest rainforest closer to a tipping point beyond which it cannot recover. Data confirms fears that Pres. Jair Bolsonaro’s policy encourages illegal logging.
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Satellite Images Reveal Scale of Myanmar’s Rohingya Crisis
Hannah Ellis-Petersen – The Guardian,
29 Jul 2019
24 Jul 2019 – Analysis of satellite imagery has cast further doubt on promises that arrangements are being made by Myanmar for the safe and humane return of Rohingya Muslims, and revealed that the destruction of their villages has continued.
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(Português) Cidadania, Florestania: A Amazônia, Titular de Direitos
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jul 2019
23 julho 2019 – Fenômenos novos exigem palavras novas. Assim cidadania se deriva de cidade e florestania, de floresta. O propósito é implementar a cidadania dos povos da floresta, dos indígenas, dos seringueiros e dos ribeirinhos. Floresta e ser humano vivem um pacto sócio-ecológico includente, onde o ser humano se entende parte da floresta e a floresta passa a ser um novo cidadão, respeitado em sua integridade, biodiversidade, estabilidade e luxuriante beleza junto com os outros cidadãos humanos.
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Required Reading: Noura Erakat on Palestine and Law
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jul 2019
Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine, by Noura Erakat, Stanford University Press, 2019 – I make no claim to approach this book with an open mind. Making a fuller disclosure, I acknowledge with some pride that I have endorsed Justice for Some even before it was published, and my blurb appears on its back cover.
→ read full articleTwo Necessary and Sufficient Principles
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jul 2019
Life’s (humanity’s and the earth’s) bottleneck problems can be solved, I dare to suggest, by applying just two general principles. The two can be regarded as principles of unbounded organization. Unbounded organization is the name of a conversation, an academy and a movement (one of many, but not one that duplicates what the others do) devoted to making the impossible possible. Here I contribute to its conversation the proposal that implementing just two principles will make the impossible possible; namely, a pro-social attitude plus doing what works; or alternatively, a pro-social attitude plus structural understanding.
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Does Religion Cause Violence?
William T. Cavanaugh | Harvard Divinity Bulletin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jul 2019
[A qualifying note from the TMS Editor: The main premise of this essay–acquittal of organized religion–relies heavily on the Abrahamic religions’ (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) interpretations, theologies, doctrines and scriptures; a built-in bias from the author’s Christian background.]
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China Will Determine the Future of Venezuela
Carlos Eduardo Pina – Al Jazeera,
22 Jul 2019
14 Jul 2019 – There are a number of reasons why Beijing continues to back Maduro’s government despite suffering financial losses.
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Land Thieves Ramp up Deforestation in Brazil’s Jamanxim National Forest
Sue Branford and Thais Borges | Mongabay – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2019
4 Jul 2019 – Deforestation is rising dramatically in Brazil, with satellite data showing the country’s Amazonian region lost more forest in May than during any other month in the past decade.
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(Italiano) Verso il bordo della guerra: Provocare l’Iran per che cosa? Per chi?
Richard Falk | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2019
10 Luglio 2019 – L’intervista seguente con il giornalista iraniano Javad Hieran-Nia è stata pubblicata in Iran su Iran Mehr News e Tehran Times insieme al Middle Scholar’s Statement sulla politica iraniana di Trump.
→ read full articleHappenings in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2019
11 Jul 2019 – The books were published by two old and respected publishing houses: Harper and Little Brown. However, something was odd, for the word fuck was spelled f*ck. These books were about hope, acceptance, and living the good life, cliché topics in a feel-good culture: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Everything is F*cked, and Calm the F*ck Down. It seemed you had to be fucked first before you could accept the hope that the good life was coming your way.
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Remembering the World Court Advisory Opinion on Israel’s Separation Wall after 15 Years
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2019
The question that remains is ‘how much longer can the Zionist Project swim against the strong historical current of anti-colonialism?’ The answer in my view depends on whether the global solidarity movement, together with Palestinian resistance, can reach a tipping point that leads Israeli leadership to reconsider its ‘security’ and its future. Such a point was reached in South Africa, admittedly under quite different conditions, but with an analogous sense that the Afrikaner leadership would never give up control without being defeated in a bloody struggle for power.
→ read full articleToward the Brink of War: Provoking Iran for What? For Whom?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jul 2019
30 Jun 2019 – The following interview with the Iranian journalist Javad Hieran-Nia was published in Iran’s Mehr News and Tehran Times together with Middle Scholar’s Statement on Trump’s Iran Policy.
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What Comes after Bahrain?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jul 2019
6 Jul 2019 – Is There an ‘After’ after the Kushner Show in Bahrain? The growing movement of global solidarity as reinforced by Palestinian acts of resistance to apartheid structures of oppression is the sole basis for a peaceful future for both peoples, Palestinians and Israeli Jews.
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Hundreds of Sharks and Rays Entangled in Plastic Debris, Study Finds
Jordan Davidson | EcoWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jul 2019
5 Jul 2019 – More than a thousand sharks and rays have become entangled in jettisoned fishing gear and plastic debris, a new study has found. The researchers behind the study warn that the plastic trapping the sharks and rays may cause starvation and suffocation.
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Reviving Yemen’s Ancient Coffee Legacy: An Opportunity to Facilitate Conflict Transformation and the Empowerment of Traditionally Marginalized Groups
Cameron Casenhiser | Cordoba Foundation of Geneva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jul 2019
The gap between the specialty coffee industry and organizations like the CFG may be closer than one may initially think. If organizations dedicated to promoting peace in conflicted areas, such as Yemen, were to partner with organizations such as ACE, Qima, and Port of Mokhtar, the resilient coffee farming communities may be discovered as not only containing voices of hope, but also as internal resources for developing local peace actors.
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Punjab: The Indian State Where Farmers Sow the Seeds of Death
Vivek Chaudhary – The Guardian,
8 Jul 2019
1 Jul 2019 – Cancer rates are the highest in the country, drug addiction is rife, and 900 farmers have killed themselves in two years. How did Punjab turn toxic?
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An American Attack on Iran Would Be an Unmitigated Disaster for the US, Iran and the World: Iran War Statement
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jul 2019
25 Jun 2019 – The following statement on US warmongering in relation to Iran was prepared by Mark LeVine, Professor of History, University of California, Irvine and myself. Some of the early signatories are among the leading scholars in the field of Middle East Studies. Their names are listed below.
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This Photo Is about Bodies – Migrant Bodies, and Our Body Politic. Don’t Look Away
Sabrina Vourvoulias – The Guardian,
1 Jul 2019
26 Jun 2019 – This is a story about bodies. Monday’s [24 Jun] image of a drowned two-year-old and her father will haunt us. I hope it changes us, too.
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Pictures of Dead Migrants Inspire Our Sympathy. But what Use Is That to Them?
Gary Younge – The Guardian,
1 Jul 2019
The photograph of a drowned Salvadoran migrant and his daughter provoked a global outcry. That’s not enough.
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The New Left Economics: How a Network of Thinkers Is Transforming Capitalism
Andy Beckett – The Guardian,
1 Jul 2019
After decades of rightwing dominance, a transatlantic movement of leftwing economists is building a practical alternative to neoliberalism.
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From Shahs to the CIA: The History of Western Intervention in Iran (Part 1)
Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
When Americans hear the word Iran, many have a sort of knee-jerk visceral reaction. The very mention of the word conjures up frightful images of be-turbaned bearded imams leading mobs of Kalashnikov-carrying Muslim men and women whose faces are grotesquely contorted by intense anger as they enthusiastically wave banners bearing squiggly lines, no doubt saying, “Death to America”.
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From Shahs to the CIA: The History of Western Intervention in Iran (Part 2)
Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
In part 1 we examined the early history of the West’s domination of Persian natural resources, especially the establishment and rise of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company which led to multiple 20th century British interventions in Iranian politics in an attempt to ensure permanent access to oil. Part 2 tells the story of Operation Ajax.
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Forest Twice Size of UK Destroyed in Decade for Big Consumer Brands – Report
Karen McVeigh – The Guardian,
24 Jun 2019
11 Jun 2019 – An area twice the size of the UK has been destroyed for products such as palm oil and soy over the last decade, according to analysis by Greenpeace International. It estimates 50m hectares cleared by 2020, warning companies must evolve to prevent ‘climate breakdown’.
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Acting Beyond the State: Toward a Cosmopolitan Awakening?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
20 Jun 2019 – The following review of Ayça Çubukçu’s For the Love of Humanity: The World Tribunal on Iraq, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018, is scheduled to appear in a forthcoming issue of the London Review of International Law.
→ read full articleGreen New Deals
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
Green New Deals can be thought of as bearing new wine in old bottles. The old bottles are demands for social justice. Now they include shock and dismay at threats to the survival of our fragile biosphere. They can easily become just another rationale for tax benefits for investors and for massive public investment financed by public debt even more massive than it already is. The new wine is the creative thinking that is seeking ways to achieve structural changes that will make it possible to succeed where social democracy failed.
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Fukushima’s Three Nuclear Meltdowns Are “Under Control” – That’s a Lie
William Boardman - Reader Supported News,
24 Jun 2019
22 Jun 2019 – The bland language of the official IAEA report is itself a form of lying, offering the false appearance of reassurance that a catastrophic event will be safely managed “for several decades.” There is no way to know that: it is a hope, a prayer, a form of denial. The IAEA, as is its job in a sense, offers this optimism that is unsupported by the realities at Fukushima.
→ read full articleOnce Upon a Time Never Comes Again: Bob Dylan, a Masked Man in Search of Redemption?
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
21 Jun 2019 – It is quite a story, powerful enough to induce one to ask: Who are we becoming in this American Dream? Will we keep sleeping through the nightmares we create and support, or will be return home with Dylan and embrace the radical truth he once gifted us with and dare to “tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it/And reflect from the mountains so all souls can see it” that our country continues to kill and oppress people all around the world as it did once upon a time very long ago?
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Ring any bells?
Wordinfo – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
Right!
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The Omnipresent Surveillance State: Orwell’s 1984 Is No Longer Fiction
John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Jun 2019
10 Jun 2019 – Tread cautiously: the fiction of George Orwell has become an operation manual for the omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state. It’s been 70 years since Orwell depicted the ominous rise of ubiquitous technology, fascism and totalitarianism in ‘1984’. Who could have predicted that after Orwell typed the final words to his dystopian novel, “He loved Big Brother,” we would fail to heed his warning and come to love Big Brother.
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(Castellano/Português) A tecnologia 5G e seus riscos para a vida em geral e para a humana
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jun 2019
¿Por qué la tecnología 5G representa un nuevo peligro para la vida? – Mario Enrique De León, sociólogo da Universidad do Panamá, nos apresenta um resumo das questões referentes à nova tecnologia 5G, motivo de grande disputa entre EEUU e a China. Aqui ele ressalta, o que nos interessa sumamente, os efeitos sobre a vida em sua diversidade, em particular, sobre a vida humana.
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UN Staffer to SG Guterres: 5G Is War on Humanity—He Admits Own Ignorance, Wants to Know More
Claire Edwards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jun 2019
The first eight months of WWII with no fighting was called The Phony War. Using millimeter waves as a fifth-generation or 5G wireless communications technology is a phony war of another kind. It is also silent, but this time shots are being fired – in the form of laser-like beams of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from banks of thousands of tiny antennae – and almost no one in the firing line knows that they are being silently, seriously and irreparably injured.
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‘Socialism for the Rich’: The Evils of Bad Economics
Jonathan Aldred – The Guardian,
10 Jun 2019
6 Jun 2019 – In most rich countries, inequality is rising, and has been rising for some time. The economic arguments adopted by Britain and the US in the 1980s led to vastly increased inequality – and gave the false impression that this outcome was not only inevitable, but good.
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The Climate Crisis Is Our Third World War. It Needs a Bold Response
Joseph Stiglitz | Nobel Economics Laureate – The Guardian,
10 Jun 2019
4 Jun 2019 – Advocates of the Green New Deal say there is great urgency in dealing with the climate crisis and highlight the scale and scope of what is required to combat it. They are right. They use the term “New Deal” to evoke the massive response by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the United States government to the Great Depression. An even better analogy would be the country’s mobilization to fight World War II.
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(Português) As corporações alimentam a ultra-direita mundial: Jean Ziegler
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
26 maio 2019 – Jean Ziegler suiço, professor universitário e pesquisador,ocupa a vice-presidência do Comitê Consultivo do Conselho de Direitos Humanos da ONU. O texto nos ajuda a entender a real situação dramática do mundo, especialmente para os pobres e os que passam fome permanentemente. Ou somos nós que mudaremos essa ordem canibal do mundo, ou ninguém o fará.
→ read full articleSpeeding into the Void of Cyberspace as Designed
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
While Internet billionaires like Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Mark Zuckerberg slam government surveillance, talk up freedom, and embrace Snowden and crypto privacy culture, their companies still cut deals with the Pentagon, work with the NSA and CIA, and continue to track and profile people for profit. It is the same old split-screen marketing trick: the public branding and the behind-the-scenes reality.
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The Perils of Financialization
Lyndsey Jefferson and Matthew Oxenford | Chatham House – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
28 May 2019 – The enduring risks of the financial sector in the global economy and how the mistakes of the 2008 financial crisis continue to resonate. Financialization – it’s a bit of a buzzword, but what does it actually mean? In the most general sense, it means that financial services are taking up a larger and larger portion of the global economy. There are really two different types of financialization if you want to talk about this broadly.
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Marxist Economic Theory Easily Explained
Richard Wolff | The Jimmy Dore Show – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
Richard David Wolff is an American Marxian economist known for his work on economic methodology and class analysis. He is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts and a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program of the New School University in New York. Wolff has also taught economics at Yale University, City University of New York, University of Utah, University of Paris I (Sorbonne), and The Brecht Forum. In 1988 he co-founded the journal Rethinking Marxism. In 2010, Wolff published Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It, also released as a DVD.
→ read full articleJurisprudential Notes toward Empowering and Liberating International Law and the United Nations
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
2 Jun 2019 – When law is aligned with injustice it gives rise to resistance, which historically is associated with the hallowed tradition of civil disobedience, influential with Tolstoy, Gandhi, and more recently, Martin Luther King, Jr. In these contexts civil disobedience can involve the nonviolent transgression of any legal norm that calls attention to the specific injustice.
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Technotyranny: The Iron-Fisted Authoritarianism of the Surveillance State
John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
29 May 2019 – Red pill or blue pill? You decide. We are living the prequel to The Matrix with each passing day, falling further under the spell of technologically-driven virtual communities, virtual realities and virtual conveniences managed by artificially intelligent machines that are on a fast track to replacing us and eventually dominating every aspect of our lives. Science fiction has become fact.
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What You See Is Not What You Get
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
Poem at Springtime
→ read full articleR2P and the Palestinian Ordeal: Humiliating the UN
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 May 2019
23 May 2019 – The fact that Gaza has not even been discussed at the UN, despite the prolonged, intense victimization of its vulnerable and impoverished civilian population is one more indication of the primacy of geopolitics and the marginalization of international law and morality. Only civil society activism can keep the torch of justice burning in this global climate.
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Raw Ivory Sales: Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia Call for End to Ban
Nyasha Chingono – The Guardian,
27 May 2019
21 May 2019 – The watchdog, Cites, prohibits unregulated commercial trade in endangered species around the world. The three southern African countries, home to 61% of the continent’s elephants, will make their application for the change at the next Cites conference in Sri Lanka. Their last appeal for a lifting of the measures was rejected.
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Eco-Friendly Ending: Washington State Is First to Allow Human Composting
Associated Press – The Guardian,
27 May 2019
Ashes to ashes, guts to dirt. Governor Jay Inslee signed legislation Tuesday [21 May 2019] making Washington the first state to approve composting as an alternative to burying or cremating human remains.
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There’s Far More Diversity in Venezuela’s ‘Muzzled’ Media than in US Corporate Press
Lucas Koerner and Ricardo Vaz – FAIR|Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 May 2019
20 May 2019 – The international corporate media have long displayed a peculiar creativity with the facts in their Venezuela reporting, to the point that coverage of the nation’s crisis has become perhaps the world’s most lucrative fictional genre. Fairy tales about totalitarian state censorship in Venezuela reflect US corporate media regime’s own self-censorship, which is far more efficacious than any so-called “authoritarian” leader could imagine.
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(Français) “Notre problème, c’est l’obéissance civile”, par Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn | Les Crises – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
1 May 2019 – “Le problème n’est pas la désobéissance civile. Notre problème, c’est l’obéissance civile.”
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On My 88thBirthday: A Reflection
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
Poem at Springtime
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The Problem Is Civil Obedience
Howard Zinn | Zinn Reader – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
I start from the supposition that the world is topsy-turvy, that things are all wrong, that the wrong people are in jail and the wrong people are out of jail, that the wrong people are in power and the wrong people are out of power, that the wealth is distributed in this country and the world in such a way as not simply to require small reform but to require a drastic reallocation of wealth. I start from the supposition that we don’t have to say too much about this because all we have to do is think about the state of the world today and realize that things are all upside down.
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Required Reading on Palestine
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel, by Andrew Ross, Verso; 2019 – Andrew: “… it would be no exaggeration to say that the ‘stone men’ of Palestine have built every state in the region except their own.” My final assessment: no matter how much you think you know about Palestine, you do not know enough until you have read this book.
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Monsanto Must Pay Couple $2bn in Largest Verdict Yet Over Cancer Claims
Sam Levin – The Guardian,
20 May 2019
13 May 2019 – A California jury has ordered Monsanto to pay more than $2bn to a couple that got cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, after using its weedkiller, marking the third and largest verdict against the company over Roundup.
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