Articles by M

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William Butler Yeats (13 Jun 1865 – 28 Jan 1939): The Transition to Aquarius
René Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Jun 2019

William Butler Yeats is the modern European poet most conscious of the transition within astrological cycles from the Piscean Period to the Age of Aquarius. The concept that humanity is at the end of a 2000-year cycle and about to start a new dispensation at a higher turn of the spiral – the gyre as Yeats called the historic spiral – was the framework within which he always worked.

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30 Years of Torture Convention – States Still Failing on Obligations
Amnesty International – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Jun 2019

10 Dec 2014 – On the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention against Torture, Amnesty International is calling upon states not to obstruct efforts to prevent the appalling practice. While 156 states have ratified the Convention, a host of nations are still carrying out torture and are obstructing efforts to prevent, monitor, investigate and to bring about prosecutions.

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Twitting…
Anonymous – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Jun 2019

Gimme a Break!

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The American Cult of Bombing and Endless Wars
William J. Astore - TomDispatch, 10 Jun 2019

4 Jun 2019 – From Syria to Yemen in the Middle East, Libya to Somalia in Africa, Afghanistan to Pakistan in South Asia, an American aerial curtain has descended across a huge swath of the planet. Its stated purpose: combating terrorism. Its economic benefit: plenty of high-profit business for weapons makers for whom the president can now declare a national security emergency whenever he likes and so sell their warplanes and munitions to preferred dictatorships in the Middle East (no congressional approval required).

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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) Advogados e juristas do mundo todo se reúnem em conferência para discutir os direitos animais
ANDA Agência de Notícias de Direitos Animais – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Jun 2019

As propostas, se aprovadas, significariam que produtos como hambúrgueres vegetarianos e veganos poderiam ser chamados de “discos” e salsichas de “tubos”. À luz dessas questões e assuntos semelhantes, advogados e juristas veganos de todo o mundo se reunirão em uma conferência jurídica anual para discutir como influenciar a lei em benefício dos animais e do planeta.

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Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara (14 Jun 1928 – 9 Oct 1967)
Encyclopædia Britannica – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Jun 2019

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, theoretician and tactician of guerrilla warfare, prominent communist figure in the Cuban Revolution (1956–59), and guerrilla leader in South America, Guevara was a medical doctor specialized in leprosy. Traveling around South America, he observed conditions that spurred his revolt against poverty and capitalist exploitation, adopting Marxist ideology, theory and practices. He is revered by many as a martyred cultural hero, having become an iconic cult figure as a symbol of anti-imperialist struggles everywhere.

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These Are the Banks and Financial Institutions Investing $748 Billion in Nuclear Weapon Producers
ICAN – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Jun 2019

5 Jun 2019 – Today, PAX and ICAN have co-published a report showing how banks and pension funds are financing the companies involved in the production of nuclear weapons: Shorting our security. Financing the companies that make nuclear weapons. This is what you need to know:

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Gnawing Hunger
Preeti Tej Singh – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Jun 2019

it rises to a crescendo
and then
gradually dies down
after all, how long
will hunger gnaw

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‘We Are Literally Sawing Off the Branch We All Live On’: Amazon Deforestation Increasing Under Bolsonaro
Eoin Higgins – Common Dreams, 10 Jun 2019

5 Jun 2019 – Satellite images show massive deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, a grim reminder of the devastation wrought by the country’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro. “People who destroy forests feel safe and those who protect forests feel threatened.”

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Modern Money Theory: The Basics
L. Randall Wray | New Economic Perspectives – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Jun 2019

So here’s an attempt to put the fears of Krugman and Post Keynesians to rest. There is a symmetry between bank lending and government spending. I also hope to help clarify things for a third group—the “debt-free money” folks who want Uncle Sam to spend “debt-free money”. Short answer: depending on how you look at it, he either already does, or cannot ever do so.

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Time Bombs: A Meditation on Walt Whitman’s 200th Birthday
Bill C. Davis – Common Dreams, 10 Jun 2019

31 May 2019 – Today is Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday. A friend observed it’s better he’s not seeing what’s happened to his country. He was a wound dresser during the civil war so he knew what men tend to do to each other. I suppose a war of sorts is in progress here – the enemy gets chosen not by geographical location but by a roulette wheel of sudden psychotic combatants. Background checks? First question. Are you a human being? Yes. Sorry—no gun for you.

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Myanmar’s [Nobel Peace Laureate] Suu Kyi Is Turning Far-Right
Maung Zarni | Anadolu Agency – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Jun 2019

8 Jun 2019 – Pictures from Budapest of a smiling Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi shaking hands with Viktor Orban, Hungary’s president, strikes fear for my Muslim friends back home in Myanmar, including the systematically persecuted Rohingya. The two reportedly exchanged their unconcealed fear and loathing of Muslims and migrants.

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He Was Arrested at 13. Now Saudi Arabia Wants to Execute Him
Muhammad Darwish, Tamara Qiblawi and Ghazi Balkiz – CNN, 10 Jun 2019

8 Jun 2019 —Three years after he was filmed taking part in the bike protest, Saudi authorities arrested Qureiris, then just 13 years old. At the time, he was considered by lawyers and activists to be the youngest known political prisoner in Saudi Arabia. Now, at the age of 18, Qureiris is facing the death penalty after being held for almost four years in pre-trial detention, CNN has learned.

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Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution in the Crosshairs of US Imperialism
Roger D. Harris – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Jun 2019

7 Jun 2019 – Hugo Chávez was elected president and initiated what has become known as the Bolivarian Revolution, which has inspired the peoples of the world while engendering the enmity of both the US imperialists and the Venezuelan elites. This article explores the contributions, shortcomings, and lessons of the Bolivarian Revolution’s two decades, in the context of the US regime-change efforts from its inception to current attempts by the US to install the unelected Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s president.

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(Poesia~Português) Vida em Plenitude
Francisco Gomes de Matos – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Jun 2019

Vida em plenitude
requer profunda atitude

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Meanwhile, Around the World
Johan Galtung and Antonio C. S. Rosa – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

In fact, we seem to have come to the point that we ourselves, as the major cause of death and being wounded through violence and war, are our own worst enemies. And yet we refer to ourselves as being “intelligent”, searching all over for something equally “intelligent”.

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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.

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UN Expert Criticizes States for ‘Ganging Up’ on WikiLeaks’ Assange; Warns against Extradition, Fearing ‘Serious’ Rights Violations
UN News – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

On 9 May, the Special Rapporteur visited Mr. Assange with two medical experts who specialize in examining victims of ill-treatment. The team spoke to the prisoner and conducted a thorough medical assessment. “Mr. Assange’s health has been seriously affected by the extremely hostile and arbitrary environment he has been exposed to for many years,” he said. On Thursday [30 May], according to reports, Assange was too ill to appear via video-link from a British prison in a hearing over an extradition request from the US.

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In Memory of Binyavanga Wainaina, a Literary Gangster
Christine Mungai – Al Jazeera, 3 Jun 2019

Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina died on May 21, 2019 after a short illness. He inspired me and a whole generation of Kenyans to put pen to paper. He publicly came out as gay in 2014, in a country where homosexuality is criminalised, becoming the only openly gay public figure that I know of in this country. Rest in Peace.

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Enrolling Winnie-the-Pooh’s Companions in Climate Change Discourse
Anthony Judge | Laetus in Praesens – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

29 May 2019 – Produced in commemoration of the recent destruction of the Hundred Acre Wood — and in anticipation of further environmental challenges.

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U.S. Government Seeks NGO Help for Removing Iran from Syria
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

29 May 2019 – The U.S. Department of State is offering a grant of $75 million to non-government-organizations to help it to further meddle in Syria. Americans have intoxicated themselves for two and a half years on the vapors emanating from the alleged Russian ‘interference’ in the 2016 election affair–never proven. The strongest odor, if one bothers to inhale, is from the stench of hypocrisy.

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Agony of No Return
Preeti Tej Singh – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

strike me down
with a blow
pull me down
to shreds
for i hate to see

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Speeding 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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Findings of Torture: The UN Rapporteur and Julian Assange
Dr. Binoy Kampmark – Global Research, 3 Jun 2019

1 Jun 2019 – Another crude and sad chapter, yet more evidence of a system’s vengeance against its challengers. While some in the cynical, narcissistic press corps still find little to comment his case, the movement to highlight his fate, and the extra-territorial vengeance of the United States, grows. Often reviled and dismissed as ineffectual if not irrelevant, the United Nations has offered Assange some measure of protection through its articulations and findings.

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What Greed Has Done
Chris Hedges | Bill Moyers – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

1 May 2019 – Real Journalism (Must Watch): Bill Moyers interviews former correspondent of New York Times Chris Hedges about his new book, Days of Destruction–Days of Revolt, on the destruction of America’s manufacturing base and the effect that unfettered and unregulated capitalism has had on the poor and vulnerable.

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Court Docs: Monsanto Paid Chemical Industry Front Group to Claim Cancer-Causing Weedkiller ‘Safe’ and Attack Its Critics
Bill Walker | Environmental Working Group – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

29 May 2019 – Emails show that in February 2015, Monsanto was working with ACSH to prepare for the expected fallout from a pending report on the safety of glyphosate by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

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Open Letter to UN SG Concerning Iran
Jan Oberg | The Transnational – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

27 May 2019 – The repeated threats of war against and sanctions on Iran contain very dangerous dynamics – for Iran, the region and the world – that could easily spin out of control. The situation is such that the UN Secretary-General must be urged to take action in accordance with the UN Charter.

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Sri Lanka: How the UN Failed Tamil Civilians in 2009
Nirmanusan Balasundaram – Al Jazeera, 3 Jun 2019

And how the legacy of this failure is still endangering lives in Sri Lanka and beyond. Today, May 18, 2019, marks one decade since the armed conflict in Sri Lanka came to a brutal end.

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After Neoliberalism
Joseph E. Stiglitz | Nobel Laureate Economic Sciences – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

30 May 2019 – For the past 40 years, the United States and other advanced economies have been pursuing a free-market agenda of low taxes, deregulation, and cuts to social programs. There can no longer be any doubt that this approach has failed spectacularly; the only question is what will – and should – come next.

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(Português) Pelo de Cânhamo É Alternativa Vegana ao Pelo de Origem Animal
ANDA Agência de Notícias de Direitos Animais | Stylo Urbano – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

A empresa ucraniana DevoHome, fabricante de tecidos à base de fibra de cânhamo, desenvolveu um inovador pelo de cânhamo como alternativa natural e vegana ao pelo verdadeiro e pelo sintético à base de petróleo. O material é feito de 50% de cânhamo e 50% de viscose.

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Abuses Show Assange Case Was Never About Law
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

27 May 2019 – It is astonishing how often one still hears well-informed, otherwise reasonable people say about Julian Assange: “But he ran away from Swedish rape charges by hiding in Ecuador’s embassy in London.” That short sentence includes at least three factual errors. In fact, to repeat it, as so many people do, you would need to have been hiding under a rock for the past decade – or, amounting to much the same thing, been relying on the corporate media for your information about Assange.

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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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Big Pharma and Organized Crime–They Are More Similar than You May Think
Carolanne Wright | Wake up World – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

If you believe pharmaceutical corporations hold the health of the general public in high regard, it’s time to reconsider. The industry is filled with examples of wrongful death, extortion, fraud, corruption, obstruction of justice, embezzlement, fake journals, harassment and hit lists that would make even the most hardened Mafia godfather blush. Big Pharma has been fined billions by the U.S. Department of Justice, but these enormous fines don’t curb the corruption, it’s just looked upon as “the cost of doing business,” similar to paying the utilities.

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US Blockade Deprives Venezuelan Cancer Patients of Treatment
teleSUR – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

31 May 2019 – The U.S. blockade is putting the lives of hundreds of chronically ill patients at risk, the Latin American Foundation of Human Rights (Fundalatin) denounced today. Without a way to pay for state-funded treatments, patients — both young and old — are being refused medical attention around the world.

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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.

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Creationism versus Redemptionism: How a Money-Issuer Really Lends and Spends
L. Randall Wray | New Economic Perspectives – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

I will examine three analogous questions (each of which has the same answer):
1. Does the government need to receive tax revenue before it can spend?
2. Does the central bank need to receive reserve deposits before it can lend?
3. Do private banks need to receive demand deposits before they can lend?

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How to Keep Criticism from Sinking Your Confidence: Walt Whitman and the Discipline of Creative Self-Esteem
Maria Popova | Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

“I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood.”

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Rand Corporation: How to Destroy Russia
Manlio Dinucci – Global Research, 3 Jun 2019

Force the adversary to expand recklessly in order to unbalance him, and then destroy him. This is not the description of a judo hold, but a plan against Russia elaborated by the Rand Corporation, the most influential think tank in the USA. With a staff of thousands of experts, Rand presents itself as the world’s most reliable source for Intelligence and political analysis for the leaders of the United States and their allies.

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Find a Deal, and It Goes ‘Round, ‘Round, ‘Round, as It Spins Along…
Christine Barie and Kathie Malley-Morrison | Engaging Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

Dealmaker?

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Jurisprudential 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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The Bankers’ “Power Revolution”: How the Government Got Shackled by Debt
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

31 May 2019 – The debt-growth model has reached its limits, as even the Bank for International Settlements, the “central bankers’ bank” in Switzerland, acknowledges. The BIS said that debt levels were too high, productivity growth was too low, and the room for policy maneuver was too narrow. “The global economy cannot afford to rely any longer on the debt-fueled growth model that has brought it to the current juncture,” the BIS warned. But the solutions it proposed would continue the austerity policies long imposed on countries that cannot pay their debts.

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(Português) Governo permite que caçadores brasileiros comprem até 15 armas
David Arioch | Vegazeta – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

27 maio 2019 – Desde que o Decreto nº 9.785 foi publicado este mês no Diário Oficial da União, mudando as regras sobre armas, caçadores brasileiros passaram a ter o direito de comprar até 15 armas. Segundo o decreto, caçadores registrados no Exército podem adquirir munições em quantidade superior ao limite permitido pelo Exército.

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Philosophical Arithmetic…
Anonymous – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

Hmmm…

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Are Environmentalists and Climate Scientists in Denial?
Anthony Judge | Laetus in Praesens – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

28 May 2019 – Climate Change Recognized as Primarily a Psychological Challenge – The key to any viable strategic response to the planetary environmental tragedy is as much a psychological matter as one of constraining carbon emissions and other excesses.

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Which Lessons Did Germany Adopt?
Amos Gvirtz – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

28 May 2019 – The German Bundestag’s decision to brand the activities of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) as anti-Semitic is in my opinion misguided, for two main reasons: the lessons of World War II and the question of nonviolent versus violent struggle. Israel has officially drawn two particular lessons from the Holocaust: “Never again”, and “We are allowed to do anything and no one is permitted to criticize our actions.”

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John Pilger Speaks Out: “Today It’s Julian Assange, Tomorrow It Could Be You”
World Socialist Website – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

31 May 2019 – Investigative journalist, broadcaster and film maker John Pilger told the media outside the Westminster Magistrates Court that Julian Assange’s “‘crime’ here, is the crime of good journalism, and every journalist who practices their craft in a conscientious way, and in a truthful way, and who investigates the power that imposes itself on people, be it the government or their vested interests, should be deeply concerned about this.

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CRDI’s Statement on AI’s Report
Canadian Rohingya Development Initiative – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

30 May 2019 – Amnesty International’s latest report, “No one can protect us” is an evidence-based, persuasive detailing of the most recent military violence in Rakhine state against ethnic Rakhine and Rohingya.

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The World Bank Is Rewarding Ethnic Cleansing in Myanmar
Azeem Ibrahim – The Washington Post, 3 Jun 2019

30 May 2019 – This month, the World Bank published a proposal for a $100 million development project in Rakhine state, the region of western Myanmar that recently saw the systematic ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslim community. This funding project also attaches no conditions on Myanmar. To spell it out: The World Bank is funding a state that has carried out ethnic cleansing in just the past 24 months, with no strings attached.

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Success & Self-Determination
Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

1 Jun 2018 – What distinguishes a healthy successful human being (or animal for that matter) from apathetic pathetic creatures who make excuses for their failures in life? Those who succeed are precisely those who have self-confidence to decide to work hard to change their circumstances and not take things for granted.

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Washington’s Huawei Hypocrisy… US Government Is Instrument of American Corporations
Finian Cunningham – RT, 3 Jun 2019

31 May 2019 – US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Chinese Huawei as an agent for Beijing. The US government, conversely, is the consummate instrument of American corporations. Its congenital service to corporate profit-making is the real national security risk to American citizens and a global security threat for all people of the world due to the wars that Washington unswervingly pursues on behalf of US corporate interests.

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8 June–International Day of the Oceans: World Citizens Call for Renewed Efforts to Resolve Asian Maritime Delimitations Dispute
Rene Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

Factions in both Japan and China are playing a “nationalist card” concerning the maritime delimitations disputes, no doubt for reasons which go beyond the specific aspects of the disputes. Although the Chinese “nationalist” focus is directed toward Japan, there is a vision among some Chinese that the USA is the cause of the continuing problems with Taiwan and Japan.

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The Worst Enemy a Person Can Have Is His or Her Own Uncontrolled Mind
Radhanath Swami – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

Our mind works like a television set. A television set is just some plastic, metal, and glass fitted with circuits inside. This box can tune into waves of energy transmitted by a satellite to produce images and sounds. The pleasure that we are looking for in this world is compared to the energy emitted by the satellite. Satellites can transmit energy that can be received through millions of television sets, but not every television is tuned into same channel.

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Renaming the Earth’s Geological Time Scale: An Alternative Spiritual Description of Our Earth
Dr Ravi P Bhatia – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

While not contesting the scientists’ proposal to rename the present epoch as Anthropocene because of the factors that demonstrate the footprint of people in clear terms, I also wish to present an alternate description of our condition. This may be termed as Indian spiritual Advaita principle based on the Vedic philosophy. Let me explain.

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Roadmap for Peace Activism
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

1 Jun 2019 – In this month’s bulletin of CPNN we try to identify those to whom we can look for peace leadership in these turbulent times. Let us consider their actions and advice. Let’s listen first to the new generation of youth activists.

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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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Rohingya repatriation: UNHCR, UNDP signs extension of MoU with Myanmar
The Daily Star [Bangladesh] – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

28 May 2019 – The UN High Commissioner for Refugees and UN Development Programme today signed extension of a memorandum of understanding with Myanmar for one year aimed at creating conducive conditions for voluntary and sustainable repatriation of the Rohingya from Bangladesh. “UN agencies have not even consulted the Rohingyas, the survivors of genocide,” said Ro Nay San Lwin, coordinator of Free Rohingya Coalition from Germany over phone.

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Hair: Let the Sunshine In (Music Video of the Week)
TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

Musical scene of the movie Hair where a hippie changes place with a soldier, is sent to the Vietnam War by mistake and dies in battle. A Classic!

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Kenya’s Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Is Recipient of Erich-Maria-Remarque Peace Prize 2019
Kimpa Vita Press – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

28 May 2019 – Every two years, the city of Osnabrück , Germany, has awarded the Peace Prize named after writer Erich Maria Remarque, born there. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o essays, collected in his anthology Decolonising the Mind, determine the discussion of the continuing consequences of the colonisation of Africa to this day. Since 1984, he has been writing his literary texts only in his mother tongue, Kikuyu (Gikuyu), which he then translates into English.

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Manufacturing War with Russia
Chris Hedges | Truthdig – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

3 Jun 2019 – Despite the Robert Mueller report’s conclusion that Donald Trump and his campaign did not collude with Russia during the 2016 presidential race, the new Cold War with Moscow shows little sign of abating. The demonization of Putin and Russia was designed to poison bilateral relations, boost U.S. war industry profits and make détente impossible.

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Modern Monetary Realism
James K. Galbraith | Project Syndicate – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

Is Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) a potential boon to economic policymakers, or, as Harvard’s Kenneth Rogoff recently argued, a threat to “the entire global financial system” and the front line of the “next battle for central-bank independence”?

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What You See Is Not What You Get
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

Poem at Springtime

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The Secret Tripartite Memorandum of Understanding between UNHCR, UNDP & Myanmar
Free Rohingya Coalition – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

28 May 2019 – The MoU was first signed in Naypyiday on June 6 last year, which has been extended for one more year.

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Resurrecting the PLO Is Palestine’s Best Response to the ‘Deal of the Century’
Ramzy Baroud | Politics for the People – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

29 May 2019 – Palestinian groups, Fatah, Hamas and others should not confine themselves to merely rejecting the Trump Administration’s so-called ‘Deal of the Century’. Instead, they should use their resistance to the new American-Israeli plot as an opportunity to unify their ranks.

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Sri Lanka: Sectarian Violence and the Higher Self
René Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

On 14 and 15 May 2019, revenge violence broke out in a number of towns in Sri Lanka against Muslim shopkeepers by Christians motivated by the Easter Sunday attacks on three Christian churches. As has been said, it is difficult to solve problems on the same level from which gave rise to the problem. While Christian-Muslim dialogue is necessary in Sri Lanka, as elsewhere, it is only as the individual person moves beyond their self-identification as Christians or Muslims that a true harmonious society can grow.

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American Militarism Destroying the Future of Humanity
Mahboob A. Khawaja, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

22 May 2019 – The wars of 9/11 continue, with no end in sight. Now, the Pentagon is investing heavily in technologies that will intensify them. By embracing the latest tools that the tech industry has to offer, the US military is creating a more automated form of warfare – one that will greatly increase its capacity to wage war everywhere forever. America or its allies in the Arab Middle East face no formidable enemy except themselves against their own naïve designs of military superiority.

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Walt Whitman Returns. . .
Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

May 31, 2019 is the 200th anniversary of Walt Whitman’s birth in West Hills, New York. I wonder what Walt Whitman would say if he appeared in our time? I know he would recognize the betrayal of history’s lessons, humanity’s continued infatuation with violence and war, and our limited empathy. He would scold us! Reprimand us! Remind us solutions are to be found in compassion and connection, not metal.

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Will Trump Be the Sage One?
Maureen Dowd – The New York Times, 27 May 2019

18 May 2019 – “On one side, you have a president who doesn’t want war, who simply wants to do with Iran what he has done with North Korea, to twist the arm of the Iranians to bring them to a negotiation on his terms,” said French Ambassador Gérard Araud. “He thinks they will suffer and at the end, they will grovel in front of his power.” But in a way, the face-off with the Iranians is more “primitive and dangerous” because, besides Bolton, other factions in the Middle East are also “dreaming of going to war.”

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Jerusalem: A Rock and a Hard Place (Part 1)
Al Jazeera English – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

31 Mar 2019 – During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Jewish forces captured West Jerusalem as the eastern half became part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Almost two decades later, the 1967 Six-Day War would see the Jewish state claim rights to the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and all of Jerusalem. Since then, Israel has established over 200 illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land with about 600,000 settlers in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.

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Pretexts for an Attack on Iran
Ray McGovern – Consortium News, 27 May 2019

15 May 2019 – Ray McGovern probes the step-up in U.S. belligerence towards a country posing the same non-existent strategic threat as Iraq.

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Understanding NATO, Ending War
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

On 4 April 2019 NATO marked its 70th anniversary. Coinciding with it, peace activists and concerned scholars in several countries conducted a variety of events to draw attention to, and further document, the many war crimes and other atrocities committed by NATO (sometimes by deploying its associate and crony terrorist armies – ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Nusra – recruited and trained by the CIA and funded by Saudi Arabia, other Gulf countries and the US directly.

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R2P 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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Varieties of Fake News and Misrepresentation
Anthony Judge | Laetus in Praesens – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

27 May 2019 – Produced in the light of concern regarding dissemination of “fake news” undermining elections to the European Parliament, of claims regarding the “fake news” purveyed by those seeking election, and in anticipation of an imminent false flag justification for war.

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The Hellish Cycle
Baher Kamal | Human Wrongs Watch – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

15 May 2019 – Indebted, exploited, hunted down, shamed at home… the harsh reality of Southeast Asia’s migrants. The immense human dimension justifies this new attempt to report on an aspect that is deliberately hidden, unwanted to be seen by the new wave of pseudo-politicians in the United States and so far a full dozen of European countries. See what it is about.

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Mainstream Under-Reporting of the Climate Crisis
John Scales Avery – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

25 May 2019 – Only immediate climate action can save the future. If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world are on the horizon.

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Unusual Events, Unusual Times
Dr Ravi P Bhatia – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

Every person has experienced unusual events at different times–some interesting, some puzzling and some unpleasant. These events are sketched in the person’s memory.

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Thanks to Facebook, Your Cellphone Company Is Watching You More Closely Than Ever
Sam Biddle – The Intercept, 27 May 2019

20 May 2019 – Offered to select Facebook partners, the data includes not just technical information about Facebook members’ devices and use of Wi-Fi and cellular networks, but also their past locations, interests, and even their social groups. This data is sourced not just from the company’s main iOS and Android apps, but from Instagram and Messenger as well. The data has been used by Facebook partners for more controversial uses like racially targeted ads.

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The Balkan Wars Created a Generation of Christian Terrorists
Azeem Ibrahim and Hikmet Karcic | Foreign Policy – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

24 May 2019 – War radicalized the far-right–and nobody stopped them at home. This failure produced the same kinds of figures and networks of radical extremism on the European right as happened with Islamist terrorism.

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How to Pay for the War
L. Randall Wray | New Economic Perspectives – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

16 May 2019 – I’m going to talk about war, not peace, in relation to our work on the Green New Deal—which I argue is the big MEOW—moral equivalent of war—and how we are going to pay for it. So I’m going to focus on Keynes’s 1940 book— How to Pay for the War—the war that followed the Economic Consequences of the Peace.

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The Bottom Line: Go for the Money
Rivera Sun – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

24 May 2019 – It’s rare to hear business magazines admit the power of nonviolent action. As the editor of Nonviolence News, a service that collects and shares 30-50+ stories of nonviolence in action each week, I often see business journals minimizing the effect of activism. Usually, industry tries to conceal the impact nonviolent action has on their bottom line by chalking it up to market pressures.

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Newly Revealed Documents Show Syrian Chemical “Attacks Were Staged”
Institute for Public Accuracy – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

21 May 2019 – An internal engineering assessment by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons undermines claims justifying U.S. attacks on Syria last year; many claimed that the Syrian government had launched a chemical weapons attack on Douma on April 7. Theodore Postol, professor of science, technology, and international security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, provided the Institute for Public Accuracy with his initial assessment of the newly revealed OPCW document.

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Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The United Nations General Assembly – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General Assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages.

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Germaine de Staël’s Guide to Haters
Maria Popova | Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

The First Modern Woman on Meritocracy, the Psychology of Why the Masses Rejoice in Tearing Down Successful Individuals, and the Only True Measure of Genius – “The life of man, so short in itself, is still of longer duration than the judgment and the affections of his contemporaries.”

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UN: Bolivia’s Universal Healthcare Is ‘Model for the World’
teleSUR – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

23 May 2019 – The U.N.’s World Health Organization praised Bolivia’s newly implemented universal health care system, known in the country as the Single Health System. The WHO pointed out that Bolivia’s leftist government has given generous funding and resources to health, ensuring free treatment for all.

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Haiti’s Market Women Resist Global Forces
Leslie Mullin | Haiti Action Committee – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

April 2019 – Haiti’s market system is at the heart of the nation. It is the backbone of the economy, as well as “the center: social, political and economic life rolled together.” Most trade is in the hands of women. In trying to make a life for themselves, market women confront foreign policy-makers, a hostile government and big business interests out to undermine the economic power represented by these resourceful women traders.

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The Western Media Is Key to Syria Deceptions
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

24 May 2019 – By any reckoning, the claim made this week by al-Qaeda-linked fighters that they were targeted with chemical weapons by the Syrian government in Idlib province – their final holdout in Syria – should have been treated by the western media with a high degree of scepticism. That the US and other western governments enthusiastically picked up those claims should not have made them any more credible.

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(Português) Apenas a rebelião pode evitar um apocalipse ecológico
George Monbiot - ANDA Agência de Notícias de Direitos Animais, 27 May 2019

A desculpa mais comum atualmente é a seguinte: “Aposto que os manifestantes têm telefones/viajam de férias/usam sapatos de couro”. Em outras palavras, não vamos ouvir ninguém a não ser que viva nu em um barril, subsistindo apenas em águas sujas. Claro que se você está vivendo nu em um barril, vamos dispensá-lo também, porque você é um hippie esquisito. Ou seja, todos os mensageiros e toda mensagem que eles carregam são desqualificados com base em impureza ou pureza por quem realmente tem o poder de fazer alguma coisa.

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Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela
Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs | CEPR-Center for Economic and Policy Research – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

April 2019 – This paper looks at some of the most important impacts of the economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the US government since August of 2017. It finds that most of the impact of these sanctions has not been on the government but on the civilian population.

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Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

25 May 2019 – Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age, by Ellen Brown, Democracy Collaborative (June 1, 2019). Today most of our money is created, not by governments, but by banks when they make loans. This book takes the reader step by step through the sausage factory of modern money creation, explores improvements made possible by advances in digital technology, and proposes upgrades that could transform our outmoded nineteenth century system into one that is democratic, sustainable, and serves the needs of the twenty-first century.

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WAR
Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

For Memorial Day USA – 27 May 2019

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(Português) Abaixo-assinado com mais de 2,1 milhões de apoios contra Festival de Carne de Cachorro vai ser entregue na Embaixada da China
David Arioch | Vegazeta – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

25 de maio de 2019 – No dia 12 de junho, às 11h, o movimento Nação Vegana Brasil vai entregar na Embaixada da China, em Brasília, um abaixo assinado com mais de 2,1 milhões de apoios contra o Festival de Carne de Cachorro. O objetivo é mostrar que o Brasil é contra a realização desse evento e que, além de injustificável, prejudica a imagem internacional dos chineses.

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Assange: The Missing Step
Amb. Craig Murray - TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

20 May 2019 – In Sweden, prosecutors have applied to the Swedish courts to issue a warrant for Julian’s arrest. There is a tremendous back story to that simple statement. The European Arrest Warrant must be issued from one country to another by a judicial authority… There is an interesting parallel with the reaction to the work of Reformation scholars in translating the Bible into vernacular languages and giving the populace direct access to its contents, without the mediating filters of the priestly class. It is something worth bearing in mind in trying to understand the depth of the State’s hatred of Julian.

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98.3% of Ghana’s Gold Remains in the Hands of Multinational Corporations
Celina della Croce | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

22 May 2019 – The disproportionate focus on corruption of national leaders distracts from the systemic theft of national wealth by multinational corporations. When local leaders are deemed too much of a threat to multinational corporations’ interests, they are quickly deposed through coups, as we saw in Haiti (2004) and Honduras (2009), or destabilization campaigns, as we see in Venezuela today.

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Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin (30 May 1814 – 1 Jul 1876)
Alan Ryan | Encyclopædia Britannica – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

Bakunin formulated no coherent body of doctrine, and his voluminous and vigorous writings were often left incomplete. Anarchist movements owing allegiance to Bakunin flourished in Italy and especially in Spain, where as late as 1936 the anarchists were the strongest revolutionary party. Bakunin died in Bern, Switzerland as chief propagator of 19th-century anarchism, a prominent Russian revolutionary agitator, and a prolific political writer.

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Debatable…
Lindsay – TRANCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

No comment…

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The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty: Primary Conflicts and Second Order Change
Diane Perlman, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

After almost 50 years, the NPT boasts partial success with horizontal proliferation as we only have four new Nuclear Weapons States: India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea–not parties to the NPT. However, all NWS are engaged in vertical proliferation with nuclear modernization programs triggering a new nuclear arms race without the benefit of arms control arrangements.

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Jerusalem: A Rock and a Hard Place (Part 2)
Al Jazeera English – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

7 Apr 2019 – A remarkable new two-part documentary special from Al Jazeera English, goes behind the scenes with residents from each of the three monolithic faiths who share one of the world’s most extraordinary cities: Jerusalem.

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Binyavanga Wainaina, Kenyan Author and Activist, Dies Aged 48
Al Jazeera News – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

22 May 2019 – Kenyan author and activist Binyavanga Wainaina, winner of the 2002 Caine Prize and once listed as one of Time Magazine’s ‘most influential people’ has died at the age of 48 at a Nairobi hospital following a short illness. Following the passage of a series of anti-gay laws across Africa in 2014, Wainaina publicly announced that he was gay. “I am, for anybody confused or in doubt, a homosexual. Gay, and quite happy,” he tweeted.

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Walt Whitman (31 May 1819 – 26 Mar 1892)
Biography – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

Walt Whitman was an American poet whose verse collection ‘Leaves of Grass’ is a landmark in the history of American literature. Fascinated by this newcomer to the poetry scene, Emerson dispatched writers Henry David Thoreau and Bronson Alcott to Brooklyn to meet Whitman.

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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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