Articles by RD
We found 3491 results.
Business Is Booming for the U.K.’s Spy Tech Industry
Matt Kennard – The Intercept,
14 May 2018
11 May 2018 – A new “cyber corridor” in England is attracting secretive companies that are producing cutting-edge government surveillance tools.
→ read full articleWorld Order after the Cold War
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 May 2018
The aftermath of the Cold War exhibited several forms of dysfunctionality: failures by the American-led West to recognize and act upon a new global agenda that served the ‘human interest’ rather than continue to pursue ‘geopolitical ambitions’ by relying on coercive diplomacy and militarism. What is politically ‘feasible’ at this point will not do. The peoples of the world deserve and require a politics that recognizes what is ‘necessary’ and aspires to achieve what is ‘desirable.’
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Unearthing Truths: Israel, the Nakba, and the Jewish National Fund
The Editors | Moving Forward Magazine – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 May 2018
The Forward courageously reminds American Jews of the reality of the Nakba, the slogans and symbols of the Jewish project that enabled mass expulsion and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people – and the policies that enable it to continue today. Our hope is that pro-Israel communities will honestly confront the history and the present situation in the land, and move toward justice.
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A Broken Idea of Sex Is Flourishing – Blame Capitalism
Rebecca Solnit – The Guardian,
14 May 2018
12 May 2018 – In this world, women are marketed as toys and trophies. Are we surprised when some men take things literally? Since the Toronto bloodbath, a lot of pundits have belatedly awoken to the existence of the “incel” (short for involuntary celibate) online subculture and much has been said about it. Too often, it has been treated as some alien, unfamiliar worldview.
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Who Are the ‘Incels’ and How Do They Relate to Toronto Van Attack?
Alex Hern – The Guardian,
14 May 2018
25 Apr 2018 – Hours before the Toronto van attack, a post on the Facebook profile of the chief suspect declared that “the incel rebellion has already begun, we will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys”. Suspect appears to have links to misogynistic online community for the ‘involuntarily celibate.’
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Transforming Violent Systems: The Key to Social Peace
Dr. Richard Rubenstein | TED – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 May 2018
12 Apr 2018 – Richard E. Rubenstein is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment and a professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia. His recent book, Resolving Structural Conflicts, was published by Routledge in 2017.
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Though Invisible to Us, Our Dead Are Not Absent
Edward Curtin, Jr. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 May 2018
Those titular words were sent to me by Fr. Daniel Berrigan shortly before he died.
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(Français) Nicaragua: 7 similitudes entre les protestations violentes au Nicaragua et au Venezuela
Misión Verdad | Investig’Action – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 May 2018
26 Avr 2018 – Les similitudes entre l’escalade de violence qui a été menée à bien au Nicaragua ces derniers jours et les guarimbas organisées par l’anti-chavisme aussi bien en 2014 qu’en 2017 sont nombreuses. Non seulement en ce qui concerne ceux qui financent ces opérations mais aussi dans le mode opératoire, tant dans la rue que dans les médias et sur les réseaux sociaux. Ci-après, sept comparaisons qui le confirment.
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Peace Journalism and Conflict Transformation: The Importance of Training
Abbas Aroua | Cordoba Foundation of Geneva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 May 2018
Training journalists in the concepts and techniques of peace journalism, is to promote access to properly established information, to make people understand the causes and issues of conflict, and finally to encourage the participation of society in the peaceful transformation of these conflicts.
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Postscript: Additional Indonesian Impressions
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 May 2018
1 May 2018 – It occurs to me that two additional impressions of Indonesia seem relevant enough to be worth a short supplement to my post of a few days ago.
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How to Overcome Fierce Debates about Banning All Trade in Ivory
Duan Biggs, Carly Cook, Kent Redford and Matthew H. Holden – The Conversation,
30 Apr 2018
25 Apr 2018 – Should trade in ivory be banned or not? There may be a solution.
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Indonesian Impressions
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Apr 2018
Impressions from a Third Visit to Indonesia
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Empty Half the Earth of Its Humans. It’s the Only Way to Save the Planet [What?]
Kim Stanley Robinson – The Guardian,
30 Apr 2018
There are now twice as many people as 50 years ago. But, as EO Wilson has argued, they can all survive – in cities.
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Can We Talk (about Animal Rights)?
Roger S. Gottlieb | Harvard Divinity School – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Apr 2018
Animals suffer for lots of reasons: The sea birds covered in oil, the fox caught in a fur hunter’s trap gnawing off its leg, the long, long lines of cows waiting to be bludgeoned and then to have their throats slit, the millions of mice to be used for God knows what, including the ones who have been scientifically, genetically engineered to get cancer (“onco-mice,” they are called). Not to mention whole species, thousands of them, dying off because humans have taken or contaminated their habitat, or brought in exotic species against which they have not evolved defenses, or just eaten too many.
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OPCW Investigators Found “No Evidence” of Chemical Weapons at Syrian Facilities Bombed by F-UK-US
Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Apr 2018
25 Apr 2018 – According to new reports, investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have spoken with Russian military officials after visiting the site of the Barzeh research center in Damascus. If France, UK and the US really did bomb a building filled with chemical weapons, there would have been thousands of bodies to show for it.
→ read full articleSpeaking the Unspeakable: The Assassination and Martyrdom of Thomas Merton
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Apr 2018
“Killing a man who says ‘No!’ is a risky business,” the priest replied, “because even a corpse can go on whispering ‘No! No! No! with a persistence and obstinacy that only certain corpses are capable of. And how can you silence a corpse?”
— Ignazio Silone, Bread and Wine
Economic Theory and Community Development
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Apr 2018
22 Apr 2018 – One of several key theses of this book is the ethical principle: we should share the surplus. It is an ancient principle that in modern times the principal founder of economic theory, Adam Smith, took great pains to deny. It is present in one form or another in most of the cultures homo sapiens has constructed. It survives today in most religions. It is, implicitly at least, a centrepiece of socialism and of responsible capitalism. We do not think of ourselves as proposing a new idea, but as reviving an old one whose time is now returning.
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Independent Swiss Lab Says ‘BZ Toxin’ Used in Skripal Poisoning: US/UK-Produced, Not Russian
Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Apr 2018
15 Apr 2018 – Somebody has some explaining to do… or did the Syrian airstrikes just ‘distract’ the citizenry from the reality surrounding the Skripal poisoning? The substance used on Sergei Skripal was never produced in Russia, but was in service in the US, UK, and other NATO states.
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Attacking Syria
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Apr 2018
18 Apr 2018 – These strikes raise questions of international law, domestic constitutional authorization for international uses of force, strategic logic, and moral imperatives and rationalizations. Each of these issues is capable of multiple interpretations raising further concerns about the appropriate location of the authority to decide given the nature of world order in the 21stcentury.
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A Socialist Economy for the 21st Century
Richard Rosen | The Next System Project – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Apr 2018
Richard A. Rosen explores the changes necessary for a modern definition of “socialism” and describes key concepts and issues that arise when aiming to restructure the American economy to include social and environmental sustainability in the Twenty-First Century.
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North Korea Is Changing
Richard Javad Heydarian – Al Jazeera,
23 Apr 2018
I visited North Korea with an official delegation and here’s what I saw and learned.
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Toward the Creation of a World Parliament: Strongly Recommended Reading
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Apr 2018
13 Apr 2018 – This is a brief promotional comment to call attention to the publication of a truly outstanding contribution to creative and restorative world order thinking. The book is entitled A World Parliament: Governance and Democracy in the 21stCentury by Jo Leinen and Andreas Bummel.
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Addressing the Systemic Challenge at the Heart of Escalating Inequality and Environmental Destruction
Ted Howard | The Next System Project – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Apr 2018
2 Apr 2018 – To cite just two figures: in the United States, just 400 people own as much wealth as the bottom 204 million people.1 Globally, just 8 billionaires own as much wealth as 50% of the entire population of our planet.2 And this negative trend – representing a medieval concentration of wealth and power that is deeply problematic for democratic culture – is escalating.
→ read full articleFaust Walks Out on Easter Morning
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Apr 2018
“All things transient are but a parable.”
— Goethe, Faust
False Flag Operations Will Start New War? Towards a U.S.-Israeli Attack on Syria and Lebanon?
Edward Curtin and Geopolitics and Empire – Global Research,
9 Apr 2018
An interview with Edward Curtin – All signs point toward an upcoming large-scale Israeli/U.S. attack on Syria and Lebanon, with Russia and Iran as the ultimate objectives. As always, the corporate media play along as if they don’t yet know what’s coming. Everyone in the know knows what is, just not exactly when. And the media wait with baited breath as they count down to the dramatic moment when they can report the incident that will compel the “innocent” to attack the “guilty.”
→ read full articleMiddle East Turmoil: Israeli Massacre, Palestinian Grievances
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Apr 2018
The Middle East Is Heating Up–Again – A Postscript on the Land Day Massacre (‘Great March of Return’)
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How Big Wireless Made Us Think That Cell Phones Are Safe: A Special Investigation
Mark Hertsgaard and Mark Dowie – The Nation,
9 Apr 2018
23 Apr 2018 Issue – The disinformation campaign—and massive radiation increase—behind the 5G rollout. As happened earlier with Big Tobacco and Big Oil, the wireless industry’s own scientists privately warned about the risks… The World Health Organization classifies cell-phone radiation as a “possible” carcinogen… “Everyone knows that if your research results show that radiation has effects, the funding flow dries up.”
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When Facebook Becomes ‘The Beast’: Myanmar Activists Say Social Media Aids Genocide
Euan McKirdy – CNN,
9 Apr 2018
7 Apr 2018 – Hatemongers have taken advantage of the social network to disseminate inflammatory, anti-Muslim speech in Myanmar. The rhetoric is aimed exclusively at the disenfranchised Rohingya Muslim minority. Human rights activists inside the country and out tell CNN that posts range from recirculated news articles from pro-government outlets, to misrepresented or faked photos and anti-Rohingya cartoons.
→ read full articleWill ‘Democracy’ Survive? How? Whether? Hard Questions in Dark Times
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Apr 2018
7 Apr 2018 – Global democracy has become, is becoming, a matter of ultimate concern. Issues raised concern transparency, accountability, participation, and responsiveness of global policy processes, and of course, how the global is to be linked with the regional and national so as to pursue the goal of global humane governance: equitable, stable, sustainable, peaceful, compassionate, and above all, mindfulness.
→ read full articleMoral Education for Structural Change
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Apr 2018
The experience of the education for social responsibility program at the University of Concepción suggests the viability of large-scale moral education programmes, aimed at forming a functional, realistic, and solidary ethical conscience. Three educational principles supported by scientific findings are proposed to guide moral education: understanding, participation, and empathy. Taking as an example the ‘structural trap’ by which the good intention of complying with social human rights, such as health, ends up discouraging economic investment…
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(Français) La cage vitrée
Regard Animal – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Apr 2018
Le fait d’acheter des poissons provenant d’une animalerie n’est pas une activité ou un hobby banal et contribue à faire fructifier une industrie génératrice de souffrance et de dommages environnementaux. Au niveau de l’individu, il est important de rappeler que le poisson, bien que n’attirant généralement que peu la compassion chez la plupart des gens, est un être animal sentient, social et intelligent qui a le désir et l’intérêt à vivre dans son milieu naturel plutôt qu’en captivité.
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Are You Ready? Here Is All the Data Facebook and Google Have on You
Dylan Curran – The Guardian,
9 Apr 2018
30 Mar 2018 – The harvesting of our personal details goes far beyond what many of us could imagine. So I braced myself and had a look.
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Luther King: “Beyond Vietnam”
Martin Luther King, Jr. | Stanford King Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Apr 2018
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Speech at Riverside Church, New York, Exactly One Year before He Was Killed on 4 Apr 1968
– 4 Apr 1967: I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi, to the National Liberation Front, to China or to Russia. Tonight I wish to speak to my fellow Americans… We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action.
Leonardo da Vinci (15 Apr 1452 – 2 May 1519)
Leonardo da Vinci – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Apr 2018
In 1466, at the age of fourteen, Leonardo was apprenticed to one of the most successful artists of his day, Andrea di Cione, known as Verrocchio. Verrocchio’s workshop was at the centre of the intellectual currents of Florence, assuring the young Leonardo of an education in the humanities. Other famous painters apprenticed or associated with the workshop include Ghirlandaio, Perugino, Botticelli, and Lorenzo di Credi.
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Greece, Austria, Portugal among Countries Not to Expel Russian Diplomats
Tyler Durden | ZeroHedge – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Apr 2018
More than 20 countries have aligned with the UK, expelling more than 100 diplomats. It is said to be the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history. However, some countries refuse to join this remarkable show of solidarity.
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Palestinians Hold Day of Mourning after 773 ‘Shot with Live Ammunition’
Hazem Balousha and Oliver Holmes – The Guardian,
2 Apr 2018
31 Mar 2018 – Gaza hospitals, running low on blood and overstretched by the huge number of wounded, were reeling after one of the enclave’s bloodiest days outside of open war, in which Israeli soldiers shot 773 people with live ammunition, according to the ministry of health.
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(Italiano) Segni di Guerra
Edward Curtin | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Apr 2018
Per Donald Trump stanno finendo i giorni per atteggiarsi ad anfitrione ora passivo ora aggressive di un gioco televisivo di reality. O licenzia tutti gli apprendisti lievemente esitanti a scatenare una guerra mondiale ben più vasta con una gragnuola di bombe, o sarà sostituito da uno che lo farà.
→ read full articleDisembodied Americans and the Crucifixion of the World
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Apr 2018
Contemplation on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, 30 Mar 2018
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The Banality of Evil: Diverting the Palestinian Struggle
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Apr 2018
28 Mar 2018 – The Banality of Evil: Language Entrapment or Political Malevolence? It seems a language game is being played. Or is it better understood as a political maneuver suffused with bad intentions?
→ read full articleFollowing Foucault: The Trail of the Fox
Prof. Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Apr 2018
A Kindle E Book on Amazon – by Howard Richards, with Catherine Odora Hoppers and Evelin Lindner, with a Foreword by Magnus Haavelsrud.‘I found this a truly fascinating work: timely, original, dynamic. There is such a huge secondary literature on Foucault; one is almost sceptical about new additions to the corpus. This, however, is certainly worth the read; partly because of the ways it also counters and contradicts many accepted ways of reading Foucault, especially on power.’
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The UN: Instrumental or Normative?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Mar 2018
Giving the veto power to the five permanent members of the Security Council almost assured that when ideological and geopolitical views clashed, which was virtually all the time, during the first 40 years after 1945, the UN would watch unfolding war-threatening events and violent encounters between ideological adversaries from the sidelines.
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The Health Benefits of Probiotics
Dr. Edward Group | Global Healing Center – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Mar 2018
Gut health is a balancing act. Stress, toxins, and a bad diet can upset the balance and throw your whole digestive system into complete chaos. Probiotics are the key to keeping the peace and pushing out the harmful organisms that throw everything off.
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Renaming the 1948 War: Partition, Dispossession, and Fragmentation–On the Politics of Language
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Mar 2018
24 Mar 2018 – Israel has been brilliant over the years in shaping and misdirecting the public discourse on the future of Palestine. Among its earliest achievement along these lines was the crucial propaganda victory by having the 1948 War known internationally as the ‘War of Independence.’ Such a designation erases the Palestinians from political consciousness, and distorts the deeper human and political consequences of the war. Language matters, especially in vital circumstances where there are winners and losers, a reality that applies above all to a war of displacement.
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East West Street, by Philippe Sands – Putting Genocide into Words
Lisa Appignanesi – The Guardian,
19 Mar 2018
“Lawyers should be the last group of people on earth who should be allowed the final word on genocides”. — UCL Professor Philippe Sand
→ read full articleFurther Signs of More War: A Most Dangerous Game
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Mar 2018
19 Mar 2018 – Donald Trump’s days of playing the passive/aggressive host of a reality-television game show are coming to an end… Today things are far more sophisticated and sinister, with a massive and unrelenting war on truth being waged by the Western corporate media, an arm of the CIA, capitalism’s invisible army. It is a twisted game show with deadly consequences. Its method is Janus-faced.
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US State Dept.: “We want elections in Venezuela now, unless we’re not guaranteed a win, in which case they’re illegitimate.”
Ricardo Vaz | Investig’Action – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Mar 2018
6 Mar 2018 – With presidential elections announced in Venezuela, the US State Department moved quickly to declare that the contest was illegitimate and that its results would not be recognised. But less than a year ago the tune was quite different, as a cursory look through State Department briefings and press releases will show.
→ read full articleThe Gulf Crisis Reassessed
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Mar 2018
12 Mar 2018 – The dysfunctionality of the Gulf Crisis, pitting a coalition of four countries, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt against tiny Qatar, is emblematic of the descent into multi-dimensional chaos, conflict, and coercion that afflicts much of the Middle East. Qatar may be tiny, but it is wealthy and has chosen for itself a somewhat independent path, and for this reason has experienced the wrath of the more reactionary forces operative in the region and world.
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A Debate on Peacemaking: Ending Occupation or Apartheid?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Mar 2018
9 Mar 2018 – The core disagreement is whether to retain the emphasis on ending occupation as still the best, and some say, the only path to peace, and my view that a sustainable peace can only be obtained by a process of eliminating the apartheid structure by which Israel currently subjugates the Palestinian people as a whole.
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The Dirty Secret of How France Exterminates Its Dolphins
Sea Shepherd News – TRANSCEND Media Service~,
12 Mar 2018
Sea Shepherd France President Lamya Essemlali launches Operation Dolphin By-Catch to warn the public about the fate of dolphins along the French coast.
→ read full articleAddressing Violence and Extremism: The Importance of Terminology
Abbas Aroua | Cordoba Foundation of Geneva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Mar 2018
Jan 2018 – In recent years, “countering/combating violent extremism” or “preventing violent extremism” has become a must in most peace building programs. Yet, the fast-growing interest in this topic belies the fundamental problem of the lack of a clear and broadly accepted definition of the VE concept. This paper aims to contribute to a more accurate definition of the terms used in the context of extremism and violence, to attempt a descriptive model of the extremization process, and to discuss the various approaches to de-extremization.
→ read full articleBook Launch: Revisiting the Vietnam War-The Views and Interpretations of Richard Falk, edited by Stefan Andersson
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Mar 2018
Revisiting the Vietnam War: The Views and Interpretations of Richard Falk, edited by Stefan Andersson, Cambridge University Press, 2017 – Why the Legal and Political Debate on the Vietnam War Still Matters
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Genocide: Why We Let It Happen | Full Panel Discussion
Oxford Union – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Mar 2018
Genocide leaves the darkest stain on the conscience of humanity, yet today we are again witnessing international passivity in the face of the genocide in Myanmar. Why have we failed to learn our lesson from these atrocities and why do we allow this stain on our conscience to continue to grow?
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(Italiano) Pace e giustizia per il popolo Palestinese: una conversazione
Richard Falk | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Mar 2018
La crisi umanitaria a Gaza è entrata nell’11° anno di un assedio crippling di Israele che rende le condizioni di vita dei palestinesi via via più complicate. Il blocco di quella che si definisce popolarmente “la prigione all’aperto più grande al mondo” vuol dire disoccupazione crescente, accesso intermittente ad acqua pura, un’economia sballata e infrastrutture carenti e mancanza di fondi che rendono la popolazione di due milioni vulnerabile alle forti piogge e a fenomeni meteorologici estremi.
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NGO Crimes Go Far Beyond Oxfam
The Guardian – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Feb 2018
Figures for earthquake relief range from $10bn to $13.4bn. Some of us who visited Haiti have seen little or no sign of that money, write activists.
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Antifa (Music Video of the Week)
Ministry | Nuclear Blast Records – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Feb 2018
Ministry’s official music video from the new album ‘AmeriKKKant’.
→ read full articleAmerica’s ‘Liberalism’ & Other Inhumane Styles of Governance at Home and Internationally
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Feb 2018
25 Feb 2018 – With apologies for this long post, which attempts to situate the struggle for an ethically and ecologically viable political future for the United States and the world in the overheated preoccupation with Trump and Trumpism, which is itself a distraction from the species challenges confronting the whole of humanity at the present time. Many of us, and I include myself, have allowed the side show to become the main attraction, which is itself a reason for struggle against the enveloping darkness.
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The Polar Boom: Corporations Flock to Melting Arctic for Oil and Trade Routes
Baher Kamal | Toward Freedom – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Feb 2018
16 Feb2018 — As the global demand for fossil fuels rises and the Arctic sea ice continues to melt, multinational corporations and governments are deepening efforts to expand oil exploration and trade routes in the region. While corporations see a profit, environmentalists see a crisis.
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Why the Experience of Ahed Tamimi Matters So Much
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Feb 2018
13 Feb 2018 – It is now known by virtually everyone that a 16-year-old girl, now 17, named Ahed Tamimi, confronted Israeli soldiers on her family’s land shortly after her cousin, Mohammed, was shot in the face with a rubber bullet, causing a coma. The video of her actions has gone viral, showing the world a courageous young woman engaging in nonviolent acts of resistance, and then a day later in the middle of the night being arrested in her home and then charged with a series of crimes.
→ read full articleThe Coming Wars to End All Wars
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Feb 2018
24 Feb 2018 – The Trump and Netanyahu governments have a problem: How to start a greatly expanded Middle-Eastern war without having a justifiable reason for one. No doubt they are working hard to solve this urgent problem. If they can’t find a “justification” (which they can’t), they will have to create one (which they will). Or perhaps they will find what they have already created.
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Where to Resist?
Richard Rubenstein – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Feb 2018
“I hear a lot from my students about ‘walking the talk,’” Eqbal Ahmad, a Pakistani scholar and anti-war activist said. “But I tell them that you can’t walk the talk without first having the talk. First you decide what’s real and what’s right; then you act on the basis of that understanding. Finally, the results of your action can force you to re-define what’s real and what’s right. That is what we call praxis.”
→ read full articleIsrael Claims to Be a Jewish State and a Democratic State: Legalism vs Justice
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Feb 2018
11 Feb 2018 – The book is an important contribution to an understanding of two dimensions of the Palestinian experience within the state of Israel: first, the reliance on law to ‘legalize’ discrimination, and the accompanying denial of fundamental rights that has resulted; secondly, to develop a distinct Israeli jurisprudence that seeks to legitimize ‘ethnocracy,’ yet disguise this reality by claiming that the nationality laws and regulations distinguishing Jews and non-Jews do not invalidate Israeli claims to be a democracy.
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Peace and Justice for the Palestinian People: a Conversation
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Feb 2018
This is a modified text of an interview conversation with Khourosh Ziabari, initially published on the website of the Organization for Defending Victims of Violence on February 4, 2018.
→ read full articleTry Learning Not to Ride a Bicycle So We Can Save the World
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Feb 2018
“Einstein discovered a law of physical change: the way to convert a single particle of matter into enormous physical energy. Might there not also be, as Gandhi suggested, an equally incredible and undiscovered law of spiritual change, whereby a single person or small community of persons could be converted into an enormous spiritual energy capable of transforming a society and a world? I believe that there is.”
→ read full article(Français) Que la solution à deux États meure de mort naturelle!
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – Investig’Action,
5 Feb 2018
30 Jan 2018 – Il soutient que les défenseurs sincères de la paix entre les Israéliens et les Palestiniens devraient accorder la priorité à combattre l’apartheid plutôt que de vouloir ranimer un « processus de paix » style Oslo (toujours une imposture) ou de proclamer que l’objectif d’une Palestine indépendante et souveraine est réalisable sans d’abord démanteler les structures d’apartheid, qui asservissent le peuple palestinien dans son ensemble, afin de préserver l’exigence sioniste qui veut qu’Israël soit l’état du peuple juif (plutôt que de lui procurer un foyer à l’intérieur d’un État légitime et normal dont les fondements sont l’égalité ethnique et religieuse, les droits de l’homme, et les principes laïcs.
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For Myanmar’s Army, Ethnic Bloodletting Is Key to Power and Riches
Richard C. Paddock – The New York Times,
5 Feb 2018
27 Jan 2018 – Myanmar’s army was born in blood 76 years ago and has been shedding it ever since. Its founders, known as the Thirty Comrades, established the army in 1941 with a ghoulish ceremony in Bangkok, where they drew each other’s blood with a single syringe, mixed it in a silver bowl and drank it to seal their vow of loyalty. It has spent the past seven decades warring with its own people.
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The Ultimate Guide to Butterflies & How to Prevent Their Decline
Clive Harris | DIY Garden! – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Feb 2018
15 Jan 2018 – Butterflies and moths have been around for millions of years. They used to be a common sight in gardens, but numbers have declined since the 1940s along with our other native wildlife species such as bees and hedgehogs.
→ read full articleDenying the Obvious: Leftists and Crimestop
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Servivce,
5 Feb 2018
3 Feb 2018 – It is well known that effective propaganda works through slow, imperceptible repetition. “The slow building up of reflexes and myths” is the way Jacques Ellul put it in his classic, Propaganda. This works through commission and omission.
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A Rare Glimpse into the Inner Workings of American Empire in the Middle East
Edward Hunt – MintPress News,
29 Jan 2018
22 Jan 2018 – Four former U.S. diplomats provided remarkably candid commentary on recent U.S. involvement in the Middle East, revealing that it is still about oil and regional dominance.
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I Have a Right (Music Video of the Week)
Sonata Arctica | Nuclear Blast Records – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jan 2018
“A song about how we should not pass the burden we get from the past generation on the shoulders of our future offspring. Children’s rights subject. Not the most metal subject ever, I suppose, but then again I think it fits our band well and is pretty universal.” — Tony Kakko, song’s author
→ read full articleA Genuine Actor: Francesco Serpico
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jan 2018
When this honest cop was lying in a pool of his own blood on the night of February 3, 1971, having been shot in the face in a set-up carried out by fellow cops, Frank Serpico heard a voice that said, “It’s all a lie.” In that moment as he fought for his life, he realized a truth he had previously sensed but never fully grasped in its awful reality.
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Animals: Endowed with Rights
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jan 2018
28 Jan 2018 – Whether one acknowledges the dignity of animals depends on that person’s paradigm (vision of the world and values). Two paradigms have been handed down to us. The first understands the human being as part of nature. The second paradigm starts with the idea that the human being is the apex of evolution, and that all things are at his disposal.
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The Earth’s Future Will Not Come from Heaven
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jan 2018
Even though it is based on the best scientific minds that have been studying the universe, the situation of planet Earth and her eventual collapse, or qualitative leap to another level of reality, for almost a century, it has not penetrated into either the collective consciousness or the major academic centers.
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Thyroid Gland: Functions, Symptoms, Diet, and Natural Support
Dr. Edward Group | Global Healing Center – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jan 2018
The thyroid is a small, butterfly-shaped gland located at the front of your neck, sort of like an internal bowtie. Part of the endocrine system, your thyroid produces and secretes the hormones T4 and T3. These essential hormones regulate growth, development, and metabolism.
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Gilad Atzmon on ‘Jew, Judaism, Jewishness’
Interview with Bill Alford – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jan 2018
The author of the runaway best seller, The Wandering Who?, discusses the three Jewish ID Categories: Religious Jew, Born a Jew, and Politicized Jew–aka Jewishness. What Is Jewishness and what are the relationships between Jews, Judaism, Zionism and Jewishness?
→ read full articleWhy the United Nations Matters (even for the Palestinians)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jan 2018
Despite understandable degrees of disillusionment, people of good will dedicated to UN ideals should not give up on the Organization or its potentiality, but work harder to make the UN come closer to fulfilling its original promise, needed now more than ever. Justice for the Palestinian people, however long deferred, remains the defining moral prism by which to assess the shifting balance between achieving global justice and bowing to the whims of geopolitics at the UN and elsewhere.
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Is Whistleblowing Worth Prison or a Life in Exile? Edward Snowden Talks to Daniel Ellsberg
Edward Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg and Ewen MacAskill – The Guardian,
22 Jan 2018
The two most famous whistleblowers in modern history discuss Steven Spielberg’s new film, The Post, about Ellsberg’s leaking of the Pentagon Papers, the personal cost of what they did – and if they’d advise anybody to follow in their footsteps.
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The 10 Companies That Dominate the Global Arms Trade
Jeff Desjardins | Visual Capitalist – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jan 2018
12 Jan 2018 – While it is common knowledge that the United States plays a big role in the global arms trade, the numbers are still quite astounding. Of the top ten companies by sales, firms based in the U.S. make up seven of them. Whether it is guns, tanks, jets, missiles, or ships that are on your shopping list, there is a supplier for any weapon your country desires.
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The Kids the World Forgot
Ken Hannaford-Ricardi | Voices for Creative Nonviolence – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jan 2018
20 Jan 2018 – I spent much of yesterday with some kids the world forgot. Young, remarkably sturdy and resilient, they can often be naïve and almost willfully gullible. They inhabit a world that delights in tripping them up and watching them fall. They are Kabul’s Street Kids.
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How the Heroin Trade Explains the US-UK Failure in Afghanistan
Alfred W McCoy – The Guardian,
15 Jan 2018
9 Jan 2018 – After fighting the longest war in its history, the US stands at the brink of defeat in Afghanistan. How could this be possible? After 16 years and $1tn spent, there is no end to the fighting – but western intervention has resulted in Afghanistan becoming the world’s first true narco-state.
→ read full articleLet the Two-State Solution Die a Natural Death
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jan 2018
7 Jan 2018 – The proper priority for genuine advocates of peace between Israelis and Palestinians should be centered around apartheid rather than be devoted to reviving an Oslo style ‘peace process’ (always a sham) or proclaiming the goal of an independent and sovereign Palestine as attainable without first dismantling the apartheid structures that subjugate the Palestinian people as a whole so as to maintain the Zionist insistence on Israel as the state of the Jewish people.
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Death at the Gate in Afghanistan
Ken Hannaford-Ricardi | Voices for Creative Nonviolence – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jan 2018
Kabul, January 2017 – The insurgents whose only weapon is violence are clearly gaining sway here, but the Afghan Peace Volunteers are adamant in their knowledge that violence solves nothing. They struggle daily to practice and teach nonviolence, which their charter maintains “is a [personal] value and a way of living, relating, and acting,” a positive force for change in our own lives and in the life of our planet.
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To Honor Albert Camus on the Day He Died: January 4, 1960
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jan 2018
Albert Camus was criticized by the right, left, and center. His allegiance was to truth, not ideologies. He opposed state murder, terrorism, and warfare from all quarters. An artistic anarchist with a passionate spiritual hunger, an austere and moral Don Juan, this sensual man of conscience and honor earned his reputation by a lifelong literary meditation on death in all its guises.
→ read full articleDesigning a Miracle to Save South Africa
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jan 2018
3 Jan 2018 – This article is an offer of new ideas, designed to be food for thought for the first group, the questers; to question the certainties of the second group, those on either the right or the left or in the centre who believe the right path is known but just not followed; and to inspire hope and clarity in the third group, those whose emotions are deep but whose thoughts are muddled and incoherent.
→ read full article(Português) Frei Betto: ANO NOVO, VIDA NOVA
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jan 2018
30 dez 2017 – Ler Frei Betto seja como analista social, escritor e homem espiritual é sempre um aprendizado. Publico este pequeno texto porque me identifico com ele. É bem isso que desejo a tantos que me seguem, ora com críticas severas,ora com benevolência. Não importa. O importante é que estejamos vivos e exerçamos a liberdade com a responsabilidade que cada um sente que pode exercer.
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Military Revealed as Top Funder of Gene Drives
Third World Network – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jan 2018
6 Dec 2017 — Gates Foundation Paid $1.6 Million to Influence UN on Gene Drives – Over1,200 emails released under open records requests reveal that the U.S. military is now the top funder and influencer behind a controversial genetic extinction technology known as “gene drives” – pumping $100 million into the field.
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North Korea and South Korea Are Threatening to Seek Peace
William Boardman - Reader Supported News,
8 Jan 2018
6 Jan 2018 – Korean Détente Puts Decades of Failed, Corrupt US Policy at Risk – A few gestures of mutual respect between North Korea and South Korea during the first week of January are the best signs of sanity there in decades.
→ read full articleEndings and Beginnings: A Commentary on 2017 to 2018
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jan 2018
1 Jan 2018 – The bad news is that the world crisis worsened during 2017, largely due to the inept and anachronistic orientation exhibited by the Trump presidency. His influence was an immense distraction from facing challenges that required urgent and creative national and global attention, including climate change, biodiversity, global migration, Middle East turmoil, nuclearism, and scandalous levels of income and wealth inequalities.
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Welcome to Kabul
Ken Hannaford-Ricardi | Voices for Creative Nonviolence – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jan 2018
31 Dec 2017 – It is a dream come true being back among friends in Kabul! Streams of dented Toyotas (They are all Toyotas!) with windscreens cracked like bolts of lightning still jockey for position on roads where traffic lights and common sense hold little sway.
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Mapping a World from Hell: 76 Countries Are Now Involved in Washington’s War on Terror
Tom Engelhardt – TomDispatch,
8 Jan 2018
4 Jan 2018 – A glance at the map tells you that the war on terror, an increasingly complex set of intertwined conflicts, is now a remarkably global phenomenon.
→ read full articleReligion – A Source of Conflict or the Path to Peace? Its Role in Preventing Violence
Abbas Aroua | Cordoba Foundation of Geneva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jan 2018
A constant and widespread communication process on religious reflection, inclusion and participation should prevail as a showpiece for conflict prevention, resolution and resilience. Doing good and promoting peaceful behaviour is not enough. Extensive inclusive participation and communication on the subject matter must be undertaken in order to provide a counter-weight to toxic conversations, the spreading of violence and extremism.
→ read full articleTrump, the UN, and the Future of Jerusalem
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jan 2018
31 Dec 2017 – The wider implications of the UN reaction to Trump’s Dec 6 decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and to follow this by relocating the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
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Mediation Perspectives: Peace, Conflict and Mediation in Islam
Abbas Aroua | Cordoba Foundation of Geneva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Dec 2017
Religions promote peace and provide moral guidance and legal injunctions to restrict and moderate the use of violence. Followers of a religion can comply with these guidelines or transgress against them as such followers are neither angels nor devils. Instead, they are human beings with all the complex aspirations to peace and temptations to violence that the human condition entails. In that respect, Islam is no exception.
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“Friendship Party” for Countries That Supported US in UN Israel Vote
Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Dec 2017
22 Dec 2017 – Though at first glance it sounds straight out of The Onion, Nikki Haley has formally invited the 64 countries who either voted ‘against’ or abstained (or just didn’t show up) for Thursday’s UN General Assembly vote on the Jerusalem resolution to a “friendship” party. Hours after Haley tweeted “We appreciate these countries for not falling to the irresponsible ways of the UN.”
→ read full articleThe Jerusalem Votes at the UN
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Dec 2017
23 Dec 2017 – What discussions gloss over is the degree to which issues of substance prevailed over matters of geopolitical alignment. Not one of America’s closest allies (UK, France, Germany, and Japan) heeded the arguments of Haley and Trump. Every important country in the world backed the GA Resolution on Dec 21 regardless of geography or political orientation (China, Russia, India, Brazil, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran).
→ read full articleDemocracy, Development, and Reputation: Vietnam, Turkey, and International Liberalism
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Dec 2017
The cases of Vietnam and Turkey strongly support the central claim here that national reputations of legitimacy should rest on a comprehensive assessment of material, ethical, and spiritual wellbeing of individuals and communities, and no longer be a reflection of geopolitical agendas (with respect to Turkey) and ideological arrogance (with respect to Vietnam).
→ read full articleJerusalem Is (Is Not) the Capital of Israel
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Dec 2017
10 Dec 2017 – Donald Trump: “Israel is the only state in the world that is not allowed to locate its capital in a national city of its choice.” It seems like an innocent enough proclamation, and even accurate pushback against global double standards, until one considers the political, moral, and legal dimensions of the actual situation.
→ read full articleAn Advent Calendar to Beat the Devil
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Dec 2017
The deeper problems connected with advertising come less from the unscrupulousness of our ‘deceivers’ than from our pleasure in being deceived, less from the desire to seduce than from the desire to be seduced. The Graphic revolution has produced new categories of experience. They are no longer simply classifiable by the old common sense tests of true or false. At no time is this more evident than in the months leading up to Christmas and the holidays.
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(Français) Amérique latine : des pouvoirs et des luttes
Bernard Duterme | CETRI Centre Tricontinental – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Dec 2017
Décembre 2017 – Entre paix et violence, tournant à gauche puis à droite, les reconfigurations à l’œuvre en Amérique latine détonnent. Contention, répression, dilution… les luttes « progressistes » n’en ont pas fini pour autant de hanter le continent des inégalités extrêmes. Face à la poussée « extractiviste », la protestation ne s’est pas unifiée : appels à la redistribution des bénéfices d’un côté, au respect de l’environnement et des territoires de l’autre.
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Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Dec 2017
15 Dec 2017 – Critics, including myself, regard the initiative as a slap at the Palestinians and a confirmation of Trump’s disregard of international law and morality, and the authority of the UN. The status of Jerusalem is a focal point for the tension between the old geopolitics of hard power realism and the normative geopolitics of soft power new realism.
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(Français) La R2P comme instrument d’agression
Edward S. Herman | Investig’Action – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Dec 2017
27 Nov 2017 – Avec cet article fondamental sur les interventions dites humanitaires, Investig’Action souhaite rendre hommage à Edward S. Herman, décédé le 11 novembre. Avec Chomsky, il avait signé un ouvrage majeur de l’analyse critique des médias, Fabriquer un consentement. Investig’Action va d’ailleurs rééditer ce livre en juin 2018*. Dans cet article, Herman expose avec brio comment les grandes puissances instrumentalisent les concepts de « Responsabilité de protéger » et d’« Intervention humanitaire » pour justifier des guerres totalement illégales au regard du droit international.
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