Articles by ICH

We found 2433 results.


Iceland’s Capital Bans All Israeli Products
Itamar Eichner – Ynet News, 21 Sep 2015

Reykjavik has passed a resolution boycotting Israeli-made goods, in protest of Israel’s ‘racist apartheid policy’ towards the Palestinians.

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The Horrifying Syrian Dilemma Persists
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Sep 2015

What this prolonged dilemma in the face of mass atrocity shows is the deficiency of state-centric world order if appraised from the perspective of human wellbeing rather than national interests. The failures in Syria are not just the shortcomings of diplomacy and manipulations of geopolitics, but also a severe mismatch between structures and capabilities of global authority and the vulnerabilities of the peoples of the world.

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Good Question
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Sep 2015

Someone who farms is a farmer.

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Netherlands Bans Wild Animals in Circuses
Amanda Froelich, True Activist – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Sep 2015

It is now illegal for wild animals such as lions, bears, elephants and giraffes to be used in circuses in the Netherlands! On Sep 15, 2015 a ban on wild animals in circuses officially went into effect.

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Outlook India: Interview on ‘Digital India’ & PM Narendra Modi
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Sep 2015

I am posting here an interview with the magazine OUTLOOK INDIA associated with an open letter that was signed by more than 100 Indian scholars and intellectuals, as well as those such as myself with a long research and human interest in India, expressing concern about the forthcoming visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Silicon Valley to promote his vision of ‘Digital India.’

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The Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki – The Iran Agreement in Perspective (4)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Sep 2015

This nuclear agreement reflects ‘where we are’ in dealing with global crises, not ‘where we should be.’ If we value international law, global justice, and indeed the future of the human species, then the distinction between the realm of the ‘feasible’ and the realm of the ‘desirable’ deserves energetic critical exposure by all of us who fancy ourselves as citizen pilgrims.

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Reich and the Myth of a Moral Capitalism
Richard Becker - Liberation, 14 Sep 2015

6 Sep 2015 – In a Sept. 5 blog, former Secretary of Labor and liberal commentator Robert Reich, asks, “What Happened to the Moral Center of American Capitalism?” It’s not satire. The only way to put an end to capitalist excesses is to put an end to the system itself.

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Children
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Sep 2015

We spend the first 2 years of children’s life teaching them to walk and talk.

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Israel’s Likud Troika: Burying the Oslo ‘Peace Process’
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Sep 2015

12 Sep 2015 – Israel’s relentless accumulation of territorial facts on the ground some years ago doomed the peace process associated with the Oslo Framework of Principles adopted in 1993. It became increasingly difficult to envisage an Israeli willingness to dismantle settlements and road network or remove the separation barrier, and without such steps there could never be achieved an independent and viable Palestinian state.

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Sanctioned Terrorism
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich – Foreign Policy Journal, 14 Sep 2015

Economic Sanctions Are a Form of Terrorism – Terrorism is “viewed as a method of violence in which civilians are targeted with the objective of forcing a perceived enemy into submission by creating fear, demoralization, and political friction in the population under attack.

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‘Yemen after Five Months Looks Like Syria after Five Years’
Michael Avender, CODEPink – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Sep 2015

The Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen: How the Saudi-Led Coalition and the US Government Guarantee No Visible End to the War

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Bishop Desmond Tutu
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Sep 2015

In 1984 he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent struggle against apartheid. In 1995, one year after the first democratic elections in which all South Africans were allowed to participate, President Nelson Mandela appointed Bishop Tutu to head the 17-member South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which exposed atrocities committed by all sides during the long apartheid regime.

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The Sympathetic Skeptic: Luis Cabrera’s Interview with Richard Falk On Behalf Of the World Government Research Network
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Sep 2015

12 Sep 2015 – The following interview was conducted by Professor Luis Cabrera, a political theorist on the faculty of Griffith University in Brisbane Australia. Cabrera has written notable books on themes of world government and global integration.

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By Accident
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Sep 2015

A car skidded on wet pavement and struck a light pole.

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(Deutsch) Der „unsichtbare“ Krieg gegen den IS – Ein Blick auf die Folgen
Michael Haid - Informationsstelle Militarisierung, 7 Sep 2015

25. August 2015 – Der Krieg aus der Luft mit Kampfflugzeugen, Hubschraubern, Marschflugkörpern oder Drohnen für Angriffe auf Einzelpersonen oder Personengruppen sowie als Kampfunterstützung für am Boden eingesetzte eigene Einheiten oder für verbündete Kriegsparteien scheint in den vergangenen Jahren an Bedeutung gewonnen zu haben.

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Twenty-six Things about the Islamic State (ISIL) that Obama Does Not Want You to Know About
Prof Michel Chossudovsky - Global Research, 7 Sep 2015

The US led war against the Islamic State is a big lie. Going after”Islamic terrorists” is used to justify a military agenda. The Islamic State is a creation of US intelligence. Washington’s “Counter-terrorism Agenda” in Iraq & Syria consists in supporting the Terrorists.

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The Origins of Peace Research
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Sep 2015

Johan Galtung, born 1930, refused to do military service in Norway. He was sentenced to six months in prison in winter 1954-55. While in prison, he completed his first book, “Gandhi’s Political Ethics”, together with his mentor, the philosopher Arne Naess.

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The Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Naasaki – Gorbachev’s Response (3)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Sep 2015

Of course, Gorbachev is appreciated in the West mainly as having presided over a political process that led to the nonviolent ending of the Cold War, the peaceful liberation of Eastern Europe, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet he was also perhaps the only head of an important sovereign state…

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The Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki (2)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 31 Aug 2015

This is a legal issue, as this book makes clear, but it is also a moral issue, a security issue and, ultimately, a spiritual issue. Humankind must step back from the nuclear abyss now, before it is too late.

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Breast Fed
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 31 Aug 2015

A woman and a baby came into the doctor’s office. She was told to go into the room and wait for the doctor.

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The Camera Is Mightier Than the Sword
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 31 Aug 2015

From 1936-79, Nicaragua was ruled by the corrupt Somoza family, which owned more than half of Nicaragua’s land. In the 1970s, the Sandinista guerrilla movement fought against the Somoza dictatorship.

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(Français) Le véritable but de la « thérapie de choc » en Grèce
Michel Collon, Investig’Action – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Aug 2015

12,5 millions d’Allemands vivent sous le seuil de pauvreté. Malgré ce bilan pitoyable, Angela Merkel prétend imposer le « modèle allemand » au monde entier. L’exemple de l’Allemagne.

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Why Congress Must Support the Nuclear Agreement with Iran
Akbar Ganji & Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Aug 2015

Akbar Ganji is an important human rights defender who spent several years for his efforts in an Iranian jail. He is a leading commentator on Iranian affairs and recipient of an International Press Association World Press Hero award. Our article stresses the critical importance of obtaining American approval of the nuclear agreement.

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Peace Research Is Value-Oriented
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Aug 2015

Imagine you are sick and visit a doctor. He takes your temperature, pulse, listens to your lungs and looks at your tongue. Then he tells you, “You have a very interesting disease, I will write it up in my next scientific publication.” You ask, “But don’t you have a cure for me?” The doctor protests, “Oh no, I am objective! I simply observe, I do not intervene.”

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The Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Aug 2015

The time is now ripe for the total de-linkage of nonproliferation from disarmament with respect to nuclear weapons policy. Without such a de-linkage false consciousness and confusion are unavoidable. It is time to generate populist impatience with the refusal of decades by government establishment to act on the basis of reason, ethics, and prudence.

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Among Geniuses
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Aug 2015

Albert Einstein met a colleague on the campus of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

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The Anarchist Impulse
Richard Swift – New Internationalist Magazine, 24 Aug 2015

The other great historic alternative to capitalism has been anarchism. Often dismissed as a dirty word, its influence ebbs and flows but its libertarian principles remain profoundly influential.

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Humor Defeating the Law about Conscientious Objectors
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Aug 2015

When [TRANSCEND member] Jorgen Johansen from Norway (born 1956) was 18, he received a letter requesting that he join the army. He wrote back that he would not do so, as a conscientious objector to military service. He was sentenced to 16 months in prison, the standard Norwegian punishment at that time for refusing military service.

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Living in the 21st Century
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Aug 2015

A confessional to the extent of acknowledging my own surroundings of digital devices that while liberating in some respects are repressive in others. To sustain our freedom under these ‘postmodern’ conditions requires the rechristening of meditative intelligence (as distinct from the instrumental rationality that acted as wet nurse of the ‘modern.’

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Scotland Completely Bans GMO Crops
Amanda Froelich, True Activist – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Aug 2015

10 Aug 2015 – Joining a growing number of nations concerned about the effects GMO’s pose, Scotland just banned the cultivation of genetically modified crops. The country’s Rural Affairs Secretary, Richard Lochhead, announced last week that the clean, green nation will no longer be permitting GM crops to be grown within its borders.

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How Switzerland Ended Its Involvement in War
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Aug 2015

For the first 200 years of its history, Switzerland was involved in many wars, first to defend itself against repeated attempts by the German emperor to reconquer the cantons that had declared themselves independent in 1291, and later to acquire more territory. Two events brought an end to this involvement in war.

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Wartime Journalism: Mohammed Omer on Gaza
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Aug 2015

Omer’s prior reporting earned him the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2007, recognizing the excellence of his reportage on Gaza (‘a voice for the voiceless’). After receiving the award in The Netherlands, Omer on his return home received a brutal reception at the Gaza border by Israeli security guards being beaten so severely as to endure serious injury that required specialized surgery.

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How to Live Wisely
Richard J. Light – The New York Times, 10 Aug 2015

Imagine you are Dean for a Day. What is one actionable change you would implement to enhance the college experience on campus? I have asked students this question for years. The answers can be eye-opening. A few years ago, the responses began to move away from “tweak the history course” or “change the ways labs are structured.” A different commentary, about learning to live wisely, has emerged.

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Truthful
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Aug 2015

Someone was walking with the devil. The person in front of them bent down and picked something up.

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Pondering Jonathan Pollard’s Release
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Aug 2015

Loyalty to the state continues to be the north star of conventional patriotism. For the citizen pilgrim solidarity with an emergent eco-humanist insurgency is the keystone of 21st century political community and ethical responsibility deserving precedence when in conflict with nationalist and tribal affinities.

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Eco-Insurgency, Tribal Vision, and Ultra-Nationalist Geopolitics
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Aug 2015

Thinking hopefully, the Anthropocene Age may soon witness the first species insurgency against the eco-tyrannical elites of the world, who have become the suicidal guardians of our neoliberal market forces joined in an unbreakable alliance with dominant forces of tribalism and nationalism. In moments of despair, the end-time hegemony of this unbreakable alliance are likely to retain control of species destiny.

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Some Charity
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Aug 2015

After the church service a little boy told the pastor, “When I grow up, I’m going to give you some money.”

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The Tiger’s Whisker
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Aug 2015

A Korean Folktale – A woman came to seek help from a famous herbalist.

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Alliance Blackmail: Israel’s Opposition to the Iran Nuclear Agreement
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jul 2015

JCPOA imposes more restrictions on Iranian enrichment capabilities and stockpiles, and on inspection and monitoring of compliance, than has been imposed on any country in the course of the entire nuclear era. Left out of consideration altogether was the nuclear weapons arsenal of Israel acquired with Western complicity and by covert means, as well as through operations outside the Nonproliferation Treaty regime, which is used to tie Iran’s hands and feet.

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Turning Enemies into Allies
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jul 2015

At the 1919 Versailles peace conference after World War I, the French Prime Minister Georges Clémenceau insisted that Germany be held solely responsible for starting World War I, and be forced to pay huge reparations over the next fifty years, to bring Germany to its knees, so that it would never be able again to build up its industrial capacity and become a military threat to its neighbors.

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Accuracy
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jul 2015

The following joke was circulating in Moscow in 1998:

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How Goldman Sachs Profited from the Greek Debt Crisis
Robert B. Reich – The Nation, 20 Jul 2015

The investment bank made millions by helping to hide the true extent of the debt, and in the process almost doubled it.

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Why Greece Should Leave the Euro Zone
Michael R. Strain – The Washington Post, 20 Jul 2015

Sure, there would be short-term pain. But in the long term, the euro is an economic mistake. And leave today Greece should, beginning the painful work of rebuilding an economy and crafting public policies over which it has primary control, hopefully achieving more success than it has in the past.

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Malaysia Just Passed a New, Stricter Welfare Act for Animals
Amanda Froelich, True Activist – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

On Tuesday [14 Jul 2015], the Malaysian government passed into law a new animal welfare act that imposes harsher penalties for those torturing or neglecting animals in order to reduce the number of crimes against animals in the country.

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An Active Peace Policy
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

In the nuclear age, we can no longer afford to wait until war breaks out and then react with military force. We must pursue an active peace policy that seeks to avoid or resolve conflicts long before they lead to war.

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On Life
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

A minister, a priest and a rabbi were discussing when life begins.

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Call for Sanity on 60th Anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto
Emanuel Pastreich – Foreign Policy In Focus, 13 Jul 2015

July 9, 2015 – Sixty years after Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell issued their manifesto about the growing threat of world war, the globe continues to face the prospect of nuclear annihilation — coupled with the looming threat of climate change.

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Women Preventing War
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

In 1905, Norway declared its independence from Sweden. Norwegian and Swedish troops faced each other along the border, ready to fight.

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Hawaii Just Banned Plastic Bags at Grocery Checkouts
Amanda Froelich, True Activist – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

Hawaii is the first US state to ban plastic bags from being distributed at grocery store checkouts.

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New Study Concludes Fruit Helps Your Body Burn Stored Fat
Amanda Froelich, True Activist – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

2-4 fresh servings of fruit per day can help your body convert ‘bad’ fat into ‘good’ fat.

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UN Gaza Report Part I: War Crimes during Israel’s 51-Day Assault on Gaza
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

Exactly a year ago, for 51 days between July 7 and August 26 Israel carried out its third major military assault on Gaza in the past six years. This last one, code named Operation Protective Edge, was the most vicious, killing 2,251 Palestinians, of which 1,462 were civilians, and included 299 women and 551 children, as well as injuring 11,231, a number that includes 3,436 children, 10% of whom have permanent disabilities, and another 1,500 have been orphaned.

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UN Gaza Report Part II: Israel’s Counterinsuurgency Apologist, Colonel Richard Kemp
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

On June 25, 2015 the New York Times published an opinion piece by Kemp assessing the UN Report. What I find scandalous and perverse on the part of this self-claiming authoritative media source, is to publish such a harsh and partisan dismissal of a prudent and overly balanced report without any kind of offsetting piece.

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Reading Claudia Rankine on Race
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

What Claudia Rankine shares and teaches is that every African American citizen must live with the existential concreteness of racism while even the most liberal of American white citizens live with only an abstract awareness of their own unconscious racism or, at best, their rather detached empathy with the historical victimization of our African American co-citizens.

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A New Mode of Warfare: The Greek Debt Crisis and Crashing Markets
Michael Hudson - CounterPunch, 6 Jul 2015

I’m in Germany now and have heard from Germans that the Greeks are lazy and don’t pay taxes. There is little recognition that what they call “the Greeks” are really the oligarchs. They have gained control of the old coalition Pasok/New Democracy parties, avoided paying taxes, avoided being prosecuted (New Democracy refused to act on the “Lagarde List” of tax evaders with nearly € 50 billion in Swiss bank accounts), orchestrated insider dealings to privatize infrastructure at corrupt prices, and used their banks as vehicles for capital flight and insider lending.

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In Church
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

During the sermon, a little boy kept moving in his seat and making noises.

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Dare to Change
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

A bird barely survived in a nest on a lonely tree on a vast deserted plain.

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(Deutsch) Ein missglücktes anarchistisches Farbenspiel
Sebastian Kalicha , Graswurzelrevolution – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

Schwarz-Weiß – die Farben des gewaltfreien Anarchismus?

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Gifts for Mom
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Jun 2015

Four brothers left home for college, and they became successful doctors and lawyers and prospered.

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Majority Rule
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Jun 2015

A Frenchman arrives on a South Sea island.

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Greed
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Jun 2015

An antique dealer used to visit farms in his area to try to find valuable old furniture, and buy it cheap.

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The Undisclosed Second Paradox in Michael Walzer’s ‘The Paradox of Liberation’
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Jun 2015

My contention is that Walzer’s paradox dissolves as soon as the claim to categorize Zionism as a mode of ‘national liberation’ is deconstructed while the second paradox, which dwells on the moral and political interplay of what transpires when the liberation of the self is organically linked to the dispossession of the other, remains to be explained.

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Ecuador Just Set the World Record for Reforestation!
Amanda Froelich, True Activist – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Jun 2015

19 May 2015 – More than 45,000 people came together last weekend and set the Guinness World Record for single-day reforestation efforts.

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The Polio Vaccine: A Global Scourge Still Threatening Humanity
Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null - Global Research, 22 Jun 2015

This horribly simplistic belief that polio and smallpox are exemplary models for all other vaccines is both naïve and dangerous. Vaccinology does not follow a one-size-fits-all theory. Among some of the more alarming discoveries since the discovery of the SV40 in Salk’s and Sabin’s vaccines and its carcinogenic footprint in millions today are:

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Forgot
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Jun 2015

A weed scientist goes into a shop.

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An Immodest Wish
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Jun 2015

A wealthy maharajah was so delighted with the game of chess that he offered the inventor of the game anything in his realm that he might wish.

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Duality
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Jun 2015

There are 10 kinds of people in this world:

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Is the Middle East America’s to Lose?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Jun 2015

I was appalled by the embedded colonialism of a recent issue of The Economist [June 6-12, 2015], “Losing the Middle East.” Any doubt about the intent of the magazine is removed by displaying a bedraggled American flag on the cover accompanied by the sub-title “Why American must not abandon the region.”

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Tobacco Companies Ordered to Pay C$15.6 Billion to Quebec Smokers
Richard Smallteacher, CorpWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Jun 2015

4 Jun 2015 – Over one million people in the Canadian province of Quebec will receive a total of C$15.6 billion ($12.5 billion) in damages for smoking related diseases from three of the biggest tobacco companies in the country. The settlement is the result of a 17-year long court battle.

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Turkish Elections: It’s Not Just Erdoğan!
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Jun 2015

9 Jun 2015 – The Turkish general election on June 7th ended more or less as the polls predicted. Turkey has been put back on the shelf and yet relieved that the AKP was again supported by a significant plurality of Turkish citizens in an impressively free and fair electoral process.

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The Human Rights Issue a Nobel Laureate Doesn’t Want to Touch
Michael Sullivan, NPR – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Jun 2015

2 Jun 2015 – It’s not often that the Dalai Lama calls out a fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate. But that’s what happened last week when he was asked about Aung San Suu Kyi, who has declined to speak out on the worsening plight of the Rohingya minority in her homeland of Myanmar.

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FIFA Scandals Are Worse Than Bribes
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Jun 2015

The Palestinian Soccer Association was persuaded by Blatter to drop its charges, with a renewal of previously empty pledges to ameliorate conditions confronting Palestinians coupled with a surely ironic plea to keep ‘politics’ from intruding on ‘the beautiful game.’ As if the humiliations and constraints imposed on the Palestinian teams were not political!

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Costa Rica: A BOLD PEACE – Documentary
Matthew Eddy and Michael Dreiling - Soul Force Media, 8 Jun 2015

Over 60 years ago, Costa Rica became one of the only nations in the world to disband their military. ‘A Bold Peace’ juxtaposes the national policy of demilitarization with their investment in education, health, and the environment. Pointed parallels and contrasts are made with recent U.S. debates over the national debt, healthcare, the environment and the escalating cost of U.S. militarism.

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Wind Energy vs. Fossil Fuels: Hurdles and Hopes for a Renewable Future
Michael Walsh, Yahoo! News – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Jun 2015

5 Jun 2015 – The colossal oil spill in Southern California last month spurred many to wonder why we have not abandoned fossil fuels for wind and other sources of renewable energy. The fossil fuel industry receives billions in taxpayer subsidies as the wind industry fights to take flight.

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Thrust into Freedom
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Jun 2015

A husband and wife in the city of Medellin, Colombia, had a cow on a small plot of grass land in front of their house, and they barely subsisted by feeding some of her milk to their children and selling the rest.

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Sick
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Jun 2015

A little boy did not want to go to school.

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Our Dogs Can Read Our Minds: The New Neuroscience of Animal Brains and Understanding
Michael C. Corbalis - Salon, 1 Jun 2015

Understanding emotion in others is basic to survival, grounded in evolution. Animals have the skill just as we do.

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The Olive Jar
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jun 2015

A merchant in 8th century Baghdad went on a long trip to the orient.

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America at Its Best Is Strange
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jun 2015

America even at its best is a strange place, alive with contradictions, a Teflon political culture that has an unshakable faith in its innocent and virtuous national character and its overall impact on the world, impervious to the ghosts of slavery and of ethnic cleansing of native Americans that should be tormenting our sleep and darkening our dreams, comfortable with its robust gun culture, and with its promiscuous reliance on rogue drones engineered to kill on command and on the brutal happenings that take place in black sites immorally situated in countries whose leaders agree to avert their gaze from the dirty work taking place.

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India´s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jun 2015

Today “governability” is standardly defined as the overall capacity for governance of any societal entity or system. This definition has the defect of being somewhat circular since it uses the word “governance” to define the word “governability.” But before busying ourselves with improving the definition of the word, let us instead look at some of the important issues at stake in governability-talk.

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Demands
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jun 2015

A group of terrorists burst into the Annual Convention of the American Bar Association at the New York Hilton Hotel and took three hundred lawyers as hostages.

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The Oak Tree and the Reed Grass
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 May 2015

A mighty oak tree ridiculed the soft thin reed grass bending back and forth in the lake.

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Checking for Accuracy
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 May 2015

A little girl was talking to her teacher about whales.

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Honesty and Insight
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 May 2015

An Indian Guru realized that he was getting old and could not teach much longer.

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A Sharp Spike in Honeybee Deaths Deepens a Worrisome Trend
Michael Wines – The New York Times, 18 May 2015

13 May 2015 – A prolonged and mysterious die-off of the nation’s honeybees, a trend worrisome both to beekeepers and to farmers who depend on the insects to pollinate their crops, apparently worsened last year.

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Arriving
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 May 2015

The director of a prison tells the warden, “Tomorrow, everything has to be perfectly clean, the chief justice is coming.”

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Parodies of Parity: Israel & Palestine
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 May 2015

Peace will come to Israel and Palestine, and be sustained, if and only if the oppressor becomes ready to dismantle its oppressive regime by withdrawing, not merely by disengaging Gaza style. So long as this is not so, direct negotiations and these periodic calls issued by Washington to resume direct talks have one main effect–to free Israel to realize its ambition to establish ‘Greater Israel’ while keeping the Palestinians in chains.

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The Semantics of Struggle
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 May 2015

What is not helpful, actually diversionary, is to respond as if the struggle was between good and evil, and that is what happens as soon as the insurgent challenger is labeled ‘a terrorist.’ Such language exempts the defenders of the status quo from self-criticism and considering accommodationist tactics, proscribing negotiation and assessment of grievances.

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Mathematicians
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 May 2015

A physicist, a chemist and a mathematician were stranded on an island after a shipwreck.

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Flying Lessons
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 May 2015

A flock of birds that could not fly met in a nice hotel on top of a cliff overlooking the sea for a training workshop on flying.

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Different Customs
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 May 2015

A Chinese man put a bowl of rice on his deceased wife’s grave every day.

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Apartheid and the Palestinian National Struggle
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 May 2015

American citizens have a special responsibility for the long ordeal of the Palestinian people. The Jewish philosopher, Abraham Heschel observed “[f]ew are guilty, but all are responsible.” The Legitimacy War scenario gives each of us ample opportunities to exercise our individual responsibility. We owe the Palestinian people and ourselves nothing less.

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Where Is the World… ?
Imani Michelle Scott, Ph.D. – The Huffington Post, 4 May 2015

I love the black men in my life. They are my brothers, my nephews, my cousins, my best friends. The politics of distraction successfully leads attention away from what occurs in the U.S. to focus on inhumanity in those nations beyond America’s borders. Where is the world when the collective of humanity is so needed to help end police violence against blacks in America?

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Too Proud?
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 May 2015

Most American politicians talk as if they had been born in a log cabin…

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War Journalism and News Distortion
Michael Krona – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Apr 2015

For example: what do you think is the conflict from its inception in 1998 has had over five million dead, has had involvement of military forces from nine countries and played out in an area the size of Western Europe, but few in the West even noticed?

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Israel’s Early Nuclear Deceit Damages Iran Nuclear Talks Today
Richard Silverstein – Middle East Eye, 27 Apr 2015

Instead of demonising Iran and treating it as a pariah state, wouldn’t there be more to gain from collaboration and cooperation? American Jewish money built Israel’s bomb.

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On the Historic Role of the Peace Movement
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Apr 2015

One can distinguish between four forms of power: military, economic, cultural and political. Military power says, “If you don’t do what I want, I will hurt you.” Economic power says, “If you do what I want, I will reward you.” Cultural power says, “If you do what I want, I will praise you, and if you don’t do what I want, I will criticize you.” Political power manipulates the other three forms of power to achieve goals.

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Solution
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Apr 2015

One reverend complained to the other, “I have no people coming to listen to my sermon.”

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The Geopolitical Right of Exception at the United Nations
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Apr 2015

Overcoming the geopolitical right of exception would require its repudiation by the United States, in particular, through a recognition that it is incompatible with a peaceful, just, sustainable, and more participatory world order. This geopolitical right is also a vehicle of influence by private sector corporate and financial interests contrary to the global public interest.

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Scholar Maung Zarni Defines Genocide in ‘Holocaust and Human Rights Project’ Lecture
David Reich - Boston College Law School Magazine, 20 Apr 2015

15 Apr 2015 – The word genocide calls to mind events like the Jewish and Armenian holocausts, but according to Maung Zarni, a Burmese scholar affiliated with Harvard and the London School of Economics, smaller-scale killing can also fit the definition “if done in an attempt to destroy a people.”

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Weakening and Discrediting the UN: The Mission of Israeli QGOs [Quasi-Government Organizations]
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Apr 2015

This is the full text of my presentation at the conference “The Israeli Lobby: Is it good for US? Is it good for Israel?” National Press Club, April 10, 2015. Although there were many illuminating presentations during the day, I would call particular attention to the memorable remarks of two highly informed Israelis, Gideon Levy and Miko Peled.

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