Articles by TRANSCEND Media Service

We found 28073 results.


The Unseen World
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

To be aware of the wonders of the living planet is to take on an unbearable burden of grief. What you see is not what others see. We inhabit parallel worlds of perception, bounded by our interests and experience. What is obvious to some is invisible to others.

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(Português) Mastite e a Exploração de Vacas
David Arioch | Jornalismo Cultural – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

27 dez 2017 – Você percebe mais uma vez como estamos imersos em uma cultura especista, que encara os animais não humanos como nada mais do que produtos, quando cientistas ligados à saúde animal apontam como principal prejuízo da mastite, uma grave inflamação das glândulas mamárias, a queda na produção de leite da vaca.

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How Facebook’s Political Unit Enables the Dark Art of Digital Propaganda
Lauren Etter, Vernon Silver and Sarah Frier |Bloomberg – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

21 Dec 2017 – Zuckerberg’s social network is a politically agnostic tool for its more than 2 billion users, he has said. What he hasn’t said is that his company actively works with political parties and leaders including those who use the platform to stifle opposition with the aid of “troll armies” that spread misinformation and extremist ideologies.

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Religion – 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.

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Stress Test: Democracy Confronts Climate Change
Gus Speth | The Next System Project – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

29 Dec 2017 – Can American democracy rise to the climate occasion? Unprecedented measures must be put in place both to move completely out of fossil fuels by mid-century and also to pursue far-reaching and costly adaptation.

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Nativity: Rev Kevin Annett, the United Church of Canada, and the “Little Matter of Genocide”
Gary G. Kohls, MD | Duty to Warn – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

25 Dec 2017 – The “little matter of genocide”, about which the United States of America shares considerable guilt, is the century-long history of abuse, rape and murder of tens of thousands of Canada’s aboriginal children in church-run Indian residential schools (known as mission schools in the US), a subject on which Kevin is an acknowledged world expert.

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Trump, 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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Crumbling Congo – The Making of a Humanitarian Emergency
IRIN – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

The Democratic Republic of Congo has been at war with itself for more than two decades. The scale of the humanitarian crisis requires an urgent international response – but the world is yet to step up to the challenge.

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Celebrating Christmas in Traditional and Non-Traditional Ways
Dr. Ravi P Bhatia – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

1 Jan 2018 – Christmas is celebrated with devotion, fervor and gaiety all over the world on 25 December. I am sure there have been unusual events to celebrate Christmas this year. The ones I have written give only a glimpse of the celebrations and festivities. Perhaps other people will join the festive mood and share their unusual experiences.

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Reconciling Symbols of Islam, Judaism and Christianity
Anthony Judge | Laetus in Praesens – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

31 Dec 2017 – Catalytic Methodology for Effective Interfaith Dialogue – Importance of the highest degree is attached by their respective believers to the symbols of the monotheistic Abrahamic faiths. Their mutual hostility over millennia is focused by and through those symbols. They are displayed and brandished on ever possible occasion.

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US Nuclear Tests Killed Far More Civilians Than We Knew
Tim Fernholz | Quartz – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

21 Dec 2017 – When the US entered the nuclear age, it did so recklessly. New research suggests that the hidden cost of developing nuclear weapons were far larger than previous estimates, with radioactive fallout responsible for 340,000 to 690,000 American deaths from 1951 to 1973.

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Two Ways of Being Western: Christianity and Science
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

Two basic institutions in Western history and individual lives: Christianity offering Salvation to those following Laws, Commandments, and Science offering Truth to those who believe in scientific laws. After Enlightenment ushered in a godless world, one is waning and the other vexing, seen as antithetical to each other.

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Bibi’s “Iran Will Have 100 Nukes!” Math Appears a Bit Wobbly…
Franklin Lamb – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

… As Israeli Military Intelligence Evaluates USIS Claims That the IROI Acquired Three Nukes from the DRNK Last Spring

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The Jerusalem Vote and the US-Israel Link
Chandra Muzaffar – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

1 Jan 2018 – the US-Israel link has not been able to achieve its goal of enhancing the “security” of Israel. The defeat of this diabolical link in the UN on 21 Dec merely underlines this fact. It should embolden all of us to accelerate our struggle for a just world.

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Suspected Cholera Cases in Yemen Surpass One Million, Reports UN Health Agency
UN News Centre – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

22 Dec 2017 – The total number of suspected cholera cases in Yemen has crossed one million, the World Health Organization reported today. “If we cannot bring in medicines and medical supplies, we cannot save lives.”

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Koan: What Is the Sound of One Hand Clapping?
Gary Corseri – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

1) Nothing. One hand cannot clap….
2) Half the sound of 2 hands clapping….

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The Man Who Jumped
Uri Avnery | Gush Shalom – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

30 Dec 2017 – Nobody described the outbreak of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict better than the historian Isaac Deutscher. A man lives in a house that catches fire. To save his life, he jumps out of the window. He lands on a passer-by in the street below and injures him grievously. Between the two a bitter enmity arises. Who is to blame?

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Runaway Train towards Full Digitization of Money and Labor
Peter Koenig | Dissident Voice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

28 Dec 2017 – The other day I was in a shopping mall looking for an ATM to get some cash. There was no ATM. Cash machines gradually but ever so faster disappear, not only from shopping malls, also from street corners. This new cashless money model is progressively but brutally introduced to the Swiss and Europeans at large as they are not told what’s really happening behind the scene.

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Malnutrition Ravages India’s Children
Moin Qazi – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

With 17% of the world’s population, India is home to a quarter of the world’s hungry. The dismal health of Indian women and children is primarily due to lack of food security. Food security exists when all people at all times have physical, economic and social access to safe, adequate and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs for a healthy and active life.

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Effigies
Sumeet Grover – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

Effigies is a collection of drawings by Syrian artist Lawand, accompanied by poems which were composed by the British poet Pascale Petit in response to these images. Even the verbal realm into which Petit’s poems take us has the language of some other world; such is the appeal of her words.

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(Português) Síndrome das Pernas Inquietas: Doença causa “alfinetadas” a noite inteira e não tem cura
Nuno de Noronha | SAPO – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

27 Dez 2017 – A Síndrome das Pernas Inquietas é uma doença crónica e progressiva com impacto importante na qualidade de vida das pessoas. Alguns descrevem-na como uma espécie de “agonia nas pernas”, “comichão nos ossos” ou “alfinetadas”, explica o médico pneumologista Bruno Santos.

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How Pharma Uses the Charge of ‘Stigma’ to Sell Psychiatric Drugs
Martha Rosenberg | Intrepid Report – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

28 Dec 2017 – Do you overeat? Did your boyfriend just break up with you? Does no one return your emails? Do you fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning? If so, you may be suffering from mental illness! Mental illness is a highly stigmatized, life-long condition, says Pharma, that millions do not even realize they have and only a pharmaceutical drug can fix.

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Alternative Dispute Resolution or Legalism? Conflict Transformation!
Theresa Sing | Galtung Institut — Transcend Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

Under the umbrella term Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), discourses around mediation and other non-judicial approaches to conflict resolution have been constrained by a predominantly legal narrative ultimately founded on an ‘either-or’ dichotomy between status quos instead of allowing a third way resting on a ‘both-and’ approach.

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Ending War Now
Jerry Alatalo – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

1 Jan 2018 – Given the massive shift of world collective consciousness emergent after U.S. President Donald Trump’s arguably intended to provoke and dangerous Jerusalem announcement – and especially considering the dramatic response by member states at the UN, now would seem the perfect storm, confluence-of-events time for the world’s genuine peacemakers to conduct an energetic push towards making wars of aggression punishable.

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The Binary Code of Body and Spirit: Computing Pioneer Alan Turing on Mortality
Maria Popova | Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

When Christopher died of bovine tuberculosis in 1930 Alan fell to pieces. He was able to collect himself only through work, by burrowing so deep into the underbelly of mathematics that he emerged almost on the other side, where science and metaphysics meet. Sorrow had taken him on a crusade to make sense of reality. He wanted to understand how he could remain so attached to someone who no longer existed materially but who felt so overwhelmingly alive in his spirit.

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Life
Adolf P. Shvedchikov – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

Everything that nature has built,
Blue sky and dark night,
Black fallow spring field,

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The “Merchants of Death” Survive and Prosper
Lawrence Wittner | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

In mid-1930s, an exposé of the international arms trade had a major impact. Convinced that military contractors were stirring up weapons sales and war for their own profit, many people grew critical of these “merchants of death.” Today, some eight decades later, their successors, now more politely called “defense contractors,” are alive and well.

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Life-Saving Cancer Drug Sees 1400% Price Hike
teleSUR – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jan 2018

The potentially life-saving medicine is used to treat patients suffering from brain tumors and Hodgkin’s lymphoma. While originally sold by Bristol-Myers Squib for decades for about US$50 a capsule, it now goes for US$768 per pill, thanks to startup NextSource’s price hikes.

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(Italiano) Lo stato dell’Impero nell’era del trumpismo
Diane Perlman | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

“Odio l’Impero USA, ma amo la Repubblica USA”. Sento da anni questo mantra da Johan Galtung, mio caro amico, mentore e collega. Con lo svolgersi degli avvenimenti, acquisisce nuovo significato.

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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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Galtung on Trauma, Drama: What Does North Korea Really Want?
Sebastian Eck | Galtung Institut – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

Prof. Johan Galtung, founder of Peace Studies, offers actionable nonviolent and dialogical solutions.

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An Irreverent Activist and His Year’s End Gift to Himself
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

‘I can’t be taken down.
For my feet have always been firmly on the ground.
My career can’t be destroyed.
For I have never pursued one.

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Happiness
Steve Cutts – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

Nov 24, 2017 – The story of a rodent’s unrelenting quest for happiness and fulfillment. If any bells ring, it is not mere coincidence.

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Art for Art’s Sake… (And Cutting Thru)….
Gary Corseri – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

In 2007, Sotheby’s
auctioned a can of artist’s shit
for 180,000 dollars.
“Sophisticated,” “cultured” types
clamored to buy a tin of shit
an auction house called “Art.”

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Led by U.S. Weapons Makers, Global Arms Sales Soared in 2016: Analysis
Jessica Corbett | Common Dreams – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

With U.S. weapons companies claiming more than half of global sales, and despite five previous years of decline, arms producers around the world raked in $375 billion in profits.

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1,000 Days of War Bringing ‘Apocalypse’ on Yemen: Oxfam
teleSUR – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

20 Dec 2017 – Yemen is on the brink of total collapse and an “apocalypse,” aid agency Oxfam said in a report today marking 1,000 days since Saudi Arabia and its regional allies began a military campaign against the poorest country in the Middle East. The British group added that one million people are suspected to have contracted cholera, a disease caused by contaminated water, in the world’s worst outbreak ever recorded.

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Jerusalem: Transforming a Hit into an Opportunity
Walid Salem – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

President Donald Trump’s 6 Dec decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel represents a crucial shift from the previous biased mediator position to the new one as Israel’s partner. It is not only a violation to international law and UN Resolutions regarding Jerusalem, but it is also a violation to the 1993 Declaration of Principles known as Oslo Agreement.

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Syria Solidarity Movement Statement: US Coalition Out of Syria Now!
Paul Larudee | Syria Solidarity Movement – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

22 Dec 2017 – Both great powers, Russia and the USA, recently claimed victory over the Islamic State (aka Daesh, ISIS, ISIL) in Syria, but only one did the right thing in response. President Putin of the Russian Federation flew to Syria to announce deep cuts to its troop and equipment commitments in Syria.

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Types of Violence and Gandhian Concept of Reducing Violence
Dr Ravi P Bhatia – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

For Gandhi, spiritual swaraj meant inner discipline marked by purity of intention and control over base tendencies like dishonesty, greed, aggression and violence. This entailed morality and virtues like truth, nonviolence, detachment, prayer, compassion and spirituality. These virtues and values are as important today as they were in Gandhian times.

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Why the Documentary Must Not Be Allowed to Die
John Pilger – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

11 Dec 2017 – “When the truth is replaced by silence,” wrote the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, “the silence is a lie.” Whenever young documentary film-makers ask me how they can “make a difference”, I reply that it is really quite simple. They need to break the silence.

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(Português) Coelhos com defeitos congênitos sofrem extrema violência em fazendas/quintas de pele
ANDA Agência de Notícias de Direitos Animais – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

Uma filmagem chocante expõe as terríveis condições das fazendas/quintas de coelhos usadas por algumas das mais famosas marcas de luxo do mundo.

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This Week in History
Satoshi Ashikaga – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

Dec 25-31, 2017 ~ This Week in History, which began in Dec 2014, ends on 31 Dec 2017. Thank you very much for your moral support for all those three years! May peace be with you. Have a Happy New Year! — Satoshi Ashikaga

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On OPTIMISM: A Peace Linguist’s Plea
Francisco Gomes de Matos – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

Optimism is a powerful sea on which to sail
It challenges all ships to make PEACE prevail

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Jerusalem as a Symbolic Singularity
Anthony Judge | Laetus in Praesens – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

25 Dec 2017 – Comprehending the dynamics of hyperreality as a challenge to conventional two-state reality. Development of an argument presented previously. Later amendments to that text have been removed from there for presentation below — in the light of decisions by the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly.

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Pentagon Admits Presence of US Troops in Yemen as Cholera Cases Top One Million
Bill Van Auken | WSWS – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

23 Dec 2017 – The Pentagon admitted for the first time this week that it has “conducted multiple ground operations” in Yemen, the impoverished and war-ravaged country whose humanitarian crisis was underscored this week by the Red Cross: the number of cholera cases in Yemen had reached one million, making the ongoing epidemic by far the worst in recorded human history.

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Why Some People Resent “Do-Gooders”
Juliana Breines, Ph.D. | Psychology Today – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

Doing well can be a double-edged sword.

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Rwandan President Paul Kagame Is Not Papa Africa Saving Slaves
Ann Garrison and Bénédicte Kumbi Ndjoko | Black Agenda Report – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

6 Dec 2017 – African Union Commission Chair Moussa Faki Mahamat praised Rwanda’s offer “to resettle up to 30,000 African migrants languishing in Libya.” The same story was reported across the Internet and newspapers in the US, Europe, and Africa. Rwandan President Paul Kagame is grandstanding as Papa Africa on the world stage, but nothing could be further from the truth or more preposterous than his proposal. Here are four reasons why.

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UN Rights Expert ‘Disappointed’ by Myanmar’s Decision to Refuse Visit
UN News Centre – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

20 Dec 2017 – The UN expert on the human rights situation in Myanmar today expressed disappointment at the government’s decision to deny her all access to the country. “This declaration of non-cooperation with my mandate can only be viewed as a strong indication that there must be something terribly awful happening in Rakhine, as well as in the rest of the country.”

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Native Americans’ Capital City: Native Histories of Washington, D.C.
Jason Steinhauer | Library of US Congress – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

As a Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress, historian Joseph Genetin-Pilawa is researching his forthcoming book The Indians’ Capital City: ‘Secret’ Native Histories of Washington, D.C. He sat down with Jason Steinhauer to discuss the facts, myths, and contradictions of Native presence in the nation’s capital.

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On Vaccines, Adjuvants and Autoimmunity
Christina England | Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

Immunologists Survey the Research and It’s Not Reassuring – “Vaccines and autoimmunity are linked fields,” state the authors from the Zabludowicz Center for Autoimmune Diseases. Just as natural infections can sometimes induce autoimmune disease, so can vaccination induce autoimmunity that “may be severe and fatal.”

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Playing the Jerusalem Card in Lebanon with Deft Hypocrisy
Franklin Lamb – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

21 Dec 2017 – Jerusalem just happened to be in the geographical area of the war between Arabs fighting the Byzantines. For a period, Muslims did pray towards Jerusalem because of its connections to Abraham and because Mecca was in pagan hands, but when Jews rejected Prophet Muhammad as the promised messiah, and Mecca was cleared of idols, Muslims largely lost interest in Jerusalem.

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Oh, God!
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

A very good hearted young man came to the gates of heaven. He asked God, “Why have you brought me here so early? I was still in perfect health and wanted to do many more good deeds.”

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Why the Istanbul Declaration Must Succeed
Chandra Muzaffar – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

18 Dec 2017 – The Istanbul Declaration adopted at an Extraordinary Islamic Summit Conference in Istanbul on the 13th of December 2017 invites “the whole world to recognise East Jerusalem as the occupied capital of the State of Palestine.” It further pledges to ‘mobilize support in the name of entire humanity to strengthen the State of Palestine and its institutions in every field.”

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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.”

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Cry, Beloved Country
Uri Avnery | Gush Shalom – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

23 Dec 2017 – Anyone proposing the death penalty is either a complete fool, an incorrigible cynic or mentally disturbed – or all of these. There is no effective therapy for any of these defects. I wouldn’t even try.

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Remembering the Christmas Truce of 1914: (And Questioning Christian Participation in Homicide)
Gary G. Kohls, MD | Duty to Warn – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

How Soldiers with Newly Attuned Consciences Almost Stopped a War – “…and the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame; and on each end of the rifle we’re the same.” — John McCutcheon

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The 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).

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2018, America’s New Corporate Tax Cuts, and Future of the World
Irwin Jerome | Countercurrents – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

23 Dec 2017 – It doesn’t take a mystic to look into a crystal ball. As all the corks of the champagne bottles continue to pop for the prospects of what the new year holds for the ultra-rich .01% and the rest of us, what no doubt now will follow will be a rush amongst the world’s corporate/financial structure to either implement similar corporate tax cuts within their own countries or inspire a new “offshore rush” of the world’s corporate infrastructure to re-locate within the borders of the United States to stick their heads in the pig trough along with all the other greedy ones to partake in the financial feeding frenzy that will ensue.

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Oh Holy Night (Music Video of the Week)
Il Divo with Katherine Jenkins – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

Il Divo perform “Oh Holy Night” with Katherine Jenkins in “Steppin’ Out”

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The Banality of Evil: Hannah Arendt on the Normalization of Human Wickedness and Our Only Effective Antidote to It
Maria Popova | Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

“Under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not… No more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation.”

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The Seeds of Discontent
Moin Qazi – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Dec 2017

23 Dec 2017 – In India, small and marginal farmers—those who work on less than two hectares (five acres) of land—constitute 80% of all farm households, 50% of rural households and 36% of the total of all households… Within this self-perpetuating cycle of rural misery, wrapping a noose around the neck is the all-too-easy exit for an increasing number of smallholding farmers.

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Democracy, 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).

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Jerusalem 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.

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Galtung on Trump’s USA: Demoralization, Destructuration, Deculturation
Sebastian Eck | Galtung Institut – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

Prof. Johan Galtung on the U.S. Empire’s Disintegration

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Winter Solstice: On This Day of the Longest Night . . .
Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

In 2017, Winter in the Northern hemisphere begins on Thu 21 Dec at 16:28 UTC. It is the shortest day of the year; it is the day of the longest night. For thousands of years, humans sought understanding of the cosmic wonder of day and night — the endless cycle of sun and moon.

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Heart-Wrenching Video Shows Starving Polar Bear on Iceless Land
Se7en Media – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

8 Dec 2017 – National Geographic Official Video. When photographer Paul Nicklen and filmmakers from conservation group Sea Legacy arrived in the Baffin Islands, they came across a heartbreaking sight: a starving polar bear on its deathbed.

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Global Arms Industry: First Rise in Arms Sales since 2010, Says SIPRI
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

11 Dec 2017 – A new report by SIPRI revealed that despite the slump in global arms industry for five consecutive years, in 2016 arms producers world over saw US$375 billion in profits, with the U.S. weapons industry claiming over half the global sales.

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If You Don’t Own any Bitcoin, Read This
Adam Taggart | Peak Prosperity – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

8 Dec 2017 – Wow. Just….wow. Bitcoin’s price has gone ‘beyond exponential’ this week. Just yesterday, as I started working on this article, it shot up 22% — from $14,000 to $17,000 (hitting an intraday high of over $19,000).

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Palestine: Towards a Freedom from Funding
Walid Salem – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

October 2017 – Thirty years ago I wrote a study about funding, suggesting that Palestine should not accept any funding that is not directed to the development of our economic productivity. The study called for the development of self reliance and for the rejection of any international funding that will be conducted in coordination with the Israeli Civil Administration. I feel that my 1987 message is still generally valid.

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International Migrants Day: 18 December
Rene Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

Today, there are some 232 million persons who reside and work outside their country of birth. The reasons for migration are diverse − most often economic, but also refugees from armed conflicts and oppression, and increasingly what are called “ecological refugees” − persons who leave their home area due to changing environmental conditions: drought, floods, rising sea levels etc. Global warming is very likely to increase the number of these ecological refugees.

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The Farewell Sermon of Prophet Muhammad
Moin Qazi – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

15 Dec 2017 – The farewell sermon of Prophet Muhammad is one of the most important charters of human rights and symbolizes the inclusive character of Islam. It has great relevance in present times for both Muslims and the humanity at large.

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Children of Stones
Uri Avnery – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

16 Dec 2017 – For god’s sake, are they crazy? They congregate in the marketplace, boys of 15, 16 years, take stones and throw them at our soldiers, who are armed to the teeth. The soldiers shoot, sometimes over their heads, sometimes straight at them. Every day there are wounded, every few days there are dead. What for? They do not have the slightest chance of changing the policy of the Israeli occupation. Only very rarely do the boys hit a soldier and cause him a slight injury. Yet they go on. Why?

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The State of the Empire in the Age of Trumpism
Diane Perlman, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

“I hate the US Empire, but I love the US Republic.” For years I have been hearing this mantra from Johan Galtung my dear friend, mentor and colleague. As events unfold, it takes on new meaning.

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An 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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Titles
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

Someone who farms is a farmer.

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It Wasn’t the Threat That Worked, It Was Reduction of Fear
Kristin Y. Christman – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

U.S. policymakers don’t trust North Korea. But on what basis can North Korea trust the U.S.? What agreement with North Korea has the U.S. ever not violated? … Whichever agreement is under discussion, the same behavior is seen: the U.S. never sees its own violations as wrong.

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Red Cross Says Life Has Stopped in Myanmar’s Rakhine
Stephanie Nebehay | Reuters – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

13 Dec 2017 – Life has stopped in its tracks in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state where an estimated 180,000 Rohingya remain, the International Committee of the Red Cross said today. “You get a sense of the two main communities being deeply scared of each other. What surprised me is the fact that not only the Muslim communities are scared, but that the others are actually scared as well.”

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UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation of the Rohingya Muslim population in Myanmar
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein | OHCHR – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

5 Dec 2017 – By continuing to dehumanise the Rohingya, the state authorities could fuel even wider levels of violence in the future – drawing in communities from across the region, eventually forcing a confessional confrontation, and destroying whatever it is they may once have hoped for their country. We cannot afford to hear that historical and tragic refrain, one more time, that no one knew it would turn out to be like this — what a lie that would be. I urge the Council to take the appropriate action to stop this madness now.

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Rohingyas Are Survivors, Not Security Threat
Maung Zarni | Prothom Alo – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

13 Dec 2017 – Can you imagine BBC, Chatham House, Rand Corporation portraying as potential “Jewish terrorists” the survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Ravensbruick, Dachau and other world infamous death and labour camps? Of course not! But that is precisely what is now happening to the survivors of my Buddhist country’s genocide, whose name even the entire Catholic Church in Myanmar, and by extension, Pope Francis, have dared not pronounce.

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God’s Oppressed Children
Pankaj Mishra | New York Review of Books – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

Many Indian houses still have a simple pit toilet, which consists of a large hole in the floor. The feces are collected at night by manual scavengers who carry away human shit and whose tools are nothing but a small broom and a tin plate. Most are women. One out of six Indians is a Dalit, untouchable, but for years I neither witnessed nor imagined the life of one, although almost every week small columns in the newspapers reported the murder, rape, and torture of them.

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ICAN Statement on Nobel Peace Prize 2017
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

6 Oct 2017 – The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons is a coalition of non-governmental organizations in one hundred countries. By harnessing the power of the people, we have worked to bring an end to the most destructive weapon ever created – the only weapon that poses an existential threat to all humanity.

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Income of World’s Top .001% Skyrockets by 636%: Report
teleSUR – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

The report, which highlights the growing gulf between haves and have-nots, was compiled by five economists, including scholars Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty.

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Put Out the Fire Before It Is Too Late
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

There was a man called Nicolas who was happy in life except for one thing: he and a neighbor distrusted each other. One day, his chicken strayed into the neighbor’s garden.

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Banality of Riches
Pawel Kuczynski – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

World of Illusion

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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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Palestine: It Is Time for a New Beginning
Ramzy Baroud | Politics for the People – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

13 Dec 2017 – Now that the American mask has completely fallen, Palestinians require an urgent rethink in their own political priorities, alliances and national liberation strategy. Business should not go on as usual after Trump accepted Israel’s definition of Jerusalem as its capital.

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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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U.S.A: FCC Repeals ‘Net Neutrality’ Rules for Internet Providers
Alina Selyukh | NPR – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

14 Dec 2017 – U.S. telecom regulators have voted to repeal net neutrality rules, which restrict the power of Internet service providers to influence loading speeds for specific websites or apps. Net neutrality: It’s a principle that Internet providers should be neutral gateways that provide equal access to all legal web content.

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Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Local Currencies
Tad Montgomery | Resilience – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

14 Dec 2017 -The world is on fire lately with the exponential growth of Bitcoin and other electronic cryptocurrencies. While some see these as speculative bubbles that are tied to nothing, used on the dark web to ransom hacked computers, and profligate users of electricity, others see Bitcoin and its ilk as our liberation from nation states and their central banks. Both could be true.

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Dirty Vaccines: New Study Reveals Prevalence of Contaminants
Celeste McGovern | Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

Every Human Vaccine Tested Was Contaminated by Unsafe Levels of Metals and Debris Linked to Cancer and Autoimmune Disease, New Study Reports

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(Português) Investigação revela a crueldade extrema da indústria da carne de cordeiro
ANDA Agência de Notícias de Direitos Animais – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

12 Dez 2017 – Os ativistas da Animal Equality investigaram um dos cerca de 200 matadouros no país que têm autorização para matar animais sem realizar o atordoamento, uma prática cruel infligida todos os anos contra centenas de milhares de seres inocentes.

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Temples for Spirituality, Harmony and Joy
Dr Ravi P Bhatia – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

18 Dec 2017 – As is well known India has diversities of virtually all types. As for religions, we have followers of all major world religions — Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and smaller faiths such as Sikhism, Jainism, Judaism, Arya Samaj, Baha’i. Other faiths such as Brahmo Samaj, Dev Samaj, along with their specific deities, rituals and holy books are also present in different regions of the country.

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An Incomplete Timeline of What We Tried: Working Back from Human Extinction
Debbie Urbanski | Vice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

Human extinction.
The coordinated release of various strains of a human sterilization virus.
The no-child laws.
The launching of the Colony into space, no final destination in mind, for those able to afford the journey…

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Ave Maria (Music Video of the Week)
Daniel Taylor & Les Petits Chanteurs Du Mont-Royal – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

A Virtuoso Performs a Classic

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Corporate Media Allowed Net Neutrality to Die in Silence
Pam Vogel | Media Matters for America – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

15 Dec 2017 – The flagship morning news shows on broadcast and cable news covered net neutrality for less than four minutes combined.

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(Português) Mary Midgley: “Os animais são muito mais sutis e complicados do que pensávamos”
David Arioch | Jornalismo Cultural – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

Segundo a filósofa britânica, um problema comum por parte de muitos cientistas é que eles ignoram a complexidade psicológica e motivacional que também faz parte dos animais.

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This Week in History
Satoshi Ashikaga – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

Dec 18-24, 2017 ~ QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “ No matter how devastating our struggles, disappointments, and troubles are, they are only temporary. No matter what happens to you, no matter the depth of tragedy or pain you face, no matter how death stalks you and your loved ones, the Resurrection promises you a future of immeasurable good.” – Josh McDowell

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Libya: European Governments Complicit in Horrific Abuse of Refugees and Migrants
Amnesty International – TRANSCEND Media Service, 18 Dec 2017

12 Dec 2017 – European governments are knowingly complicit in the torture and abuse of tens of thousands of refugees and migrants detained by Libyan immigration authorities in appalling conditions in Libya, said Amnesty International in a report published today, in the wake of global outrage over the sale of migrants in Libya.

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(Português) Seminário – Rumo a um Mundo Livre de Armas Nucleares: Desafios e Perspectivas
Embaixador Sergio Duarte – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Dec 2017

Intervenção de Abertura, Ministério das Relações Exteriores, Brasília 7-8 Dez 2017 – Uma visão ampla sobre três principais temas:
• a contribuição do Tratado de Tlatelolco e da ABACC para a segurança da América Latina e do mundo em geral;
• as perspectivas para a Conferência de Exame do Tratado de Não Proliferação de Armas Nucleares, em 2020;
• e o impacto da recente adoção do Tratado de Proibição de Armas Nucleares.

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Ludwig van Beethoven (17 Dec 1770 – 26 Mar1827)
Biography – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Dec 2017

Ludwig van Beethoven was a deaf German composer and the predominant musical figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras. He was baptized on Dec 17, 1770 in Bonn, Holy Roman Empire. He was an innovator, widening the scope of sonata, symphony, concerto and quartet, and combining vocals and instruments in a new way. His personal life was marked by a struggle against deafness, and some of his most important works were composed during the last 10 years of his life, when he was quite unable to hear.

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