Articles by ICH

We found 2555 results.


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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The Black Hole
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Apr 2015

When Johan Galtung, widely recognized as the founder of the academic discipline of peace research, founded the first International Peace Research Institute in Oslo in 1959, he and his colleagues sent copies of their working papers regularly to about 400 social science institutes around the world, including the Institute for World Economy and International Relations in Moscow.

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Armenians 1915: The Genocide Controversy
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Apr 2015

According to the great American novelist William Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” This year being the centenary of the contested events of 1915 makes it understandable that was simmering through the decades has come to a boil, with the anniversary day of April 24th likely to be the climax of this latest phase of the unresolved drama.

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Blessed Ambiguity
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Apr 2015

King Louis XI of France was superstitious. One time, his astrologer predicted nice weather.

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Security versus Peace Discourse (after Johan Galtung)
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Apr 2015

The prevailing discourse used by governments today is the security discourse, which briefly is the following: “We have a problem, our enemies. Through military superiority we can deter or prevent their evil designs and achieve security–and through this peace.”

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Flying Lessons
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Apr 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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Replacement
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Apr 2015

An attorney telephoned the governor just after midnight, insisting that he talk to him regarding a matter of utmost urgency.

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Jerusalem
Yehuda Amichai – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Apr 2015

The late Israeli poet captured this urban division well.

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Peace Journalism
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Apr 2015

The time has come for “peace journalists” to write not only about war, but also about its causes, prevention, and ways to restore peace. They need not invent solutions to conflicts themselves–in the same way as health journalists need not invent cures for diseases themselves; they ask specialists.

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American Sniper and America’s “War on Terror”
Richard E. Rubenstein – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Mar 2015

The issue I want to emphasize here is how extreme focus, eliminating both breadth and depth, historical context and psychological motivation, afflicts our general approach to the “War on Terror” and effectively rules out conflict resolution.

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How Haiti Abolished Its Military
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Mar 2015

A soft spoken, retired Quaker couple from Troy, New York, took a crucial step that led to the complete abolition of Haiti’s army, which in 1991 had violently overthrown the democratically elected government of President Aristide and arbitrarily arrested, tortured and murdered many Haitian citizens.

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Change versus Continuity in the Philippines
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Mar 2015

When I asked how was it possible that the Marcos past has been so cleanly erased from the contemporary blackboard of Filipino awareness, I received various answers: “They have lots of money” “They never lost popularity in their home province where lots of development took place while Marcos governed ” “The past no longer matters; it is the present that counts” “the oligarchy still rules the country and includes all leading families regardless of their political affiliations.”

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Easter Dress
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Mar 2015

Towards the end of the Sunday morning service, a pastor invited all the children to come forward for a children’s prayer.

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Insurance
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Mar 2015

Three retirees were sitting on a bench in Miami.

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Buddhist Nationalists Stoke Hatred in Myanmar
Richard Bennett – Al Jazeera, 23 Mar 2015

Myanmar’s Proposed ‘Race and Religion Laws’ Fuel Hatred and Fear – Authorities should work for reconciliation between religious and ethnic groups – not play into hatred and fear, and seek to cement already widespread discrimination.

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Iran’s Nuclear Program: Diplomacy, War, and (In)Security in the Nuclear Age
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Mar 2015

Iran is expected not only to forego the option to acquire nuclear weapons, but to agree to a framework of intrusive inspection if it wants to be treated as a ‘normal’ state after it proves itself worthy. As indicated, this approach seems discriminatory and hypocritical in the extreme.

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Stalking Netanyahu’s Victory: Palestine and Iran
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Mar 2015

My immediate reaction to the outcome of the Israeli elections is that for Palestinian solidarity purposes, it was desirable for Netanyahu to receive this electoral mandate. It exhibits as clearly as possible that the long discredited Oslo ‘peace process’ is truly ‘discredited.’

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Don’t Want NSA to Spy on Your Email? 5 Things You Can Do
Michael Liedtke, Associated Press – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Mar 2015

Pew researchers found that a majority of those surveyed don’t know about online shields that could help boost privacy or believe it would be too difficult to avoid the government’s espionage.

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Detail
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Mar 2015

The difference between philosophy and theology…

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A Binational Zone
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Mar 2015

We need a UN Agency for Mediation, with several thousand professionals, who can detect emerging conflicts and help transform them peacefully before they lead to war. That would be an excellent and inexpensive investment for a more peaceful world.

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Why We Occupy: Dutch Universities at the Crossroads
Nicholas Vrousalis, Robin Celikates, Johan Hartle, and Enzo Rossi – Open Democracy, 9 Mar 2015

The upshot is the bureaucratic equivalent of a sausage-factory: the production of the knowledge-sausage at minimum cost for the maximum number of consumers. The process by which one arrives at knowing thus becomes insignificant and secondary: means (degrees) and ends (the free pursuit of knowledge) are completely inverted.

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Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement Pledges Nonviolent Direct Action
Allyson Gross, Miles Goodrich – Common Dreams, 9 Mar 2015

Just as in the struggles against the Vietnam War, for a living wage, and for divestment from apartheid, our movement is powerful because we have risen up together.

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March 5, 1871: Rosa Luxemburg Is Born
Richard Kreitner and The Almanac – The Nation, 9 Mar 2015

5 Mar 2015 – Rosa Luxemburg, founder of the Spartacus League, brutally murdered by proto-fascists in January 1919, was born on this day in 1871, just two weeks before the Paris Commune took hold.

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Netanyahu: The Day After
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Mar 2015

4 Mar 2015 – My reaction to Netanyahu’s theatrical performance yesterday in Congress led me to recall that the deepest thinkers turned against democracy in ancient Greece because of the susceptibility of the Athenian citizenry to demagogic oratory from opportunistic politicians. Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides all became sensitive to the degree to which the rhetoric of demagogues contributed to the decline, and eventual downfall, of ancient Athens.

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The Fantasy World of Benjamin Netanyahu: Responses to His Talk to Congress
Rabbi Michael Lerner – Huffington Post, 9 Mar 2015

3 Mar 2015 – Netanyahu’s speech to Congress was brilliantly deceitful because it played to the fantasies that Israeli propaganda and right wing militarists in the US have been popularizing for the past thirty years.

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Commentary on Netanyahu’s Visit to the United States
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Mar 2015

2 Mar 2015 – It is far too simple to be merely outraged by the arrogant presumptuousness of tomorrow’s speech by the Israeli Prime Minister to a joint session of Congress two weeks prior to national elections in Israel. The Netanyahu visit has encouraged various forms of wishful thinking.

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Former Guantanamo Detainee David Hicks Speaks Up
Richard Phillips, WSWS – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Mar 2015

Hicks, an Australian citizen, was captured in Afghanistan by the Northern Alliance in late 2001, sold to the US military and sent to Guantanamo Bay. He spent five and a half years in the prison hellhole where he was subjected to sleep deprivation, beatings, solitary confinement and was injected with unknown substances.

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Sheherazade
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Mar 2015

A cruel prince in 8th century Baghdad returned early from hunting and surprised his wife in the company of another man. He ordered both of them executed.

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‘Lawfare’ and Liberation
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Mar 2015

In opposition to a law-oriented foreign policy for the United States are arguments of ‘American exceptionalism.’ Such arguments condition its applicability to American behavior and insist on the implementation of international law in relation to the alleged unlawful conduct of adversaries (e.g. Russia involvement in eastern Ukraine)

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How Gazan Natural Gas Became the Epicenter of an International Power Struggle
Michael Schwartz – CounterPunch, 2 Mar 2015

The Great Game in the Holy Land – After 25 years and five failed Israeli military efforts, Gaza’s natural gas is still underwater and, after four years, the same can be said for almost all of the Levantine gas.

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(Italiano) Quando un terrorista non è un terrorista
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Mar 2015

Ciò che la polizia di Chapel Hill, nella Carolina del Nord ha inizialmente pubblicizzato nel mondo come ‘un litigio per un parcheggio’, è stata l’uccisione deliberata di tre giovani e devoti studenti musulmani americani per mano di un assassino, ‘nuovo ateo’ di nome Craig Stephen Hicks, motivato ideologicamente. Quello che The Economist chiama senza esitazione ‘terrorismo a Copenhagen ha implicato il tentativo di sparare a un vignettista danese che ripetutamente deride il Profeta e le convinzioni islamiche e ha implicato anche l’uccisione con arma da fuoco di una guardia di sicurezza ebrea davanti a una sinagoga.

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How to Pay for Social Programmes
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Mar 2015

Chapter Eight of: Economic Theory and Community Development – Where we are going with our analysis: What we need is not so much a new economics as a new psychology. We need alignment with the common good. We need community.

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Nonviolent Communication
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Mar 2015

Psychologist Marshall Rosenberg (born 1934) was invited to speak at a meeting of a group of young Palestinians in a refugee camp on the West Bank. The Israeli police had recently entered the camp to quell protests. The ground was strewn with tear gas shells labeled “Made in USA”.

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February 19, 1942: FDR Orders the Internment of the Japanese
The Almanac and Richard Kreitner – The Nation, 23 Feb 2015

19 Feb 2015 – The Nation’s response to the president’s evacuation, relocation and internment order was not nearly as firmly opposed as one now wishes it had been.

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When a Terrorist Is Not a Terrorist
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Feb 2015

What the Chapel Hill police in North Carolina initially pitched as ‘a parking dispute’ was the deliberate killing of three young and devout Muslim American students by an ideologically driven ‘new atheist’ killer named Craig Stephen Hicks. What the The Economist unhesitatingly calls ‘terrorism in Copenhagen’ involved the attempted shooting of a Danish cartoonist who repeatedly mocks the Prophet and Islamic beliefs as well as the lethal shooting of a Jewish security guard outside a synagogue.

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Saint Francis and the Wolf
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Feb 2015

We must understand the causes of violence, in our own interest, to prevent it in the future. In no way does this justify violence, or blame the victims.

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Ukraine Agrees To Monsanto Land Grab for $17 Billion IMF Loan
Christina Sarich, Popular Resistance – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Feb 2015

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund are helping biotech run the latest war in Ukraine. Make no mistake: what is happening in the Ukraine now is deeply tied to the interests of Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, and other big players in the poison food game.

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Retraction
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Feb 2015

A member of the United States Senate, known for his hot temper and acid tongue, exploded one day in midsession and began to shout, “Half of this Senate is made up of cowards and corrupt politicians!”

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Interview with William Schabas, Former Chair, UN Commission of Inquiry for 2014 Israeli Attack on Gaza
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Feb 2015

Interview with Prof. William Schabas, recently resigned under pressure as Chair of the Commission of Inquiry appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to Investigate Allegations of State Crimes associated with Israel’s military attack on Gaza, code named Operation Protective Edge.

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A Presumption against Intervention
Richard Falk, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Feb 2015

It is important to recall that self-determination remains the most significant anti-intervention norm in a post-colonial global setting, and is so often marginalized in debates for or against intervention.

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On the North Carolina Killings
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Feb 2015

14 Feb 2014 – A short interview on how to interpret the ghastly murder of three young Muslims living in the North Carolina university town of Chapel Hill.

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Good News!
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Feb 2015

During Cheney-Bush’s reign of terror in Iraq many many people were taken to Abu Ghraib and to rendition flights never to be seen again.

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My Tribute to Serena Williams
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Feb 2015

By returning to Indian Wells Serena Williams has made the double point of at once acknowledging the pain of her past victimization and the healing power of forgiveness.

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An Irish Ghost Story
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Feb 2015

This story happened a while ago in Dublin, and even though it sounds like an Alfred Hitchcock tale, it’s true.

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Is It Time to Make Iran Our Friend and Saudi Arabia Our Enemy?
Michael Axworthy – The Guardian, 2 Feb 2015

Far from being a guarantee of stability in the Middle East, the western alliance with the kingdom is an impediment to peace.

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The Imaginary World That Holds the Real World Captive
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Feb 2015

Chapter Six of: Economic Theory and Community Development.

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Winston Churchill: The Imperial Monster
Michael Dickinson – CounterPunch, 2 Feb 2015

28 Jan 2015: This week Britain is commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Winston Churchill. “It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer of the type well-known in the East, now posing as a fakir, striding half naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor. I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion, breed like rabbits and will outstrip any available food supply.” — Churchill

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Viewing American Sniper
Richard Falk, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Feb 2015

To question this American domination project is to antagonize the entrenched bureaucratic, media, and neoliberal forces that benefit from endless war making and its associated expenditures of trillions. In the end it is this grand project of late capitalism that American Sniper indirectly vindicates, thereby burdening the nation and the world, perhaps fatally.

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Not Again!
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Feb 2015

A wife and husband lived in a third floor apartment. One day, the husband died.

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Are We All Lebanese Porn Stars? On Freedom of Speech and Mohammed Cartoons
Michael Brull – New Matilda, 26 Jan 2015

If depicting Mohammed in a cartoon is a noble act of freedom of expression, then why isn’t porn on prime time? And a WARNING. This article contains an image that some readers may find offensive.

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Exactly!
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Jan 2015

A reporter asked an American,

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Pope Francis, Salman Rushdie, and Charlie Hebdo
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Jan 2015

The Associated Press reports that despite present tensions and the public celebration of free speech the government in Paris has “ordered prosecutors around the country to crack down on hate speech, anti-Semitism, and glorifying terrorism.” But no message by the French government mentioning ‘hate cartooning’ or the surge of ‘Islamophobia’ in the country.

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Sectarianism Rears Its Head as Asean Launches Community
Michael Vatikiotis - The Straits Times, 19 Jan 2015

Without a doubt, South-east Asia’s traditional models of pluralism and tolerance are under stress. Before Asean can really become a community, its leaders must move fast to shore up and protect long-established traditions of tolerance and coexistence.

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European Powers Implement Police State Measures in Wake of Charlie Hebdo Attack
Ulrich Rippert, WSWS – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Jan 2015

Governments throughout Europe have responded to the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in France by moving quickly to push through a raft of anti-democratic measures that have long been prepared, but that have so far encountered resistance.

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Faith
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Jan 2015

A mountain climber slipped down a slope and barely got hold of a small branch at the edge of an abyss.

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Charlie Hebdo Massacre: a Tragic, Universal Failure
Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם – TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Jan 2015

Imagine if Charlie Hebdo drew a big-nosed Moses sitting amid buckets of cash. Does no one understand why if one is wrong the other is as well? In fact, a Hebdo cartoonist derided Nicholas Sarkozy’s son for “doing well” by converting to Judaism to marry a wealthy Jewish heiress. The cartoonist was fired. But cartoonists ridiculing the Prophet are now folk heroes.

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Pope Francis and Religious Cosmopolitanism
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Jan 2015

It has never been more important to counter the widely disseminated view that religion is ‘inherently’ responsible for political extremism, and more destructively, to blame Islam as a religion for sociopathic violence when the culprits are Muslim. True, religious doctrine can be twisted to serve any values, however demonic, as can secularist thinking.

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Before & After the Fact
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Jan 2015

Before marriage…

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New Level: Monsanto Tries Patenting Natural Tomatoes
Christina Sarich, Natural Society – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Jan 2015

Stealing a Tomato with No Biotech Traits

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Richard Jackson: Terrorism, Torture, and the Problem of Evil in Our Time
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Jan 2015

Richard Jackson, a professor of peace studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, has written a probing political essay that takes the form of an imagined dialogue between a British interrogator and an Egyptian terrorist who is apparently thought at the time of their conversation to be the mastermind of an imminent attack on Great Britain.

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Monks & Politicians
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Jan 2015

A politician was campaigning for reelection and visited all kinds of people, trying to be folksy.

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When Is Civil Society a Force for Social Transformation?
Michael Edwards – Open Democracy, 5 Jan 2015

There are more civil society organizations in the world today than at any other time in history, so why isn’t their impact growing?

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The Irrelevance of Liberal Zionism
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Jan 2015

Frustrated by Israeli settlement expansion, excessive violence, AIPAC maximalism, Netanyahu’s arrogance, Israel’s defiant disregard of international law, various Jewish responses claim to seek a middle ground.

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Remembering 2014 (Badly)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Dec 2014

A posture of cynical hopelessness or despair worsens prospects for positive future developments, however empirically based such a negative assessment seems. All of us should recall that those who struggle for what seems ‘impossible’ today often turn out to be the heroes of tomorrow.

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Three Members of Congress Just Reignited the Cold War While No One Was Looking
Dennis Kucinich - Truthdig, 22 Dec 2014

The Congressional Record will show ONLY THREE of 425 members were present on the floor to consider the sanctions bill. According to the clerk’s records, once the bill was considered under unanimous consent, it was passed in one second, unanimously.

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The Dead End of Post-Oslo Diplomacy: What Next?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Dec 2014

The Oslo framework was an unseemly tacit assumption that the Palestinians would be willing to carry on negotiations without complaining about the Israeli violations of international law, most conspicuously the continued unlawful settlement activity.

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Alkarama Human Rights Award to Shireen Issawi
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Dec 2014

Geneva, 13 December 2014 – A letter written from an Israeli prison by the recipient of the award Ms. Shireen Issawi, a brave, resolute, and inspiring human rights defender who has dedicated her professional career as a lawyer to the long Palestinian national struggle for freedom, human rights, and self-determination.

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Shameless: The Luxury Homes That Torture Built
Michael Daly – The Daily Beast, 15 Dec 2014

The CIA paid torture teachers James Mitchell and Bruce Jesser more than $80 million. Call them the houses that torture built: Two sprawling luxury homes purchased by the CIA-contracted psychologists at the center of the scathing Senate report.

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A Eurasian Gas Bombshell
Alexander Sotnichenko - Oriental Review, 8 Dec 2014

At the Dec. 1 joint press conference held by the leaders of Russia and Turkey, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia was abandoning its ambitious South Stream project that would have significantly increased the supply of gas to Europe.

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Memoir Sketch: Championing Lost Causes
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Dec 2014

To contemplate death without the metaphysical painkillers of an imagined afterlife is to be finally alone. In a sense learning to die is equivalent to learning to live alone, and takes courage and fortitude.

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Gaza 2014 Compilation
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Dec 2014

A POMEAS Compilation of Writings Relating to Israel’s 50-Day Attack on Gaza

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The Jump
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Dec 2014

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were watching TV in the evening.

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New 10 Year Study Finds GMO Corn Contaminates Non-GMO Varieties up to 2.8 Miles Away
Christina Sarich – Nation of Change, 1 Dec 2014

GMO pollen, specifically corn, is contaminating non-GMO crops as far as 2.8 miles away. Won’t this have a ripple effect if nothing is done? This is exactly what organic farmers, and non-GMO supporters warned us about decades ago.

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Remembering Yoshikazu Sakamoto (1927-2014)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Dec 2014

I am sharing these words of appreciation, and hope that anyone from Japan who comes across this text will contact me, especially if they have a way of putting me in touch with either Yoshi’s family or Japanese media. I would like to believe that ‘an American appreciation’ of Professor Sakamoto, an important public intellectual, would be of interest to those who knew and admired him.

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Rethinking Economics: From Scarcity to Abundance
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Nov 2014

The coming crash may be humanity’s golden opportunity to transition to post-economic society. Or it may be the beginning of endless misery, violence, confusion, ignorance parading as technocracy, repression and –what is worse– ecocide.

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Mainstream Media Blackout of the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement
Christina Sarich – Nation of Change, 24 Nov 2014

Why won’t Fox, NBC, CNN, or ABC cover the TTP? These media empires (even Facebook has boosted news feeds of the top 100 media outlets, owned by only six mega-corporations to control public opinion) have decided that the public should be kept in the dark about ‘NAFTA on steroids’ so that biotech corporations can completely take over ‘free-trade’ with Pacific Rim nations.

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Surprised?
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Nov 2014

A little boy got lost at the gym and found himself in the women’s locker room.

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Two Interviews [of mine] on Palestine
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Nov 2014

14 Nov 2014 – Two recent interviews seek to assess the Palestinian national movement as it is unfolding at this critical time.

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Looking Back on WW-I One Hundred Years Later: Four Mixed Messages
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Nov 2014

Dorothy Brown Memorial Lecture, Auckland, New Zealand, November 8, 2014

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