Articles by M

We found 33802 results.


(Castellano) Como Entender la Política y Como Cambiarla
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

Lo que distingue el político de los demás oficios y profesiones no es en fin ninguna calidad moral distinta, sino el hecho que le corresponde cumplir una tarea que en la época que nos toca vivir es imposible. La tesis que hoy la política es imposible, o –dicho de una manera menos escueta– que los objetivos que la política se propone sean inalcanzables, es hasta aquí todavía más una provocación que una hipótesis.

→ read full article

The Nobel Peace Prize Watch 2016
Fredrik S. Heffermehl and Tomas Magnusson – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

Who Should Win the 2016 Nobel? Promote good nominations, of qualified candidates, for 2016, before the Feb. 1 deadline. The right to nominate is limited, to parliamentarians, certain professors, and others, all over the world. If you are not entitled to nominate, please seek out someone who is.

→ read full article

Wall Street Taking Over Nonprofit Sector
Dan Wright, Shadowproof – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

4 Jan 2015 – While there has traditionally been a close relationship between Wall Street donors and nonprofit organizations like charities and universities, a new study from the Stanford Social Innovation Review reveals a growing Wall Street takeover of nonprofit boards of directors.

→ read full article

What Is Genocide?
Prof. Daniel Feierstein, Rohingya Genocide Documentation - TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

Prof. Daniel Feierstein is president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars; director of the Centre for Genocide Studies at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero; professor in the Faculty of Genocide at the University of Buenos Aires.

→ read full article

Schooling for Peace and Harmony
Dr Ravi P Bhatia – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

The UN Charter of Human Rights passed in 1948 has recognised education as a fundamental right in Article 26 of the Charter that states, “Everyone has the right to education. It should be free at least to the elementary and foundational levels …” “Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.” — Edward Everett

→ read full article

Wibisono’s Resignation as UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

I am surprised, but not shocked. Surprised because he should have known that he was faced with a dilemma between doing the job properly of reporting on Israel’s crimes and human rights abuses and gaining Israel’s cooperation. Not shocked, indeed grateful, as it illuminates the difficulty confronting anyone charged with truthful reporting on the Palestinian ordeal under occupation, and by his principled resignation Wibisono doesn’t allow Israel to get away with neutering the position of special rapporteur.

→ read full article

Carl Rogers (8 Jan 1902 – 4 Feb 1987): Healing the Person and the State
Rene Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

Carl Ransom Rogers was a US psychologist, educator and a leading figure of what is often called “the third wave of psychology. The first wave was Freud and Jung, and their views of psychoanalysis. The second wave was behaviorism symbolized by B.F. Skinner and the later behavior-modification specialists. The third wave, often called “humanist”, has Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, and Carl Rogers as its best-known figures.

→ read full article

… And All of a Sudden, Syria!
Baher Kamal, IPS - Human Wrongs Watch, 11 Jan 2016

5 Jan 2015 – The “big five” – i.e., the most military powerful states on earth (US, UK, France, Russia and China) have just agreed that it would be about time to end the Syrian five-year long human tragedy.

→ read full article

Decide to Be a Spiritual Person
Robert Muller – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

Render others spiritual
Irradiate your spirituality
Treat every moment of your life
with divine respect

→ read full article

Children
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

All parents want their children to be independent.

→ read full article

Khalil Gibran (6 Jan 1883 – 10 Apr 1931): Spirits Rebellious
René Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

Khalil Gibran is one of the most quoted prose poets, especially his 1923 work The Prophet. The book has become bedside reading for all those who consider themselves “spiritual but not religious”.

→ read full article

Blame Capitalism for Doping in Sports
Bhaskar Sunkara – Al Jazeera America, 11 Jan 2016

Players who take performance-enhancing drugs are only responding to the incentives of the free market. When it comes to corruption in sports, don’t hate the players—scapegoats for capitalism; hate the game.

→ read full article

Free Basics: Corporate Freedom to Privatise India’s Basic Economy
Prof. Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

Mark Zuckerberg is in India with ₹100 crore, in pocket change, for advertising. Facebook’s Free Basics is a repackaged internet.org, or in other words, a system where Facebook decides what parts of the internet are important to users.

→ read full article

Myanmar’s Nobel Peace Prize Winner [Aung San Suu Kyi] and Crimes against Humanity
Nicholas Kristof – International New York Times, 11 Jan 2016

9 Jan 2015 – Soon the world will witness a remarkable sight: a beloved Nobel Peace Prize winner presiding over 21st-century concentration camps. [Pres. Barack Obama, another NPP recipient, sets the world on fire, killing by Drones indiscriminately around the globe.]

→ read full article

Sometimes! I wonder
Dr. M. Ashaq Raza – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

Sometimes! I wonder
There be No border
Between India and Pakistan
So that people of two nations
Live as brothers
As their fathers

→ read full article

Ave Maria (Music Video of the Week)
Luciano Pavarotti – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

Luciano Pavarotti, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian operatic tenor who also crossed over into popular music, eventually becoming one of the most commercially successful tenors of all time.

→ read full article

Syria Is the Middle Eastern Stalingrad
Andre Vltchek, New Eastern Outlook – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

Hundreds of thousands have died, and millions have been forced to flee abroad or have been internally displaced. In many cities and villages, not one house is left intact. But Syria is, against all odds, still standing. And the Syrian people have won. For how long, I don’t know. But it has proven that an Arab country can still defeat the mightiest murderous hordes.

→ read full article

Troubling Habits of Chronically Unhappy People
Dr. Travis Bradberry – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

“The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.” – Benjamin Franklin. Unhappiness is easy to identify; you know it when you see it, and you definitely know when it’s taken hold of you.

→ read full article

Starvation Imagery as Humanitarian Trump Card?
Anthony Judge – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

Suffering elsewhere can be more readily framed as an unacceptable evil for which others are responsible. As with universal condemnation of apartheid, however, it is especially convenient that it be a focus for attention on another continent — displacing attention from the challenge of discrimination and suffering in the immediate environment.

→ read full article

Drought and Heat Took a Heavy Toll on Crops, Study Finds
Nicholas St. Fleur – International New York Times, 11 Jan 2016

Droughts and heat waves wiped out nearly a tenth of the rice, wheat, corn and other cereal crops in countries hit by extreme weather disasters. The paper, published Wednesday [6 Jan] in Nature, examined data on the effects, over five decades, of extreme temperatures, floods and droughts on national crop harvests.

→ read full article

Nuclear Expert Siegfried Hecker Assesses North Korean Hydrogen Bomb Claims
Steve Fyffe, Stanford Center for Int’l Security and Cooperation – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 11 Jan 2016

7 Jan 2015 – One of the world’s top experts on the North Korean nuclear program, former Los Alamos National Laboratory director Siegfried Hecker has visited North Korea seven times since 2004; he is one of the few Western scientists to have set foot inside the Yongbyon nuclear facility.

→ read full article

We Are Living at the Edge of a Nuclear Precipice
David Krieger, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

With nuclear weapons, what could possibly go wrong? The short answer is: Everything. The ever-present dangers of nuclear proliferation, nuclear accidents and miscalculations, nuclear terrorism and nuclear war. Instead of nuclear deterrence and modernization of arsenals, we need to negotiate in good faith for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons. That is, we need to break free of our acidic complacency and commit ourselves to achieving a nuclear zero world.

→ read full article

Duty to Warn – 14 Lies That Our Psychiatry Professors in Medical School Taught Us
Gary G. Kohls, MD – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

In my mental health care practice, I personally treated hundreds of patients who had been given a multitude of confusing and contradictory mental illness labels, many of which had been one of the new “diseases of the month” for which there was a new psych “drug of the month” that was being heavily marketed on TV.

→ read full article

Money for Nothing: Inside the U.S. Federal Reserve
TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

A Documentary about Money

→ read full article

The Role of Peace Education
Surya Nath Prasad, Ph. D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

For Good Governance: Saints and Sages as Ministers and Judges; Inventors and Innovators as Bureaucrats

→ read full article

Syria (Minding the Minds II)
Johan Galtung, 11 Jan 2016 - TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

Syria offered a poor choice between a minority dictatorship with tolerance and a majority dictatorship–democracy–without. Violence flourished, attracting old suspects for proxy wars. “Bomb Syria” was the panacea, after “bomb Libya”. What a shame. Bring it to an end.

→ read full article

This Month in Nuclear Threat History
Jeffrey W. Mason – Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 11 Jan 2016

January 9, 1987 – Dean Rusk (1909-1994), a former Secretary of State (1961-69) under presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson who received many awards during his career including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, spoke out against nuclear weapons with a statement that, “Nuclear war not only eliminates all the answers, but eliminates all the questions.”

→ read full article

This Week in History
Satoshi Ashikaga – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Jan 2016

Jan 11-17 QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “It is better to light one small candle of gratitude than to curse the darkness.” – Confucius

→ read full article

(Português) A Inteligência dos Porcos
Direitos Animais - ANDA Agência de Notícias de Direitos Animais, 11 Jan 2016

Cada vez mais vamos percebendo, através de estudos ou pela simples convivência, que os animais não humanos são mais inteligentes do que costumávamos pensar. Para exemplificar, segue uma lista de comportamentos peculiares dos porcos.

→ read full article

Romancing the Sunni: A US Policy Tragedy in Three Acts. Act I
Angelo Codevilla – Asia Times, 4 Jan 2016

For more than a quarter century, as Americans have suffered trouble from the Muslim world’s Sunni and Shia components and as the perennial quarrel between them has intensified, the US government has taken the side of the Sunni. This has not worked out well for us.

→ read full article

Twenty Pious Wishes for 2016: Mind the Minds
Johan Galtung, 4 Jan 2016 - TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

Empirically, the West is often on the wrong side. Nevertheless, as anything empirical, it is subject to the law of change. Westerners are not slaves of the violent mind-sets in the Iliad and Beowulf spanning Europe. The liberation is overdue. By minding the minds.

→ read full article

Romancing the Sunni: A US Policy Tragedy in Three Acts. Act II
Angelo Codevilla – Asia Times, 4 Jan 2016

Iraq’s Sunni leaders awakened to the reality that far from cowing the Shia while punishing the Americans they were now in danger of their very lives. They offered to stop killing Americans if the Americans could stop the Shia from killing them. The US government set about doing that. This was “the surge” in 2006.

→ read full article

The Mass Beheadings in Saudi Arabia
Bill Van Auken, WSWS – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

4 Jan 2015 – Washington’s closest ally in the Arab world, the dictatorial monarchy of Saudi Arabia, ushered in the New Year with a torrent of blood, simultaneously executing 47 prisoners. This wave of state murders unfolded at 12 separate prisons across the kingdom. The barbaric killing spree was a calculated political act driven by both domestic and international objectives.

→ read full article

GITMO Clock
Andy Worthington, Close Guantánamo Campaign – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

Holding President Obama to his promise to release the 48 cleared-for-release detainees at Guantánamo Bay.
As of 4 Jan 2016, 12:25 p.m. GMT:
1321 days, 11 hours, 26 minutes since the promise on May 23, 2013.

→ read full article

The Man Who Exposed the Lie of the War on Drugs
Ed Vulliamy – The Guardian, 4 Jan 2016

“The City of London is a far more important centre for laundering criminal money than the Cayman Islands.” Roberto Saviano already lives under armed guard after writing about the Neapolitan mafia. Now he is determined to uncover capitalism’s complicity with the narco-lords of South America.

→ read full article

Year of Hope 2016
Ada Aharoni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

The power of women and children for peace is rising,
Democracy and the Internet are spreading,
Global poverty has been cut in half –
Never have ordinary people, like you and me,
Had more power to face challenges
And to decide our own fate of Nonkilling.

→ read full article

The Soul of an Octopus: How One of Earth’s Most Alien Creatures Illuminates the Wonders of Consciousness
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

Montgomery begins with a seemingly simple premise. The octopus is a creature magnificently dissimilar to us — it can change shape and color, tastes with its skin, has its mouth in its armpit, and is capable of squeezing its entire body through a hole the size of an apple. And since we humans experience reality in profoundly different ways from one another, based on our individual consciousnesses, then the octopus must be inhabiting an altogether different version of what we call reality.

→ read full article

Don’t Eat That Shrimp
Roberto A. Ferdman – The Washington Post, 4 Jan 2016

Indentured and Enslaved Workers Fuel the Thai Shrimp Industry – Burmese men, women and children are being sold to factories in Thailand and forced to peel shrimp that ends up in global supply chains.

→ read full article

Adagio in G Minor (MUSIC VIDEO OF THE WEEK)
Albinoni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

Composer: Tomaso Albinoni. Adagio in G minor for strings and organ.
Performer: Herbert von Karajan & Berliner Philharmoniker.

→ read full article

This Week in History
Satoshi Ashikaga – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

Jan 4-10 QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” ― Martin Luther King, Jr.

→ read full article

Romancing the Sunni: A US Policy Tragedy in Three Acts. Act III
Angelo Codevilla – Asia Times, 4 Jan 2016

So long as the West plays Erdogan’s multiple-double game, why should Erdogan stop playing it? So long as the Sunni Muslim communities in the West pay no price for nurturing the thirst for infidel blood, what argument can convince them to stop nurturing it?

→ read full article

Coming Out as a Radical — or Coming In?
Anthony Judge – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

Risks of Cultivating Negative Capability in a Caliphate of Normality – This argument is inspired by the progressive conflation in mainstream discourse of radicalisation with Islamisation, extremism, fundamentalism and terrorism. The concern here is whether it is possible to engage in thinking, framed as radical by some, without being branded a terrorist in consequence.

→ read full article

Culture, Education and Human Solidarity
John Scales Avery – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

Human nature has two sides: It has a dark side, to which nationalism and militarism appeal; but our species also has a genius for cooperation, which we can see in the growth of culture. Our modern civilization has been built up by means of a worldwide exchange of ideas and inventions.

→ read full article

A Review of Stephen Prothero’s ‘Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars (Even When They Lose Elections)’
James A. Haught, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

Social progress occurs because liberal-minded reformers defeat conservative resistance.

→ read full article

(Italiano) Il servizio migranti di Aosta non deve chiudere. Sulla petizione postata su change org.
Silvia Berruto – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

797 Sono le voci delle/dei sostenitori della petizione “Il servizio Migranti di Aosta non deve chiudere” in dissenso con la chiusura forzata del servizio Migranti di Aosta.
Da tutto il mondo è giunta, in pochi giorni, l’espressione di solidarietà per gli stranieri che da questa mattina non hanno più un servizio di riferimento.

→ read full article

‘No-Grow Zone:’ Israel Admits to Spraying Poisons Inside Gaza Strip
Sputnik News – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

The Israeli Army has admitted that they used crop-dusters to kill hundreds of acres of Palestinian crops, claiming that it was to “enable security operations.”

→ read full article

Venezuela Passes Law Banning GMOs, by Popular Demand
William Camacaro, Frederick B. Mills and Christina M. Schiavoni – CounterPunch, 4 Jan 2016

1 Jan 2016 – The National Assembly of Venezuela, in its final session before a neoliberal dominated opposition takes the helm of legislative power on January 5, passed one of the most progressive seed laws in the world on December 23, 2015; it was promptly signed into law by President Nicolas Maduro.

→ read full article

Over My Dead Body
TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

Gravestone

→ read full article

International Monetary Fund’s Rogues Gallery: Crooks, Rapists and Swindlers
Prof. James Petras – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

The IMF has been under the control of the US and Western European states and its policies have been designed to further the expansion, domination and profits of their leading multi-national corporations and financial institutions. The executive directors of the IMF are Europeans; their counterparts in the World Bank are from the US.

→ read full article

Pentagon Curbs Use of Psychologists with Guantánamo Detainees
James Risen – International New York Times, 4 Jan 2016

31 Dec 2015 – The United States military has sharply curtailed the use of psychologists at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in response to strict new professional ethics rules of the American Psychological Association, Pentagon officials said.

→ read full article

You Say ISIL, I Say ISIS, Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off
Tom H. Hastings, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

Who benefits? Who loses? US elites benefit. Owners of military contractors benefit the most ($711,000,000 the last day of 2015 alone, nearly $40 million per hour around the clock), and they share their largesse with those who serve them best—friendly bellicose politicians, persuasive media, high-level military officers.

→ read full article

(Italiano) Anglo-America, UE, Occidente: una prognosi
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

Grazie, cari studenti di Oxford, per il regalo di Natale, sfidare il culto di Cecil Rhodes – colonialista, classista, razzista. Sa di TV Reality. Gli USA reclamano il monopolio sulla “leadership” concedendo “un rapporto speciale” al Regno Unito. E la Paura dei Tedeschi divenne Paura dei Rossi, divenne Paura dei Cinesi, divenne Paura dell’Islam, divenne Paura della Russia. La paura del giorno divenne paranoia; di facile combinazione col narcisismo UK-USA.

→ read full article

A Happy & More Just and Peaceful New Year FOR ALL! -> Reduce the Great Divide between Rich and Poor
James Albertini – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

There are great divides that need healing. Honolulu has the largest number of homeless per capita of any city in the U.S. The gap between rich are poor widens while $50-100 million-dollar private jets crowd the Kona airport bringing the super rich to vacation in luxury homes and resorts.

→ read full article

Syria – A Light to the World
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

In November 2015 I visited Syria together with an International Peace delegation. This was my third visit to Syria in the last three years. There is hope and Syria is a light to the world as there are many people working for peace and reconciliation, dialogue and negotiations, and this is where the hope lies and what we can all support by rejecting violence and war in Syria, the Middle East and our World.

→ read full article

A Most Unhappy New Year at Guantanamo
Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan – Democracy NOW!, 4 Jan 2016

Currently there are 107 men imprisoned there, 48 of whom have been cleared for release for almost six years. Reuters recently reported that the Pentagon itself, which is supposed to be under the civilian control of Commander-in-Chief Obama, may be resisting the order to close Guantanamo.

→ read full article

Despair and Hope for the New Year
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

Most needed in these dark times is to hold tight to what we believe with an unruly embrace of faith, patience, and urgency. This is my most fervent New Year’s wish for 2016.

→ read full article

(Deutsch) Dabeisein ist alles!
Jürgen Wagner - Informationsstelle Militarisierung (IMI), 4 Jan 2016

Deutsche Syrien-Interessen und der erste Hauptsatz internationaler Machtpolitik

→ read full article

Comments to Paris Atrocities Editorial – A Reply
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2016

I grew up in Norway, forced into Christianity, dedicated to Western colonialism to spread Christianity, and fought both. Against the same from Islam, I favor using the military to defend the many exposed to IS brutality. But not to kill and escalate by using their approach. And in favor of negotiation based on understanding both.

→ read full article

Renewable Energy Soars in 2015
Nathanael Greene, Natural Resources Defense Council, EcoWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

With Tax Incentives’ Renewal, Expect More of the Same in Years to Come – The truth is, 2015 has been one in a series of very good years for these pollution-free, renewable resources—years that are helping us get on track for the low-carbon future we need and need now.

→ read full article

Brazil: Back to the Future
Lucia Nader, Manoela Miklos, and Ana Carolina Evangelista – Open Democracy, 28 Dec 2015

Even if mired in a deep crisis affecting the three brands of power, Brazil’s civil society still believes in democracy. Recent women and student’s mobilizations show the way into the future.

→ read full article

(Italiano) Cina vs. Russia vs. USA; Xi vs. Putin vs. Obama
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

Cina, il più popoloso; Russia, il più vasto; USA, il più militarizzato. E qui c’è l’ipotesi chiave, presumibilmente più giusta che sbagliata: Cina-Xi: pace positiva; Russia-Putin: pace negativa; USA-Obama: guerra. Ci vogliono almeno due per fare la guerra, e due per fare la pace. La domanda è: chi cederà all’altro, Cina-Russia a una guerra estesa, o gli USA a una pace estesa?

→ read full article

Sacrifice: Meat Producing Worse Than Airplanes for Environment
George Monbiot - TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

A Kg of beef protein can generate the equivalent of 643 kg of carbon dioxide. A kilogramme of lamb protein can generate 749 kg. One kilo of protein from either source, in other words, causes more greenhouse gas emissions than a passenger flying from London to New York.

→ read full article

A Perfect New Year Gift: A Calendar Dedicated to the Rohingya Victims of Myanmar’s Slow Genocide
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

Here is a perfect gift for this holiday season, especially for those with a social conscience. And Myanmar authorities will arrest you if it is found in your possession!

→ read full article

Imagine (Music Video of the Week)
John Lennon – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

Remembrance on the 35th anniversary of his untimely death at the hands of an assassin on 8 Dec 1980. He was just 40 years old. RIP dearest John, your memory will live forever in our hearts and of upcoming generations of peace/music/poetry lovers throughout the world.

→ read full article

Burundi : In Moments of Crisis the Wise Build Bridges
Rene Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

On 17 December 2015, the UN Human Rights Council held a Special Session on preventing further deterioration of the human rights situation in Burundi. A Special Session is the “highest profile” measure that the Human Rights Council has to highlight a dangerous situation and to call attention to a need for action.

→ read full article

Memories of Urvashi
Dr Ravi P Bhatia – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

Urvashi is no longer alive physically but her memories and her supreme sacrifice continue to inspire and motivate many young persons. She is a symbol of encouragement and peace.

→ read full article

The Believer: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Ruler of the Islamic State
William McCants – The Brookings Essay, 28 Dec 2015

The bare facts of Baghdadi’s biography show an unusually capable man. He helped found an insurgent group, finished a Ph.D. while managing the religious affairs of the Islamic State, built coalitions, and intimidated rivals.

→ read full article

Large Pod of Bottlenose Dolphins Endures Brutal Capture and Slaughter in Taiji’s Infamous Cove
Sea Shepherd News – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

A large pod of approximately 85-90 bottlenose dolphins driven into Taiji, Japan’s infamous cove on Sunday, Dec. 20 was forced to endure brutal captive selection and slaughter that claimed the freedom of 30 dolphins and the lives of 28-30 others.

→ read full article

Military to Military
Seymour M. Hersh – London Review of Books, 28 Dec 2015

Seymour Hersh’s Latest Bombshell: U.S. Military Undermined Obama on Syria with Tacit Help to Assad

→ read full article

The Art Collector’s Wife
Submitted by Robin Poulton – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

A New York attorney representing a wealthy art collector called and asked to speak to his client, “Saul, I have some good news and, I have some bad news.”

→ read full article

Slouching toward Global Disaster: Chaos and Intervention in the Middle East
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

Even the more thoughtful Democrats limit their proposals to enhanced militarism, hoping to induce the Arab countries to put ‘the boots on the ground’ with nary a worry about either igniting a regional war or the imaginative collapse that can only contemplate war as the recipe for peace, again recalling the degree to which Orwellian satiric irony is relied upon to shape foreign policy prescriptions by ambitious politicians.

→ read full article

Awakening an American Society and the Global Community
Clive Hambidge – Media with Conscience News, 28 Dec 2015

The celebrated physicist Fritjof Capra explains why this is a fact in nature, “Evolution is not just adaptation to environment … but rather an organism and its environment evolv[ing] together. Likewise, in music, the essence of the musical chord lies in relationship. Even subatomic particles are not discrete and separate.”

→ read full article

The Roots of the Current Crisis in the Middle East
Free Haifa – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

The wave of refugees that has reached Europe and the terror attacks in Paris reminded many people in Europe and beyond of the crisis in our region – but at the same time led them to forget that the main victims of this crisis are the people of the region themselves.

→ read full article

15 Indigenous Rights Victories That You Didn’t Hear about in 2015
John Ahni Schertow – IC Magazine, 28 Dec 2015

21 Dec 2015 – Good news. Sometimes, it comes in the form of a cancelled hydro dam that spares 20,000 people from the burden of displacement. Other times, it takes the shape of a simple court admission that Indigenous Peoples do actually make the best conservationists. In this day in age such stories are incredibly rare.

→ read full article

Anglo-America, EU, the West: A Prognosis
Johan Galtung, 28 Dec 2015 - TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

Thanks dear Oxford students for the Xmas gift, challenging the cult of Cecil Rhodes–colonialist, classist, racist. Sounds like Reality TV: The USA claims monopoly on “leadership” granting “special relation” to the UK. And German Scare became Red Scare became China Scare became Islam Scare became Russia Scare. The scare of the day paranoia; easily combined with UK-US narcissism.

→ read full article

Prof. Ståle Eskeland – A Life in the Vanguard for Peace and Justice
Fredrik S. Heffermehl – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

Oslo, December 27, 2015 – A great Norwegian scholar for peace, justice and a sane foreign policy, Ståle Eskeland, died yesterday at age 72. He was a retired professor of (Norwegian and international) criminal law at the University of Oslo, who never shied away from pointing out social and political wrongs.

→ read full article

Where to Invade Next
Godfrey Cheshire, Roger Ebert – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

Moore tells us the Joint Chiefs of Staff invited him to Washington, DC to confess that all their wars since “the big one” have been disastrous and ask his advice. He responds by offering himself up as a one-man army who will “invade countries populated by Caucasians whose names I can mostly pronounce, take the things we need from them, and bring them back home to the United States of America.”

→ read full article

Why Did You Make Me? A Pig’s Complaint to God
Dr. M. Ashaq Raza – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

These Muslims, your Muslims
Why they hate me so much
They don’t want to see me
They don’t call even my name
What did I do to them?

→ read full article

The NRA Is Actually Half Right: Guns Don’t Kill People — Americans Kill People
Michael Moore – The Hollywood Reporter, 28 Dec 2015

The ‘Where to Invade Next’ filmmaker argues that even if the U.S. banned guns, its lack of a social safety net would still turn many toward violence: “We just need to modify [the NRA’s slogan] to, ‘Guns don’t kill people — Americans kill people.'”

→ read full article

Radical Localization in a Global Systemic Context
Anthony Judge – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

Distinguishing Normality Using Playing Card Suits as a Pattern Language – There is currently considerable confusion as to what is to be distinguished as “radical” in contrast to “fundamental”, “extraordinary”, “exceptional” and “extreme”.

→ read full article

Why Did Brookings Institution Hold a Secret Panel Countering BDS?
Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

Americans should be asking why such a conference is taking place behind closed doors at a leading liberal thinktank– and why it’s tackling BDS, which Israeli leaders have termed an “existential” threat to Israel. The gathering is a reflection of the power of the Israel lobby in Washington.

→ read full article

When Terrorism Becomes Counter-Terrorism: The State Sponsors of Terrorism Are “Going After the Terrorists”
Prof Michel Chossudovsky - Global Research, 28 Dec 2015

A complex network of Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations overseen by US and allied intelligence agencies has unfolded, extending across the Middle East, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, Western China, South and South East Asia.

→ read full article

(Deutsch) Das Weihnachtswunder von 1914
MMNews – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

Deutsche und britische Soldaten legten zu Heiligabend 1914 die Waffen nieder und feierten an der Front ein spontanes Friedensfest. Das als “Christmas Truce” (“Weihnachtsfrieden”) in die Geschichte eingegangene Ereignis zeigt die Sinnlosigkeit von Kriegen.

→ read full article

A Christmas Message in Dark Times
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

Christmas has an ecumenical resonance that calls for bright lights, ornamented trees, celebration, and wishes for peace on earth and good will toward all, bringing together those of diverse faith or no faith at all. The legions of ‘the politically correct’ determined to avoid offending those, especially Jews, who are not Christians, will carefully express their good wishes with such phrases as ‘happy holidays!’

→ read full article

Duty to Warn – Nativity: Rev Kevin Annett and the “Little Matter of Aboriginal Genocide”
Gary G. Kohls, MD – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

One of the most meaningful Christmas stories that I have ever read came from my friend from Vancouver, Canada, Reverend Kevin Annett. His story is titled “Nativity” and is printed further below.

→ read full article

Got Fascism? The 1942 Norwegian Teachers’ Nonviolent Resistance to Nazis Has Answers
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

In April 1940, the Nazis invaded Norway and occupied the country. In 1942, as part of an attempt to implement a fascist curriculum in the schools, Minister-President Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian collaborator, disbanded the existing teachers’ union and required all teachers to register with the new Norwegian Teachers’ Union by February 5.

→ read full article

(Italiano) Il servizio Migranti di Aosta non deve chiudere. Petizione-appello alla comunità politica globale
Silvia Berruto – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

Da pochi giorni la comunità straniera e la comunità valdostana hanno appreso dai media che il servizio Migranti di Aosta dal 4 gennaio 2016 non sarà più operativo. Dopo 25 anni.

→ read full article

List of Palestinians [and Israelis] Killed between Oct. 1 and Dec. 18, 2015
Celine Hagbard – International Middle East Media Center, 28 Dec 2015

19 Dec 2015 – The Following is a list of names of all Palestinians shot and killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, including one in the Negev, in the period between Thursday October 1st and the end of December 18th, as confirmed by the Palestinian Health Ministry.

→ read full article

Pre-Deciding about Violence
Elizabeth Traubman and Lionel Traubman – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

What does smacking your child have in common with the fast-spreading violence we read about in headlines from every continent like terrorist attacks in Paris, Beirut, and Jerusalem, and drone strikes that kill innocent women and children? They all are part of the cycle of cruelty. Yet as today’s headlines clarify for us, violence primarily fuels more flames of hostility.

→ read full article

This Week in History
Satoshi Ashikaga – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

Dec 28–Jan 3 QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.” – George Santayana

→ read full article

Terror, Climate Chaos, Financial Crisis Are the Costs of ‘Doing Business’
Nafeez Ahmed – Middle East Eye, 28 Dec 2015

The techno-narcissism of predatory neoliberal capitalism is locked into an endless war with the bastard monster of its own creation – Islamic State.

→ read full article

Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Francis A. Boyle – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

Israel, Palestine and American Christian Hypocrites

→ read full article

It Wasn’t only Exxon That Knew about Global Warming since the 1970s
Lauren McCauley - Common Dreams, 28 Dec 2015

New investigative reporting by Neela Banerjee with Inside Climate News revealed on Tuesday [22 Dec 2015] that scientists and engineers from nearly every major U.S. and multinational oil and gas company may have for decades known about the impacts of carbon emissions on the climate.

→ read full article

Surveillance Techniques: How Your Data Becomes Our Data
Domestic Surveillance Directorate – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

We’ve turned our nation’s Internet and telecommunications companies into collection partners by installing filters in their facilities, serving them with secret court orders, building back doors into their software and acquiring keys to break their encryption.

→ read full article

The First Christmas without Our Santa Claus: Remembering Dietrich
Nirmanusan Balasundaram – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

He was a thoughtful human being born to strengthen a shared future that would uphold nonviolence, humanity and peace. Either ordinary life problems or peace building studies, Dietrich had answers to most situations, not through complex political theories but rather through simple short stories or jokes.

→ read full article

Tarantino: I ‘Utterly Reject’ Argument That only Some Cops Are Bad
Truth Voice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

“I completely and utterly reject the bad apples argument. It’s about institutional racism. It’s about institutional cover-ups that are about protecting the force as opposed to the citizens.”

→ read full article

Raw Pecans: Discover 7 Health Benefits of Pecans
Dr. Edward Group, Global Healing Center – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2015

From 277 different nuts and foods, USDA researchers say pecans are the most antioxidant-rich nut; with more oleic acid than olive oil, they contain 90% unsaturated (heart-healthy) fats, are low sodium, cholesterol free, contain essential vitamins and minerals, and have alpha and gamma-tocopherol forms of vitamin E.

→ read full article

Is the EU the New USSR?
Sam Gerrans – Russia Today, 21 Dec 2015

“The Soviet Union was governed by 15 unelected people, who appointed each other and who were not accountable to anyone. The European Union is governed by two dozen people, who appoint each other and are not accountable to anyone.” His disturbing and lucid monologue concludes with the words: “I have lived in your future, and it didn’t work.”

→ read full article

I Helped Create ISIS
Vincent Emanuele - TeleSur, 21 Dec 2015

After we cut their zip-ties and took the black bags off their heads, several of our more deranged marines would fire rounds from their AR-15s into their air or ground, scaring the recently released captives. Always for laughs. Who knows how long they survived. After all, no one cared. We do know of one former U.S. prisoner who survived: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS.

→ read full article

Silence, Please! A New Middle East Is in the Making
Baher Kamal, IPS – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Dec 2015

When, in June 2006, former US National Security adviser and, later on, Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, spelled out the George W. Bush administration new, magic doctrine for the Middle East, tons of ink was poured and millions of words said in a harsh attempt to speculate with what she really did mean by what she called “Creative Chaos.”

→ read full article