Articles by ICH
We found 2477 results.
Class Warfare Indeed
Michael Parenti – Toward Freedom,
10 Oct 2011
And who knows, once we learn to talk about the realities of class power, we are on our way to talking critically about capitalism, another verboten word in the public realm. And once we start a critical discourse about capitalism, we will be vastly better prepared to act against it and defend our own democratic and communal interests.
→ read full articleInterview on the Palestinian Statehood Bid
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Oct 2011
This post consists of my responses to questions put to me by a Greek journalist, C.J Polychroniou, who long followed intellectual thought in the West, and is a keen analyst of the current European economic crisis.
→ read full articleAn American Awakening?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Oct 2011
We must hope and engage. We can be thankful that this initiative places its focus on financial and corporate structures, and not on the state. Further along these lines, if the struggle will gain momentum it will be totally thanks to politics-from-below. The implicit not so subtle point is that the center of power over the destinies of the American people has shifted its locus from Washington to New York, and from the penthouse to the the basement!! We’ll see!!
→ read full articleA Modest Proposal: Is It Time for the Community of Non-Nuclear States to Revolt?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Oct 2011
There are 189 countries that are parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) that entered into force in 1970. Only India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea have remained outside the treaty regime so as to be free to acquire the weapons. The nuclear weapons states have done an incredibly successful job, especially the United States, in getting a free ride, continuously modernizing their arsenals while keeping the weapons out of most unwanted hands.
→ read full articleBrian Stelter and the Pathology of Objectivity
Michael Tracey – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Oct 2011
So I had a question for Stelter — what evidence indicated to him that a “battle” had taken place yesterday, or in other words, what evidence indicated that protesters had “battled” police? Again, the term “battle” implies the participation of at least two parties, but there is no reason (as yet) to believe that protesters attacked police. Here’s what Stelter said in response: “I used the word “battle” in an attempt not to judge either side.”
→ read full articleWhat Facebook Really Wants
Nicholas Thompson – The New Yorker,
3 Oct 2011
The more our online lives take place on Facebook, the more we depend on the choices of the people who run the company – what they think about privacy, how they think we should be able to organize our friends, what they tell advertisers (and governments) about what we do and what we buy. We’ll rely on whom they choose as partners to give us news and music. Real issues are at stake, in other words – not just the size of photos and whether you can poke.
→ read full articleSmall Price
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Oct 2011
A pole goes to a bank with 100 zlotys and asks, “What is the safest thing to do with my money?” “Deposit it in a bank,” the teller says.
→ read full articleReflections on the Abbas Statehood/Membership Speech to the UN General Assembly
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Oct 2011
There is a natural disposition for supporters of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination to suppose that the Palestinian statehood bid must be a positive initiative because it has generated such a frantic Israel effort to have it rejected.
→ read full articleLockdowns and the IMF on Occupied Wall Street
Richard (RJ) Eskow – Nation of Change,
3 Oct 2011
You know why otherwise smart hedge fund managers say crazy things, why they call themselves “a persecuted minority” or react to the suggestion that they pay the same tax rates as a firefighter by comparing it to the invasion of Poland? Because they’re addicts. Junkies, even the smart ones, say crazy things to get their next fix. Especially the smart ones. Wall Street is occupied by … addiction.
→ read full articleRethinking Afghanistan After a Decade
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Sep 2011
This post is a short essay responding to a question about my dramatic change of position on the Afghanistan War with regard to its initial justification and flawed execution. It is both a reconsideration of errors of judgment and reflections on how the world has changed in the course of this decade, focusing on the inability of the United States to grasp either its own decline or the related decline in the historical agency of hard power approaches to security.
→ read full articleSocialism, Communism…
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Sep 2011
At a political meeting the chairman asks the audience, “Who is Gomulka?” There is silence.
→ read full articleWe the Ruled
Michael S. Rozeff - LewRockwell,
26 Sep 2011
And the Criminals Who Dominate Us – I am saying little that is new, although it bears repetition until it motivates action. I echo and strongly endorse Henry David Thoreau in Civil Disobedience (1849): “When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.”
→ read full articleThe American and Global Experience of 9/10, 9/11, 9/12 +10:
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Sep 2011
There is unacknowledged freedom associated with any event inscribed in our individual and collective experience of profoundly disabling and disturbing public occurrences. For most older Americans what is most vividly remembered among such occurrences is likely to have been Pearl Harbor, the assassination of JFK, and the 9/11 attacks, each coming as a shock to a shared societal sense of exceeding the limits of what could be expected to happen.
→ read full articlePreliminary Libyan Scorecard: Acting Beyond the UN Mandate
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Sep 2011
If the governments will not act to uphold agreed and fundamental limits on state violence, especially directed at vulnerable countries and peoples, then as citizens of the world, ‘we the peoples of the United Nations,’ as proclaimed by the Preamble to the Charter need to raise our voices. We have the residual responsibility to act on behalf of international law and morality when the UN falters or when states act beyond the law.
→ read full articleLast Wishes
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Sep 2011
A dying man asked his wife, “Are you going to marry again?” “If you wish, I will,” she said.
→ read full article
Sloppy Journalism or War Propaganda? Fake Images from Tripoli
Michel Chossudovsky – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Sep 2011
Tripoli’s Greeen Square in India: BBC 24 Aug 2011 Hoax Report – It’s not Green Square and it’s not the King Idris Flag (red, black green) of the Rebels. It’s the Indian flag (orange, white and green) and the people at the rally are Indians. Sloppy journalism at the BBC or outright Lies and Fabrications? Image manipulation seems to be a routine practice of the mainstream media.
→ read full articleThe Legal Flaws of the Palmer Commission Flotilla Report
Richard Falk & Phyllis Bennis – TRANSCEND Media Serivce,
19 Sep 2011
The latest United Nations report on last year’s lethal flotilla incident – in which nine people were killed and many injured by Israeli commandos on board a humanitarian ship bound for Gaza – was released at the beginning of September, and generated much controversy. Astonishingly, the only other independent member was its vice-chair, the former president of Colombia. Alvaro Uribe’s notorious history as a human rights abuser who called human rights advocates such as Amnesty International “rats,” as well as his legacy of seeking out the closest possible ties to and defense of Israel while in office, make him wildly inappropriate for such an assignment.
→ read full article9/11 Did Not Start or End At Midnight
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Sep 2011
All too often we view 9/11 from the perspective of the nation-state rather than from a global standpoint.
→ read full articleAgainst Our Principles
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Sep 2011
A Rabbi, a Hindu and a lawyer are riding down the road when their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere.
→ read full articleAnother UN Failure: The Palmer Report on the Flotilla Incident of 31 May 2010
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Sep 2011
Israel has managed up to now to avoid paying the price for defying international law. For decades it has been building unlawful settlements in occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. It has used excessive violence and relied on state terror on numerous occasions in dealing with Palestinian resistance, and has subjected the people of Gaza to sustained and extreme forms of collective punishment.
→ read full articleSpeculating with Lives: How Global Investors Make Money Out of Hunger
Horand Knaup, Michaela Schiessl and Anne Seith – Der Spiegel,
5 Sep 2011
In recent years, the financial markets have discovered the huge opportunities presented by agricultural commodities. The consequences are devastating, as speculators drive up food prices and plunge millions of people into poverty. But investors care little about the effects of their deals in the real world.
→ read full articleOops…!
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Sep 2011
A Catholic priest was being honored at his retirement dinner after 25 years in the parish.
→ read full articleYou Only Believe the Official 9/11 Story Because You Don’t Know the Official 9/11 Story
Jesse Richard – TV News LIES,
5 Sep 2011
During the past 10 years I have not met a single individual who, after doing research on the subject, switched from questioning the official narrative of the events of 9/11/2001 to believing the official narrative of those events.. It is always the other way around. Why do you think that is?
→ read full articleStrategy Lesson at the Soviet War College
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Aug 2011
A general is a guest lecturer and tells the class of officers that the session will focus on potential problems and the resulting strategies. One of the officers in the class begins by asking the first question:
→ read full articleLibya without Qaddafi: Decoding an Uncertain Future
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Aug 2011
There is so much spin surrounding the Transitional National Council victory in Libya that it is difficult to interpret the outcome, and perhaps premature to do so at this point considering that the fighting continues and the African Union has withheld diplomatic recognition on principled grounds.
→ read full articleSomalia Tragedy, Islamist Extremists and Climate Change Skeptics
Hilal Elver and Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Aug 2011
The unfolding tragedy in East Africa is a dramatic indicator of what humanity as a whole can expect in the near future ‘if business as usual’ continues to be the phrase that most accurately expresses global climate change policy. The unwillingness of the developed countries to provide adequate humanitarian aid to the most vulnerable peoples in the world also helps explain this worsening regional tragedy has reached such dire extremes.
→ read full articleSyria: Geopolitical Mentoring versus Rehab for Addicted Geopolitical Leaders
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Aug 2011
Of course, the future should not be entrusted to the political leaders representing sovereign states. It is up to the peoples of the world to propose and demand better solutions for the unfolding global tragedies that are sidestepped by the egocentric behavioral goals of national governments. Populist complacency is part of what gives this geopolitical posturing a semblance of credibility in our post-colonial era.
→ read full articleBack in 1967… In Eastern Europe
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Aug 2011
Czechoslovakia announced that it was going to create a ministry of the Navy.
→ read full articleFear of the Executioners: The Sinister Power of the Rating Agencies
Michaela Schiessl, Christoph Schult and Thomas Schulz – Der Spiegel,
22 Aug 2011
The most obvious solution — perhaps even the only solution — to break the power of the agencies without also destabilizing the entire financial system would be to remove the rating stipulations from the regulations. This would allow investors to seek alternative sources of information without being bound, for better or for worse, to the agencies’ opinions.
→ read full articleEconomic Crisis or Nonviolent Opportunity? Gandhi’s Answer to Financial Collapse
Michael Nagler – Waging Nonviolence,
15 Aug 2011
The real purpose of an economic system is to guarantee to every person in its circle the fundamentals of physical existence (food, clothing, shelter) and the tools of meaningful work so that they can get on with the business of living together and working out our common destiny. This was Gandhi’s vision, among others’. We can no longer afford to ignore him in this sector any more than we can ignore his spectacular contributions to peace and security.
→ read full articleThe Afghanistan War in the Mirror of the Tet Offensive: When ‘Defeat’ Became ‘Victory’
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Aug 2011
It is true the war dragged on for several more years with heavy casualties on both sides, but the Tet Offensive changed the American goal from ‘victory’ to ‘peace with honor,’ that is, ‘defeat in disguise.’ The subsequent Christmas bombing of the North and the disastrous invasion of Cambodia in 1970 were part of the bloody effort during the Nixon/Kissinger period of American leadership to produce ‘honor.’ Actually, when the war finally came to an abrupt end in 1975, the dominant image at the time being that of Vietnamese collaborators with the American intervention desperately seeking to escape from Vietnam by clamoring aboard a helicopter taking off from the roof of the embassy. Not honor but humiliation, chaos, and defeat…
→ read full articleOslo: Europe, Islam and the Mainstreaming of Racism
Miriyam Aouragh and Richard Seymour – Jadaliyya,
8 Aug 2011
European media coverage of the Norwegian tragedy has led with dangerous and clichéd arguments about ‘Islamic extremism’ and multiculturalism, even after the identity of the killer was confirmed – thus contributing to the mainstreaming of racism that helped make Breivik what he is.
→ read full articleCan Humanitarian Intervention Ever Be Humanitarian?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Aug 2011
Not since the debate about the Kosovo War of 1999 has there been such widespread discussion of humanitarian intervention, including the semantics of coupling ‘humanitarian’ with the word ‘intervention.’
→ read full articlePeak Oil: A Chance to Change the World
Richard Heinberg – Yes! Magazine,
8 Aug 2011
For advice about life after graduation, students at Worcester Polytechnic wanted to hear from peak oil scholar Richard Heinberg instead of Exxon’s CEO. Here’s what he told them.
→ read full articleParadigm Meltdown and Opportunities for Peacebuilding
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Aug 2011
A question that it would seem to be reasonable to ask is how to raise wages and employ everyone who wants a job, without raising prices, without militarism, and without damage to the environment.
→ read full articleWarfare without Limits: A Darkening Human Horizon
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Aug 2011
There are several pressures that push war in the direction of the absolute, and imperil the human future. Perhaps, the foremost of these is emergence, use, retention, and proliferation of nuclear weapons, as well as the development of biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction.
→ read full articleQuestions the Media Are Not Asking about Norway
Michael N. Nagler and Stephanie N. Van Hook – Metta Center for Nonviolence,
1 Aug 2011
The law enforcement entities dealing with the appalling massacre in and around Oslo last Friday have been understandably preoccupied with the question, did the perpetrator, Anders Behring Breivik, act alone. That is an important question for them, but it does nothing to help the rest of us understand and respond to this tragedy.
→ read full articleBreaking the Power of the ‘Big Three’
Peter Müller, Michael Sauga and Christoph Schult – Der Spiegel,
18 Jul 2011
German Firm Wants to Set Up New Rating Agency – European politicians are blaming the escalation of the euro crisis on the major rating agencies, and are determined to break the monopoly of the “Big Three.” Supporters of an intiative by a German consulting firm to set up a European rival agency believe that their time has come.
→ read full articleDilemmas of Sovereignty and Intervention
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Jul 2011
The Arab Spring (and its troublesome, yet still hopeful, aftermath in Egypt), intervention in Libya, nonintervention in Syria and Bahrain, drone military operations in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the influx of unwanted immigrants and walls of exclusion, and selective applications of international criminal law draw into question the most basic of all ideas of world order: the sovereignty of territorial states, and its limits.
→ read full articleWar without Humans: Modern Blood Rites Revisited
Barbara Ehrenreich - TomDispatch,
11 Jul 2011
12,000 Drones, Lethal Cyborg Insects, See-Shoot Robots — How Machines Are Taking Over War – How far will the automation of war and the substitution of autonomous robots for human fighters go?
→ read full articleSabotaging Flotilla II: Waging War against Civil Society
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Jul 2011
It is useful to compare the Flotilla II unfolding experience with the Rainbow Warrior incident. At the time, the French nuclear tests in the Pacific were considered legal, although intensely contested, while the blockade of Israel is widely viewed as a prolonged instance of collective punishment in violation of international humanitarian law, specifically Article 33 of the 4th Geneva Convention.
→ read full articleInstances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2010
Richard F. Grimmett, Congressional Research Service – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Jul 2011
March 10, 2011 – This report lists hundreds of instances in which the United States has used its armed forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or for other than normal peacetime purposes.
→ read full articleMao Inc. – China’s Terribly Successful Communist Party Turns 90
Erich Follath and Wieland Wagner – Der Spiegel,
4 Jul 2011
Beijing’s communists are among the world’s most successful capitalists, but their economic ascent is often overshadowed by its human rights violations. The Communist Party now faces a crucial test: Can it become more democratic without jeopardizing its hold on power?
→ read full articleThe International Criminal Court Plays Politics? The Qaddafi Arrest Warrants
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Jul 2011
This politicized use of the ICC in the course of the Libyan War offers an opportunity for those dedicated to global justice, especially in the Arab world, to insist that international law should no longer serve as a plaything for those who intervene with hard power in their region from the comfort zone of NATO headquarters.
→ read full articleDirty Truths
Michael Parenti – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Jul 2011
The history of the United States has been one of territorial and economic expansionism, with the benefits going mostly to the U.S. business class in the form of growing investments and markets, access to rich natural resources and cheap labor, and the accumulation of enormous profits. The American people have had to pay the costs of empire, supporting a huge military establishment with their taxes, while suffering the loss of jobs, the neglect of domestic services, and the loss of tens of thousands of American lives in overseas military ventures.
→ read full articleA Few Notes on WHAT IS LEFT (or Toward a Manifesto for Revolutionary Emancipation)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jun 2011
These notes are meant as tentative and conversational expressions of an emergent political point of view, and will be revised in response to commentary by others. Obviously, also, there is no pretension on my part of comprehensiveness, or else many other issues would have been addressed.
→ read full articleNo Impunity for Killing by Drones
Richard Johnson, Oxford Research Group - InDepth News,
27 Jun 2011
“If you use drones you must confirm and report who they killed,” international lawyers say, adding: “Drones don’t allow hit and run.” In fact, states that authorize or use armed drones as well as those who launch and control them are obliged to identify the deceased so as to provide reparations or compensation for possible wrongful killing, injury and other offences.
→ read full articleTurkey, the Region, and the West after the Elections
Richard Falk & Hilal Elver – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jun 2011
What emerges overall is this American led reluctance to accept Turkey as an independent regional force in the Middle East that has achieved enormous influence in recent years by relying on its own brand of soft power diplomacy. A dramatic indicator of this influence is the great popularity of Erdogan throughout the region, including among the youth who brought about the uprisings against authoritarian rule throughout the Arab world. It is an encouraging sign of the times that these new Arab champions of democracy are coming to Ankara and Istanbul, not Washington, Tel Aviv, or Paris, for guidance and inspiration.
→ read full article(Portuguese) Vida nos Oceanos Pode Enfrentar Extinção sem Precedentes, Diz Estudo
Richard Black - BBC News,
27 Jun 2011
Um novo estudo indica que os ecossistemas marinhos enfrentam perigos ainda maiores do que os estimados até agora pelos cientistas e que correm o risco de entrar em uma fase de extinção de espécies sem precedentes na história da humanidade.
→ read full articleIs the State a Monster? Pro and Contra Nietzsche
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jun 2011
In Part One of Friederich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra there is a particularly provocative section entitled ‘Of the New Idol.’ Remembering that this pivotal writing of the great German thinker/philosopher, so often misinterpreted, was written in 1881, it is surprising how relevant and invigorating its strong language remains in 2011.
→ read full articleThe Financial Road to Serfdom: How Bankers use the Debt Crisis to Roll Back the Progressive Era
Prof. Michael Hudson – Global Research,
20 Jun 2011
At issue is sovereignty itself, when it comes to government responsibility for debts. And in this respect the war being waged against Greece by the European Central Bank (ECB) may best be seen as a dress rehearsal not only for the rest of Europe, but for what financial lobbyists would like to bring about in the United States.
→ read full articleInterpreting the AKP Victory in Turkey
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jun 2011
The following post was written jointly with Hilal Elver, who is a Turkish scholar and public intellectual. It offers commentary on the recent AKP victory, which is viewed as a significant and hopeful development in Turkish, and regional, politics.
→ read full article(Italian) Economia di Guerra e di Pace (Prima Parte)
Dietrich M. Fischer – Centro Studi Sereno Regis,
13 Jun 2011
La teoria economica può contribuire a una migliore comprensione di come possono essere risolti senza violenza i conflitti d’interesse, e di come possiamo costruire un sistema di pace costituito da politiche in reciproco rafforzamento che garantiscano il benessere generale e la trasformazione pacifica dei conflitti.
→ read full article(Italian) Economia di Guerra e di Pace (Seconda Parte)
Dietrich M. Fischer – Centro Studi Sereno Regis,
13 Jun 2011
La teoria economica può contribuire a una migliore comprensione di come possono essere risolti senza violenza i conflitti d’interesse, e di come possiamo costruire un sistema di pace costituito da politiche in reciproco rafforzamento che garantiscano il benessere generale e la trasformazione pacifica dei conflitti.
→ read full articleA Shameless Secretary General versus Freedom Flotilla 2
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jun 2011
In light of these surrounding circumstances, including the failure of Israel to live up to its announced promise after the attack in 2010 to lift the blockade, it shocks our moral and legal sensibilities that the UN Secretary General should be using the authority of his office to urge member governments to prevent ships from joining Freedom Flotilla 2.
→ read full articleBuying Time: Global Leaders Play the Game As Israeli Settlements Expand
Ashley Lackovich-van Gorp – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jun 2011
Young Israelis, who have grown up with the social construction that Palestinian land is nothing more than a fabrication of the anti-Semitic international community, do not realize that some of the East Jerusalem communities, such as the entire city of Ma’ale Adumim, are actually settlements. These settlements look, act and function like any other Israeli town. These young Israelis, then, are more victims of an ideology than deliberate perpetrators of occupation. The Occupation is a tragedy not only to Palestinian youth, but Israeli youth as well.
→ read full articleObama’s AIPAC Speech: A Further Betrayal of the Palestinian People
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 May 2011
After such a speech the only responsible response by the Palestinian leadership is to conclude once and for all, however belatedly, that it is no longer possible to look to Washington for guidance in reaching a peaceful, just, and sustainable resolution of the conflict.
→ read full articleGlobal Leadership: American Retreat, BRIC Ambivalence, and Turkey’s Rise
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 May 2011
As the American president, Barack Obama, sets forth his views on the future of the Middle East it seems a good time to take stock of the leadership vacuum in world affairs, and whether there are alternatives to the role the United States has played ever since World War II.
→ read full articleObama’s Flawed Approach to the Israel/Palestine Conflict
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 May 2011
In many respects, Obama’s speech, aside from the soaring rhetoric, might have been crafted in Tel Aviv rather than the White House. It is a tribute to Israel’s extraordinary influence upon the American media that has been able to shift the focus of assessment to the supposed Israeli anger about affirming Palestinian statehood within 1967 borders.
→ read full articleEscaping the Matrix
Richard K. Moore – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 May 2011
The defining moment in The Matrix occurs when Morpheus invites Neo to choose between a red and a blue pill. The red pill promises “the truth, nothing more.” Neo takes it and awakes to reality. What Neo had before assumed to be reality was only a collective illusion. The story is intended as metaphor, and the parallels that drew my attention had to do with political reality. Are you ready for the red pill?
→ read full article(Castellano) Escapar de la Matriz
Richard K. Moore – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 May 2011
El momento dramático definitivo en la película La Matriz ocurre inmediatamente a continuación de la invitación de Morfeo a que Neo escoja entre una píldora roja y una azul. La píldora roja promete “la verdad, nada más”. Neo toma la píldora roja y despierta a la realidad. Lo que Neo había antes tomado por la realidad resulta ser sólo una ilusión colectiva, inventada por la Matriz. La intención de la trama es metafórica, y el paralelo que atrajo mi atención tiene que ver con la realidad política.
→ read full articleObserving the 63rd Nakba
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 May 2011
The Nakba is of course a day of grievance and resolve for all Palestinians including the several million living in refugee camps for decades in the countries surrounding Palestine and other millions in exile throughout the region and the world. A sustainable peace must realize the rights of all Palestinians, and must be broader and deeper than ending the occupation or establishing a Palestinian state. Palestinian representation to be legitimate and effective must keep faith with this wider Palestinian reality, and not confine its political program to a territorial imaginary.
→ read full articlePress Release-UN High Commission for Human Rights: Palestinian Nakba
Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 May 2011
On May 15 2011 the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Mr. Richard Falk, marks the 63rd anniversary of the Nakba, the catastrophic beginning of the Palestinian tragedy of dispossession and occupation, with the following statement.
→ read full articleHazards and Hopes of Limitless Freedom of Expression
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 May 2011
One of the glories of the Western Enlightenment, especially as embodied in the lifeblood of political democracies is freedom of expression, the right to give voice in public spaces to unpopular, tasteless, provocative, and even outrageous ideas, and especially those critical of the prevailing political order without fear of retaliation.
→ read full articleWar Hawk or Deficit Hawk? You Cannot Be Both
Michael True – Common Dreams,
9 May 2011
Must we, as a people, squander our wealth and our young people in wars of conquest and intervention, financing 1,000 military bases around the world, funding corrupt dictatorships, and imposing “democracy” on countries whether they want it or not? Going along to get along, Democrats and Republicans support policies that justify torture, undermine the right of habeas corpus, destabilize unions, abandon our once-admired educational system, and neglect our own people.
→ read full articleIs the Arab Spring a Black Swan?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 May 2011
Having just visited Egypt for a week I came away with this dual sense that the revolutionary dynamics have produced remarkable results that form a glorious chapter of Egyptian history, but also that there are a variety of dark forces that are working under the radar to contain if not reverse this exhilirating democratizing momentum.
→ read full articleWhat Future for the Goldstone Report? Beyond the Name
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Apr 2011
Only half satirically, I would think that the Goldstone Report might be time to rename the Goldstone Report as the Chinkin Report or blandly let it be henceforth be known as the ‘Report on Israeli and Hamas War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity during Operation Cast Lead.’ Whatever the name, the main allegations have been confirmed over and over again, and it is now up to the governments making up the UN General Assembly and Security Council to show the world whether international criminal accountability and the International Criminal Court is exclusively reserved for sub-Saharan African wrongdoing!
→ read full articleWhen War Games Go Live: “Staging” a “Humanitarian War” against “SOUTHLAND”
Prof. Michel Chossudovsky – Global Research,
25 Apr 2011
Military operations of this size and magnitude are never improvised. The war on Libya as well as the armed insurrection were planned months prior to the Arab protest movement…
→ read full articleRethinking Germany
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Apr 2011
For Germany to stand alone among its Western allies while being in solidarity with the BRIC countries should be a moment of national pride, not a time for solemn soul searching as the German mainstream media has been encouraging.
→ read full articleIs Japan’s Elite Hiding a Weapons Program Inside Nuclear Plants?
Yoichi Shimatsu – New America Media,
18 Apr 2011
The nihilism at the heart of this nuclear threat to humanity lies not inside Fukushima 1, but within the national security mindset. The specter of self-destruction can be ended only with the abrogation of the U.S.-Japan security treaty, the root cause of the secrecy that fatally delayed the nuclear workers’ fight against meltdown.
→ read full articleDo Western Strikes in Libya Betray Peaceful Revolt Everywhere?
Michelle Chen – Colorlines,
11 Apr 2011
Is the Arab Spring already coming to an end? The foreign intervention in the rebellion in Libya has clouded the rosy vision of nonviolent, youth-led uprisings that had enchanted activists around the world. Will the surge of grassroots pro-democracy solidarity hit a dead end in the streets of Tripoli, as a nebulous armed insurrection aligns with U.S. and European forces?
→ read full articleQuantico Blocks Official Visits by UN, Amnesty, and Rep. Kucinich to Bradley Manning
Michael Whitney, FDL – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Apr 2011
Government officials and Quantico Marine base have blocked official visits to PFC. Bradley Manning by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Amnesty International, and the UN Special Rappateur on torture.
→ read full articleObama’s Libyan Folly: To be or not to be…
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Apr 2011
The outcome in Libya remains uncertain, but what seems clear beyond reasonable doubt is that military intervention has not saved the day for either the shadowy opposition known as ‘the rebels,’ and certainly not for the people of the country.
→ read full article(Italian) Il Collasso del Vecchio Ordine Petrolifero
Michael T. Klare – Centro Studi Sereno Regis,
28 Mar 2011
Qualunque sia l’esito delle proteste, sommosse e ribellioni che stanno ora spazzando il Medio Oriente, una cosa è certa: il mondo del petrolio sarà trasformato in maniera definitiva.
→ read full articleQaddafi, Moral Interventionism, Libya, and the Arab Revolutionary Moment
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Mar 2011
Recently [Qaddafi] confirmed this assessment, referring to his own people as ‘rats and dogs’ or ‘cockroaches,’ and employing the bloodthirsty and vengeful language of a demented tyrant. Such a tragic imposition of political abuse on the Libyan experience is a painful reality that exists beyond any reasonable doubt, but does it validate a UN authorized military intervention carried out by a revived partnership of those old colonial partners, France and Britain, and their post-colonial American imperial overseer? I think not.
→ read full articleThe Dangers of Nuclear Energy
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Mar 2011
Because insurance companies have refused to cover the risks of nuclear accidents, the Price Anderson Act of 1957 commits the US federal government to cover such risks. Other countries have similar legislation. This represents an enormous subsidy by the taxpayers to the nuclear industry… Solar energy is currently more expensive than electricity from nuclear plants. But this is only because of the huge indirect subsidy for nuclear power, and also due to the shortage of research into alternative sources of energy… If insurance companies, the experts in estimating risks, refuse to risk their money, why should people be forced to risk their lives?
→ read full articleGroundbreaking New UN Report on How to Feed the World’s Hungry: Ditch Corporate-Controlled Agriculture
Jill Richardson - AlterNet,
21 Mar 2011
A new report from the UN advises ditching corporate-controlled and chemically intensive farming in favor of agroecology. There are a billion hungry people in the world and that number could rise as food insecurity increases along with population growth, economic fallout and environmental crises. But a roadmap to defeating hunger exists, if we can follow the course — and that course involves ditching corporate-controlled, chemical-intensive farming.
→ read full articleLearning from Disaster? After Sendai
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Mar 2011
Let us fervently hope that this Sendai disaster will not take further turns for the worse, but that the warnings already embedded in such happenings, will awaken enough people to the dangers on this path of hyper-modernity so that a politics of limits can arise to challenge the prevailing politics of limitless growth. Such a challenge must include the repudiation of a neoliberal worldview, insisting without compromise on an economics based on needs and people rather than on profit margins and capital efficiency.
→ read full articleSuperpower Bypassed by History: The Embarrassments of Empire
David Bromwich - TomDispatch,
14 Mar 2011
Washington Wonders What to Say about Arab Freedom – From Egypt to Pakistan, February 2011 will be remembered as a month unusually full of the embarrassments of empire. Americans were enthralled by a spectacle of liberty in which we felt we should somehow be playing a part. Here were popular movements toward self-government, which might once have looked to the United States as an exemplar, springing up all across North Africa and the Middle East. Why did they not look up to us now?
→ read full articleAristide to End Exile and Return to Haiti before Vote, Lawyer Says
Rich Phillips - CNN,
14 Mar 2011
Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide will end his exile and return to Haiti within the next week or so, ahead of the country’s elections, his lawyer told CNN Saturday [12 Mar 2011]. “He is headed back to Haiti,” said Ira Kurzban, Aristide’s longtime attorney. “We don’t know when yet, but it will be before the elections.” A presidential runoff is scheduled for March 20.
→ read full articleDecline of Honey Bees Now a Global Phenomenon, Says United Nations
Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor – The Independent,
14 Mar 2011
The mysterious collapse of honey-bee colonies is becoming a global phenomenon, scientists working for the United Nations have revealed.
→ read full articleInsurrection and Military Intervention: The US-NATO Attempted Coup d’état in Libya?
Prof. Michel Chossudovsky – Global Research,
14 Mar 2011
The US and NATO are supporting an armed insurrection in Eastern Libya, with a view to justifying a “humanitarian intervention”. This is not a non-violent protest movement as in Egypt and Tunisia. Conditions in Libya are fundamentally different. The armed insurgency in Eastern Libya is directly supported by foreign powers.
→ read full articleWill We Ever Learn? Kicking the Intervention Habit
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Mar 2011
It should be obvious that a no-fly zone in Libyan airspace is an act of war, as would be, of course, contemplated air strikes on fortifications of the Qadaffi forces. The core legal obligation of the UN Charter requires member states to refrain from any use of force unless it can be justified as self-defense after a cross-border armed attack or mandated by a decision of the UN Security Council. Neither of these conditions authorizing a legal use of force is remotely present,…
→ read full articleCommentary on Recent Developments: Interview Responses
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Mar 2011
The following Q & A interview consists of my responses to questions put to me by the outstanding Greek journalist, C. J. Polychroniou, and is being published in a Greek newspaper.
→ read full articleQuickies
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Mar 2011
George W. Bush came late to a cabinet meeting.
→ read full articleThe United States Stands Alone with Israel in the UN Security Council (or How Honest is the Honest Broker)?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Feb 2011
In what appears to be as close to a consensus as the world community can ever hope to achieve, the United States reluctantly stood its ground on behalf of Israel and on February 18, 2011 vetoed a resolution on the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that was supported by all 14 of the other members of the UN Security Council. The resolution was also sponsored by 130 member countries before being presented to the Council.
→ read full articleThe Salary Theory…
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Feb 2011
Dilbert’s “Salary Theorem” states that “Engineers and scientists can never earn as much as business executives and sales people.”
→ read full articleSchooling
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Feb 2011
A young cowboy from Wyoming went off to college, but half way through the semester, he had foolishly squandered all his money. He called home. “Dad,” he said, “You won’t believe what modern education is developing! They actually have a program here that will teach our dog, Ol’ Blue how to talk!”
→ read full articleReport of Special Rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council on Occupied Palestinian Territories
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Feb 2011
14 Feb 2011 – I am posting the official text of my most recent report to the UN Human Rights Council on Israeli human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The period covered ends in December 2010, and the report will be formally presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on March 21, 2011. Of course, the impact of recent events, especially in Egypt, is not considered. Of primary interest will be the approach taken by the new Egyptian leadership to the Rafah Crossing, especially whether humanitarian goods will be permitted to enter freely and whether Gazans will be allowed to leave and return without difficulty.
→ read full articleRevolutionary Prospects after Mubarak
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Feb 2011
The bravery, discipline, and creativity of the Egyptian revolutionary movement is nothing short of a political miracle, deserving to be regarded as one of the seven political wonders of the modern world! To have achieved these results without violence, despite a series of bloody provocations, and persisting without an iconic leader, without even the clarifying benefit of a revolutionary manifesto, epitomizes the originality and grandeur of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.
→ read full articleA Prayer for America
Dennis Kucinich – The Nation,
21 Feb 2011
Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The anthrax attack. The Patriot Act. Those were the themes in a speech which I gave nine years ago in Los Angeles, entitled “Prayer for America.” Today the news is about…the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, the anthrax attack, the Patriot Act.
→ read full articleDrunks
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Feb 2011
Recently, a routine police patrol was parked outside a local neighborhood bar in Minnesota. Late in the evening, the officer noticed a man leaving the bar so intoxicated that he could barely walk.
→ read full articleThe Toxic Residue of Colonialism: Protecting Interests, Disregarding Rights
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Feb 2011
Here is the crux of the ethical irony. Washington is respectful of the logic of self-determination so long as it converges with American grand strategy, and oblivious to the will of the people whenever its expression is seen as posing a threat to the neoliberal overlords of the globalized world economy or to strategic alignments that seem so dear to State Department or Pentagon planners.
→ read full articleFinancial Interests Dictate Sovereign Policy
Michael Hudson – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Feb 2011
“Latvia has become a testing ground for how far living standards can be depressed, how steeply an economy can be taxed while removing public social support in the face of a wealthy kleptocratic class at the top.”
→ read full article(French) Moubarak Degage!
Michel Collon – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Feb 2011
Les dictateurs ne dictent pas, ils obéissent aux ordres- Michel Chossudovsky
“Il ne suffit pas d’abattre la marionnette, le problème, c’est le marionnettiste”
Egypt’s Transformative Moment: Revolution, Counterrevolution, or Reform
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Feb 2011
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 there have been two further transformative events that have reshaped in enduring ways the global setting. When the Soviet empire collapsed two years later, the way was opened for the triumphalist pursuit of the American Imperial Project, seizing the opportunity for geopolitical expansion provided by its self-anointed global leadership as ‘the sole surviving superpower.’ This first rupture in the character of world order…. The second rupture came with the 9/11 attacks, however those events are construed. The impact of the attacks transferred the locus of policymaking authority back to the United States, as state actor, under the rubrics of ‘the war on terror,’ ‘global security,’ and ‘the long war.’
→ read full articleAge Is Not the Problem
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Feb 2011
A fifty year old man went for his annual health check-up to the doctor.
→ read full articlePesticide Linked to Bee Deaths Should Be Suspended, MPs Told
Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor and Josephine Forster – The Independent,
31 Jan 2011
A new generation of pesticides is implicated in the widespread deaths of bees and other pollinators and should be suspended in Britain while the Government reviews new scientific evidence about their effects, MPs were told yesterday [26 Jan 2011]. Neonicotinoid pesticides are linked by “a growing weight of science” to insect losses, and the assessment regimes for them are inadequate, the Labour MP Martin Caton told the House of Commons.
→ read full articleThe Year’s 10 Best Political Documentaries
Michael Atkinson - In These Times,
31 Jan 2011
From Eliot Spitzer to Daniel Ellsberg, documentary filmmakers didn’t lack engrossing subjects this year. Thanks largely to personal technology and its discontents, we’re living through a renaissance of activist filmmaking — never before in the history of popular media have nonfiction films been so convenient to execute, so inexpensive to finance and so easy to distribute.
→ read full articleAnalogy
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Jan 2011
The following analogy characterizes a typical Congress member’s attitude about the looming energy crisis: A young man decided that he wanted to become a switching specialist with a railroad.
→ read full article