Articles by RT
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(Portuguese) A Urgência da União Sul-Americana
Mauro Santayana – Carta Maior,
21 May 2012
A América do Sul terá que unir-se com urgência, para que não se torne território aberto à disputa feroz pelos seus recursos naturais, no futuro que se apressa a chegar. Ao lado da África, a América Latina sempre foi vista como um território de todos, menos de seus próprios habitantes.
→ read full articleWhy Tibet Matters
Bianca Jagger - Reader Supported News,
21 May 2012
His Holiness the Dalai Lama is in London today [14 May 2012] to receive the Templeton Prize in recognition of his outstanding achievements and spiritual wisdom. Since Feb 2009, 35 Tibetans have sacrificed themselves, in an act of desperation, which emerges from the anguish of oppression. Tibetans who have self-immolated include monks, nuns, a 19-year old female student, a widowed mother of four, and a Tibetan reincarnate lama in his forties.
→ read full articleKoodankulam Protests are Fully Justified
Prashant Bushan, Senior Lawyer Supreme Court of India – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 May 2012
The Koodankulam protestors are therefore fully justified in agitating against the plant. It is imperative that the government respects their sentiments and fears and immediately suspends work at the plant. It must constitute a credible independent expert committee to examine all the safety issues which have been raised, in a transparent manner with public hearings and not resume work on the plant till all safety issues have been credibly addressed.
→ read full articleBrazil Forging Strategic Alliance with Africa
Fabíola Ortiz – Inter Press Service-IPS,
14 May 2012
The Brazilian government of Dilma Rousseff is taking firm steps towards stronger relations with Africa, such as the creation of a special fund to finance development projects together with multilateral lenders like the World Bank. Ex-President Lula said, “Africa cannot be looked at like it used to be seen, as a simple supplier of minerals and gas…We have to find African partners. We don’t want hegemony; we want strategic alliances.”
→ read full articleThe Children of Fallujah – The Hospital of Horrors
Robert Fisk – The Independent,
30 Apr 2012
Special Report day two: Stillbirths, disabilities, deformities too distressing to describe – what lies behind the torments in Fallujah General Hospital? In al-Hadidi’s office, there are now photographs which defy words. How can you even begin to describe a dead baby with just one leg and a head four times the size of its body?
→ read full article“There Are Marxists in India?”
Robert Jensen – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Apr 2012
While there certainly are no shortages of capitalists, there are still lots of Marxists in India, as well as communist parties that have won state elections. Patnaik represents the best thinking and practice of those left traditions — both the academic Marxism that provides a framework for critique of economics, and the political Marxism that proposes public policies — which is why I was so excited to talk with him about lessons to be learned from the current economic crisis.
→ read full articleThe Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Is Far From Over
Robert Alvarez - Reader Supported News,
23 Apr 2012
Spent reactor fuel, containing roughly 85 times more long-lived radioactivity than released at Chernobyl, still sits in pools vulnerable to earthquakes.
→ read full articleUnplugging Americans from the Matrix
Paul Craig Roberts – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Apr 2012
Americans, the British, and Western Europeans are accustomed to thinking of themselves as the representatives of freedom, democracy, and morality in the world. The West passes judgment on the rest of the world as if the West is God and the rest of the world are barbarians in need of chastisement, invasion, and occupation.
→ read full articleThis Is Politics Not Sport. If Drivers Can’t See That, They Are the Pits
Robert Fisk – The Independent,
23 Apr 2012
Supposing it was Assad shelling out £40m for a race. Would Ecclestone be happy to give him a soft sporting cover for his repression? When the Foreign Office urges British motor racing fans to stay away from Bahrain, this ain’t no sporting event, folks, it’s a political one. The Bahraini authorities prove it by welcoming sports reporters but refusing visas to other correspondents who want to tell the world what’s going on in this minority-run, Saudi-dominated kingdom.
→ read full articleBritain Destroyed Records of Colonial Crimes
Ian Cobain, Owen Bowcott and Richard Norton-Taylor - The Guardian,
23 Apr 2012
Review finds thousands of papers detailing shameful acts were culled, while others were kept secret illegally.
→ read full articleCISPA, aka SOPA 2.0, Pushed Forward by For-Profit Spying Lobby
Lee Fang – Republic Report,
23 Apr 2012
A cyber security bill moving swiftly through Congress would give government intelligence agencies broad powers to work with private companies to share information about Internet users.
→ read full articleAFRICOM Overheard by Lacville
Robert Lacville – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Apr 2012
The neocolonial scramble for Africa has led to a declaration of the Independent Republic of Azawad – According to the National Intelligence Council, “the United States is likely to draw 25% of its oil from West Africa by 2015. The interests of the USA could be assured by using local allies to fight American battles.” During a recent virtual trip he did not make to Stuttgart, writer Robert Lacville virtually overheard the following briefing of a senior U.S. army general by Senior C.I.A. Agent Jack and a certain Colonel W.:
→ read full articleUnderstanding the Sanusi of Cyrenaica: How to Avoid a Civil War in Libya
Akbar Ahmed and Frankie Martin – Al Jazeera,
2 Apr 2012
Emerging from the nightmare of dictatorship, Libya has a new challenge – to fully accommodate its own people. This article is the seventh in a series by Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, a former Pakistani high commissioner to the UK, exploring how a litany of volatile centre/periphery conflicts with deep historical roots were interpreted after 9/11 in the new global paradigm of anti-terrorism – with profound and often violent consequences.
→ read full articleEmpires Then and Now
Paul Craig Roberts – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Apr 2012
Great empires, such as the Roman and British, were extractive. The empires succeeded because the value of the resources and wealth extracted from conquered lands exceeded the value of conquest and governance. In his book, The Rule of Empires (2010), Timothy H. Parsons wonders whether America’s is really an empire. After eight years in Iraq, all Washington has for its efforts is several trillion dollars of additional debt and no Iraqi oil. After ten years of trillion dollar struggle against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Washington has nothing to show for it except possibly some part of the drug trade that can be used to fund covert CIA operations.
→ read full articleFighting Fire in Haiti
Alexis Erkert – Toward Freedom,
2 Apr 2012
Camp Kozbami is the fifth camp to be arsoned in two months. As landowners and the government push to close camps inhabited by those displaced by the earthquake that rocked Haiti 26 months ago, a reported 94,632 individuals are facing forced eviction. Residents of the 660 displacement camps scattered throughout the Port-au-Prince area are experiencing increasing levels of threats and violence.
→ read full articleThe Corporate Media Crisis: Everything Old Is New Again
Robert Jensen, Litwin Books – Truthout,
2 Apr 2012
These days, there’s one political point on which one can usually get consensus: Mainstream journalists are failing. In common parlance, most everyone “hates the media.” But there is little agreement on why journalism might be inadequate to the task of engaging the public in a democratic society. More than ever, it’s important to understand the forces that constrain good journalism.
→ read full articleWhy Germany Is Phasing Out Nuclear Power
David Roberts, grist – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Apr 2012
The most controversial aspect of this power overhaul is Germany’s post-Fukushima decision to completely phase out nuclear power by 2020, which caused the heads of Very Serious People to explode on multiple continents. To many, passing ambitious low-carbon energy goals and then axing a good chunk of your low-carbon energy seems irrational and self-defeating.
→ read full articleProject Brings Peace Journalism to Uganda
Steven Youngblood, Peace Portal – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Mar 2012
As I taught Peace Journalism in Uganda for five weeks in 2009, I kept hearing from the journalists in my seminars that they liked and needed what I was teaching. However, they emphasized that Uganda needed many more peace journalism lessons. At their urging we put together a proposal for a comprehensive Peace, Development, and Electoral Journalism project for 2010-2011. It’s our hope that this model can replicated elsewhere, since it proved to be such a powerful tool for peace and reconciliation in Uganda.
→ read full articleSri Lanka Angered By U.N. Vote to Investigate War Abuses
Emily Alpert – Los Angeles Times,
26 Mar 2012
In a step that infuriated Sri Lankan leaders, the country was urged to investigate alleged war crimes from its bloody civil war, in a resolution passed Thursday [22 Mar 2012] by the chief human rights body at the United Nations.
→ read full articleChallenging the Ruling Global Corporate Conglomerates – Regaining the Real Economy
Prof. John McMurtry – Global Research,
19 Mar 2012
As Adam Smith says in a little-known overview of the market’s supply-demand system, “among the inferior ranks of people the scantiness of subsistence can set limits to the further multiplication of the human species; and it can so in no other way than by destroying a great part of the children which their fruitful marriages produce”. This is why market-capitalist ideology has been so long bent on assimilating the system to natural laws. It drapes the monstrous mechanism in a macro alibi of ‘natural struggle for existence.’
→ read full articleMadness Is Not the Reason for This Massacre
Robert Fisk – The Independent,
19 Mar 2012
I’m getting a bit tired of the “deranged” soldier story. It was predictable, of course. The 38-year-old staff sergeant who massacred 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, near Kandahar this week had no sooner returned to base than the defence experts and the think-tank boys and girls announced that he was “deranged”. Not an evil, wicked, mindless terrorist – which he would be, of course, if he had been an Afghan, especially a Taliban – but merely a guy who went crazy.
→ read full articleThe Fukushima Syndrome
Martin Freer – Project Syndicate,
12 Mar 2012
The dramatic events that unfolded at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant after last year’s tsunami are commonly referred to as “the Fukushima disaster.” We need look no further than this description to begin to understand the significant misconceptions that surround nuclear energy.
→ read full articleCancer of the Spirit
Robert Koehler – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Mar 2012
Can we squeeze the glory out of the word “war”? Can we talk about savage irrationality and lifelong inner hell instead? Can we talk about the wreckage of two countries? Can we talk about spiritual cancer? In the extraordinary documentary On the Bridge — an unstinting look at the reality of war and the terror of PTSD.
→ read full articleTroubled Waters: How Mine Waste Dumping is Poisoning Our Ocean, Rivers, and Lakes
Earthworks & MiningWatch Canada – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Mar 2012
A new investigative report from Earthworks and MiningWatch Canada documents how mining companies are using the world’s waterways as dumping grounds for their toxic mine wastes. These mine wastes, or tailings, can contain up to three dozen dangerous chemicals, including arsenic, lead, mercury, and cyanide. Each year, mining companies dump over 180 million tonnes of these hazardous mine wastes into rivers, oceans, and lakes – that’s more than 1.5 times the amount of waste that US cities send to landfills each year.
→ read full articleA Look at the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Armies
Luke McKenna and Robert Johnson – Business Insider-Military & Defense,
5 Mar 2012
Business is booming for a growing army of private military contractors, who take their military training and offer it to the highest bidder. Modern-day mercenaries are stationed throughout the world fighting conflicts for governments that are reluctant to use their own troops. Security giant G4S is the second-largest private employer on earth.
→ read full articleThe Heroic Myth and the Uncomfortable Truth of War Reporting
Robert Fisk – The Independent,
5 Mar 2012
Like other correspondents, Robert Fisk has risked his life to ‘witness history’. But after almost four decades, he feels ambivalent towards his profession. – “Funny, though, that the newsrooms of London and Washington didn’t have quite the same enthusiasm to get their folk into Gaza as they did to get them into Homs. Just a thought. A very unhappy one.”
→ read full articlePsychologists and Torture, Then and Now
Laura Melendez-Pallitto and Robert Pallitto – Foreign Policy in Focus,
5 Mar 2012
Psychologists’ involvement in torture has done damage to the reputation of the profession, and the boards’ unwillingness to act undermines the integrity of ethics rules. It is both unconscionable and absurd that a psychologist can lose his or her license for Medicaid fraud but not for involvement in torture.
→ read full articleKeiser Report: D.I.C.s and Hackers
Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert – Russia Today,
5 Mar 2012
The Stratfor bimbo and the bank that is in bed with it. WikiLeaks as the modern day Gutenberg press.
→ read full articleThe Fearful Realities Keeping the Assad Regime in Power
Robert Fisk – The Independent,
5 Mar 2012
Once a Roman city, where the crusaders committed their first act of cannibalism – eating their dead Muslim opponents – Homs was captured by Saladin in 1174. Under post-First World War French rule, the settlement became a centre of insurrection and, after independence, the very kernel of Baathist resistance to the first Syrian governments. By early 1964, there were battles in Homs between Sunnis and Alawi Shia. A year later, the young Baathist army commander of Homs, Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Tlas, was arresting his pro-regime comrades. Is the city’s history becoming a little clearer now?
→ read full articleThe Emperor’s Messenger Has No Clothes: Belén Fernández Dresses Down Thomas Friedman
Robert Jensen - Truthout,
27 Feb 2012
What’s scary about Thomas Friedman is not his journalism, with its underinflated insights and twisted metaphors. Annoying as his second-rate thinking and third-rate writing may be, he’s not the first – or the worst – hack journalist. What should unnerve us about Friedman is the acclaim he receives in political and professional circles. Although his work is stunningly shallow and narcissistic, Friedman is celebrated as a big thinker.
→ read full articleHappy Savages
Robert Koehler – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Feb 2012
“John is a savage, but a happy, amenable savage.” Thus intones the voice on a ’50s-era newsreel clip in the documentary, showing footage of seven male Marshall Islanders who have been brought to the United States for radiation testing. “John is mayor of Rongelap Atoll. John reads, knows about God and is a pretty good mayor.” The film does a stunning job juxtaposing examples of our smug ignorance of South Sea culture with the reality of what we did to it. John the happy savage is actually John Anjain, who is one of many former residents of Rongelap Atoll interviewed in the film. He talks about his thyroid cancer, the thyroid cancer of three of his children and one grandson, and about the death of another son from leukemia.
→ read full articleHow Did Rwanda Cut Poverty So Much?
Emily Alpert – Los Angeles Times,
20 Feb 2012
The small African nation of Rwanda recently announced that it had cut poverty by 12% in six years, from 57% of its population to 45%. That equals roughly a million Rwandans emerging from poverty — one of the most stunning drops in the world.
→ read full articleWashington’s Insouciance Has No Rival
Paul Craig Roberts – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Feb 2012
Washington is now in the second decade of murdering Muslim men, women, and children in six countries. Washington is so concerned with human rights that it drops bombs on schools, hospitals, weddings and funerals, all in order to uphold the human rights of Muslim people. You see, bombing liberates Muslim women from having to wear the burka and from male domination.
→ read full article“Human Rights” Warriors for Empire
Glen Ford – Black Agenda Report,
20 Feb 2012
“Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have chosen sides in the Washington-backed belligerency – the side of Empire.” Syria has no choice but to secure every square foot of its territory. “Faced with the certainty of superpower-backed attack under the guise of ‘protecting’ civilians in “liberated” territory, Syria cannot afford to cede even one neighborhood of a single city – not one block! – or of any rural or border enclave, to armed rebels and foreign jihadis.”
→ read full article
Arts, Culture and Peacebuilding (Video of the Week)
Dominik ‘Nik’ Lehnert | XCHANGEperspectives – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Feb 2012
In this video Basti, Frank and Nik reflect on Xchange Perspectives’ work in South Sudan since 2005. Dominik ‘Nik’ Lehnert is TRANSCEND Media Service’s Video Production Assistant.
→ read full articleDo TV Networks ‘Practice’ for War?
Peter Hart – Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting-FAIR,
20 Feb 2012
I was visiting ABC News the other day to see a friend who works on graphics. When I went to his room, he showed me all the graphics he was making in anticipation of the Israeli attack on Iran; not just maps, but flight patterns, trajectories and 3-D models of U.S. aircraft carrier fleets. Does that kind of thing actually happen? Well, yeah.
→ read full articleElections Are for Suckers
Robert Scheer - Truthdig,
13 Feb 2012
Let’s just dip our fingers in purple ink and pose for photos now that voting has the same significance for us as it had for those Iraqis who got conned into thinking they were participating in some grand democratic experiment. Our own elections, the ones our government has modeled for the world, are a hoax.
→ read full article
Keiser Report: Black Holes & Gold Hills in Finances Universe
Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert – Russia Today,
13 Feb 2012
In this episode, Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, discuss the latest discoveries of black holes in the financial universe and the populations growing permanently poorer as a result. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Dr. Yanis Varoufakis about financial horror, a currency from which you can’t escape and the Greek situation.
→ read full articleWill Iran Be Attacked?
Paul Craig Roberts – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Feb 2012
As Karl Marx said, money turns everything into a commodity that can be bought and sold. All other values are defeated–honor, integrity, truth, justice, loyalty, even blood kin. Nothing remains but filthy lucre. In the course of the conversation I asked [Warren Nutter] how Washington got so many other governments to do its bidding. He answered, “Money.” I asked, “You mean foreign aid?” He said, “No, bags of money. We buy the leaders.” Purchasing the leadership of their enemies or of potential threats was the Roman way. As long as the dollar rules, Washington’s power will rule.
→ read full articleNokia Publishes Policy on African Conflict Minerals
Curt Hopkins – The Christian Science Monitor,
13 Feb 2012
Nokia says it will not buy mineral products that benefit armed groups or those engaging in human rights abuses. How will they implement their policy? The mineral equivalent of blood diamonds, they include tantalum, tungsten, tin and gold, all of which are used to manufacture our electronics. Nokia, the world’s largest manufacturers of mobile phones, today published its policy on conflict minerals.
→ read full articleThe Scary Danger of Meat (Even For Those Who Don’t Eat It)
Martha Rosenberg - AlterNet,
6 Feb 2012
Antibiotics are routinely given to livestock on factory farms to make them gain weight with less feed and keep them from getting sick in confinement conditions. But the daily dosing, at the same time it lowers feed needs, lowers drug effectiveness and produces antibiotic resistant bacteria or super bugs that can be deadly to people.
→ read full articleBrazil: Community Radio Flourishes Online
Fabíola Ortiz – Inter Press Service-IPS,
30 Jan 2012
Community radio stations in Brazil are finding the internet and user-friendly information technologies to be valuable allies for their broadcasts, which focus on citizenship, social equity and human rights.
→ read full articleThematic Social Forum: Working Towards a Never-Ending Democracy
Antonio Martins – TerraViva Europe,
30 Jan 2012
For five centuries, Europe has taken it upon itself to enlighten the world, teaching it ways to address and overcome crises, from ideas and wars to missionary work and genocides. But it forgot it only held a part of the world’s knowledge and now it is on the verge of the abyss, and it is time for a different approach.
→ read full articleDying Honeybees: It Was the Insecticides All Along
Jeanne Roberts, Celsias – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Jan 2012
With news that the U.S. honeybee population has been so devastated that some beekeepers will qualify for disaster relief dollars, comes a report from Purdue University that one of the causes of honeybee deaths is – as long suspected – neonicotinoids.
→ read full articleThe Demise of the Dollar
Robert Fisk - The Independent,
30 Jan 2012
In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading. Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq.
→ read full articleWhen Is A Terrorist Not A Terrorist? & War with Iran or Not?
Alan Hart – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2012
When is a terrorist not a terrorist in the eyes of the Obama administration (not to mention all of its predecessors) and the governments of the Western world? Answer: When he or she is an Israeli Mossad agent or asset. In the case of the assassination of Iranian scientists, the Mossad’s assets are almost certainly members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) also known as The Peoples’ Mujahedin of Iran, which is committed to overthrowing the regime of the ruling mullahs.
→ read full articleA Close Look at SOPA-Stop Online Piracy Act
Jonathan Zittrain, Kendra Albert and Alicia Solow-Niederman – Future of the Internet,
23 Jan 2012
This document is a guide to the Stop Online Piracy Act as proposed in the United States House of Representatives. Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), H.R. 3261, 112th Cong. (2011). It represents our notes as we sought to understand exactly what it does and how it does it — along with our corresponding sense for why its principal mechanisms make for poor law. Our aim is for this analysis to be useful to anyone wanting to understand the Act — whatever his or her point of view may be on technology or intellectual property policy.
→ read full articleA Momentum of Cynicism
Robert C. Koehler – Common Wonders,
16 Jan 2012
At this late stage of the American republic, military-industrial corruption permeates not only our foreign policy but our ideals. We go to war because the business of war is beyond all constraint. “In a striking departure from the ideological preferences of the post-Vietnam Democratic Party, President Barack Obama has made overseas arms sales a pillar of U.S. foreign policy,” Loren Thompson, chief operating officer at the Lexington Institute, a D.C. think tank, wrote – uncritically – for Forbes last week.
→ read full articleHaiti: From Displacement Camps to Community
Alexis Erkert and Beverly Bell – Toward Freedom,
9 Jan 2012
As 2012 begins, a growing movement of displaced people and their allies in Haiti is actively claiming the right to housing, which is recognized by both the Haitian constitution and international treaties to which Haiti is signatory. Haitians displaced by the earthquake two years ago face many crises, but perhaps none worse than ongoing homelessness: 520,000 people still living in displacement camps.
→ read full articleAustralia: Economic Forecasters Lose Their Way in Extreme Weather
Peter Martin – BusinessDay,
9 Jan 2012
WHO would have thought it? Certainly none of the 20-odd members of the economic forecasting panel this time last year. The rate of inflation turned out to be higher than the highest of their predictions, the budget deficit bigger than the biggest, and the sharemarket far lower than all but two thought likely. It is trite to say it, but they did not know what was coming.
→ read full articleEnd of the Pro-democracy Pretense
Peter Martin – BusinessDay,
9 Jan 2012
A central staple of American domestic propaganda about its foreign policy is that the nation is “pro-democracy” — that’s the banner under which American wars are typically prettified — even though “democracy” in this regard really means “a government which serves American interests regardless of how their power is acquired,” while “despot” means “a government which defies American orders even if they’re democratically elected.”
→ read full articleWhy Socialism?
Albert Einstein – Monthly Review,
26 Dec 2011
Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.
→ read full articleBankers Are the Dictators of the West
Robert Fisk – The Independent,
19 Dec 2011
It seems to me that the reporting of the collapse of capitalism has reached a new low which even the Middle East cannot surpass for sheer unadulterated obedience to the very institutions and Harvard “experts” who have helped to bring about the whole criminal disaster.
→ read full articleSanctions Are Only a Small Part of the History That Makes Iranians Hate the UK
Robert Fisk – The Independent,
5 Dec 2011
It’s a weird irony that Iranians know the history of Anglo-Persian relations better than the Brits. This was not a myth but a real, down-to-earth conspiracy. The CIA called it Operation Ajax; the Brits wisely kept their ambitions in check by calling it Operation Boot. They were successful. Mossadegh was arrested – by an officer assiduously done to death in the 1979 revolution – and the young Shah returned in triumph to impose his rule, reinforced by his faithful SAVAK secret police whose torture of women regime opponents was duly filmed and – according to the great Egyptian journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal – circulated by CIA officers to America’s allies around the world as a “teaching” manual. How dare the Iranians remember all this?
→ read full articleMan-Made Flu Virus with Potential to Wipe Out Many Millions If It Ever Escaped Is Created In Research Lab
Daily Mail Reporter – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Dec 2011
A group of scientists is pushing to publish research about how they created a man-made flu virus that could potentially wipe out civilisation. The study is one of two that have caused serious debate about scientific freedom and about regulating research that might have potential public health benefits but at the same time could also be useful for bio-terrorism.
→ read full article(Italian) Le Sanzioni Sono Solo Una Parte Dell’Odio Dell’Iran Per il Regno Unito
Robert Fisk – Centro Studi Sereno Regis,
5 Dec 2011
È ironico che gli iraniani conoscano la storia delle relazioni anglo-persiane meglio dei britannici. Non si tratta di una leggenda, ma di una cospirazione bella e buona. La CIA la chiamò Operazione Ajax; i britannici, saggiamente, tennero a freno le proprie ambizioni con la dicitura Operazione Boot. Ciò fu coronato dal successo. Mossadegh fu arrestato – da un ufficiale che nella rivoluzione del 1979 patì una morte truculenta – e il giovane shah ritornò in trionfo per imporre la sua regola con l’appoggio della fedele polizia segreta SAKAV, le cui pratiche di torture inflitte alle donne oppositrici furono doverosamente filmate e, secondo il giornalista egiziano Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, diffuse dai funzionari della CIA agli alleati degli Stati Uniti in tutto il mondo come manuale didattico. Come osano gli iraniani ricordarsi di tutto questo?
→ read full articleSales & the Winter of Discontent
James Albertini, Malu 'Aina, Hawai`i – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Nov 2011
The store ads all say “SALE, SALE, SALE! The real meaning is BUY! BUY! BUY! The ads are a lure to create “Wants” not “Needs.” This holiday season do not buy the hype. Buy nothing or buy local. Support an economy that benefits the 99%, not the 1% of global corporate interests that suck labor and resources out of our local economies. Add to this mess, endless wars for empire disguised as “war on terror” to keep us all in a state of fear and obedience to those in power. The oil companies and the arms merchants have never seen more profitable times; they like things just as they are.
→ read full articleThe Neuroeconomics Revolution
Robert J. Shiller – Project Syndicate,
28 Nov 2011
Neuroscience – the science of how the brain, that physical organ inside one’s head, really works – is beginning to change the way we think about how people make decisions. These findings will inevitably change the way we think about how economies function. In short, we are at the dawn of “neuroeconomics.”
→ read full articleThe Roads to War and Economic Collapse
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts – Global Research,
28 Nov 2011
November 23, 2011: The day before the Thanksgiving holiday brought three extraordinary news items. One was the report on the Republican presidential campaign debate. One was the Russian President’s statement about his country’s response to Washington’s missile bases surrounding his country. And one was the failure of a German government bond auction. As the presstitute media will not inform us of what any of this means, let me try.
→ read full articleBest Job in the Neighborhood—And They Own It
Susan Arterian Chang – YES! Magazine,
21 Nov 2011
How worker co-ops are expanding despite the rust-belt economy.
→ read full articleAnd the Big Time Banksters Come Marching In
Robert Wenzel – Economic Policy Journal,
14 Nov 2011
Mario Drgahi (European Central Bank), Lucas Papademos (Prime Minister of Greece), Mario Monti (Prime Minister of Italy), Mark Carney (chair, Financial Stability Board): The big time banksters are getting direct hands on control. If you get the sense that the elitist banksters are going to take this financial crisis and push it in whatever direction they want, you are probably very right.
→ read full articleCorzine’s Downfall
Nick Paumgarten – The New Yorker,
14 Nov 2011
The collapse this week of the broker-dealer MF Global and the comeuppance of its chief executive Jon Corzine, who resigned Friday [4 Nov 2011], have been and will be put to many political and rhetorical purposes. It doesn’t much matter, in these Zuccotti Park days, whether you’re too sanguine or too sly. Either way, you’re considered a crook. But if the firm did indeed use hundreds of millions of dollars of its customers’ money to prop up its own liquidity, in its waning hours, someone, perhaps even the former C.E.O. of Goldman Sachs and Governor of New Jersey, could wind up in jail.
→ read full articleCan Revolutionary Pacifism Deliver Peace?
Noam Chomsky - Reader Supported News,
7 Nov 2011
Not to be overlooked, however, is that Europeans came to realize that the next time they indulge in their favorite pastime of slaughtering one another, the game will be over: civilisation has developed means of destruction that can only be used against those too weak to retaliate in kind, a large part of the appalling history of the post-World War II years.
→ read full articleOccupy Demands: Let’s Radicalise Our Analysis
Robert Jensen – Al Jazeera,
7 Nov 2011
The crisis we face is caused by failed systems – replacing leaders while keeping the old system intact will not help. There’s one question that pundits and politicians keep posing to the Occupy gatherings around the country: What are your demands? I have a suggestion for a response: We demand that you stop demanding a list of demands.
→ read full articleToo Big to Jail
Robert Scheer - Truthdig,
7 Nov 2011
Can we all agree that a $1 billion swindle represents a lot of money? So why isn’t anybody at Citibank going to prison?
→ read full articleAmericans: Awash In Spin
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts – Global Research,
7 Nov 2011
I have come to the conclusion that Big Brother’s subjects in George Orwell’s 1984 are better informed than Americans. Americans have no idea why they have been at war in the Middle East, Asia and Africa for a decade. They don’t realize that their liberties have been supplanted by a Gestapo Police State. Few understand that hard economic times are here to stay.
→ read full articleOccupy Wall Street’s Elegant Message
Danny Schechter - Consortium News,
7 Nov 2011
One of the most frequently repeated, recycled and dismissive questions about Occupy Wall Street is its supposed lack of an “agenda.” The “what do you people want” question has featured in media interviews almost to the exclusion of all others. It’s as if the movement won’t be taken seriously by some, unless and until, it enunciates a list of “demands” and defines itself in a way that can allow others, especially a cynical media, to label and pigeonhole it. (So, it won’t be taken seriously then either.)
→ read full articleJudaism and Zionism Are Not the Same Thing
Neturei Karta, Jews United Against Zionism – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Nov 2011
The truth is that the Jewish faith and Zionism are two very different philosophies. They are as opposite as day and night. The Jewish people have existed for thousands of years. The Zionist movement created the Israeli state. The latter is a persuasion less than one hundred years old. Its essential goal was and is to change the nature of the Jewish people from that of a religious entity to a political movement. From Zionism’s inception the spiritual leaders of the Jewish people stood in staunch opposition to it.
→ read full articleU.N. Torture Investigator Says Access to Manning Denied, Condemns Solitary Confinement
The Bradley Manning Support Network – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Oct 2011
Juan Mendez, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, confirmed yesterday that the Department of Defense has blocked his requests for an unmonitored meeting with PFC Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower. He told reporters gathered at a U.N. General Assembly committee on human rights that he would be issuing a report on Bradley Manning’s case “in the next few weeks.”
→ read full articleThe Solutions Generation
Robert Constanza – Al Jazeera,
31 Oct 2011
The next generation will have to bring about major transitions in order to build a more sustainable future. The Arab Spring, and now the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, are indications of growing unhappiness with the state of the world, especially in the younger generation. As Paul Krugman has pointed out, Americans are finally getting angry at the right people – the financial and corporate elites that currently govern the United States, and who have caused the ongoing economic crisis.
→ read full articleMillionaires Control 39% of Global Wealth
Robert Frank – The Wall Street Journal,
24 Oct 2011
According to the latest Global Wealth Report from Credit Suisse, the 29.7 million people in the world with household net worths of $1 million (representing less than 1% of the world’s population) control about $89 trillion of the world’s wealth. That’s up from a share of 35.6% in 2010, and their wealth increased by about $20 trillion, according Credit Suisse.
→ read full articleA Model for Macropolitical Crisis Prevention? The Rhodes Dialogue of Civilizations
Erika Degortes – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Oct 2011
It should be possible to respond to economic and social changes and it should be made able for civilizations to cope with them locally. The World Public Forum identified the “Dialogue of Civilizations” itself as a possible approach to the current economic crisis, as well as conflict resolution models, as proposed by Prof. Galtung among others, as a method to develop a new growth and distribution model that would act as an alternative to the current ones.
→ read full articleDon’t Sleep Through the Revolution
Rev. Jesse Jackson - Reader Supported News,
17 Oct 2011
Entrenched privilege does not surrender its privilege easily. Occupy Wall Street is taking on the most powerful interests. But nothing, as Victor Hugo wrote, is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. As Dr. King urged, “Don’t sleep through the revolution.” It is time to take a stand. So 99’ers, maintain your disciplined focus, your peaceful nonviolent approach to protest, and demand change. In the end we will win.
→ read full articleHappy Genocide Day!
Thom Hartmann - Truthout,
17 Oct 2011
If you fly over the country of Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, the island on which Columbus landed, it looks like somebody took a blowtorch and burned away anything green. Even the ocean around the port capital of Port au Prince is choked for miles with the brown of human sewage and eroded topsoil. From the air, it looks like a lava flow spilling out into the sea. The history of this small island is, in many ways, a microcosm for what’s happening in the whole world.
→ read full article(Portuguese) Saiba Como o Álcool Afeta Seu Corpo
Philippa Roxby, Repórter de Saúde - BBC News,
10 Oct 2011
Os efeitos do consumo do álcool a curto prazo são conhecidos: ressacas, cansaço, má aparência. A longo prazo, a ingestão da substância está associada a várias condições, entre elas o câncer da mama, câncer oral, doenças cardíacas, derrames e cirrose hepática, entre outras. Pesquisas também associaram o consumo de álcool em doses elevadas à problemas de saúde mental, perda de memória e diminuição da fertilidade.
→ read full articleIs The War On Terror A Hoax?
Paul Craig Roberts – Information Clearing House,
3 Oct 2011
In the past decade, Washington has killed, maimed, dislocated, and made widows and orphans millions of Muslims in six countries, all in the name of the “war on terror.” When I observe the gullibility of my fellow citizens at the absurd “terror plots” that the US government manufactures, it causes me to realize that fear is the most powerful weapon any government has for advancing an undeclared agenda.
→ read full article“Drug Addicts Are Sick, Not Criminals”
Fabíola Ortiz – Inter Press Service-IPS,
3 Oct 2011
“The Police Pacification Units-UPPs are not going to fix all of Brazil’s, or Rio de Janeiro’s, problems, but the areas that have been ‘pacified’ today have already seen a decline in the various indicators of crime,” said police Major Eliécer de Oliveira, coordinator of UPP training and teaching in the military police.
→ read full articleA Truly Courageous Response to Terror
Fran Korten – YES! Magazine,
26 Sep 2011
“Our answer will not be hate and revenge, but more openness, more tolerance, and more democracy.” What the U.S. could learn from Norway about how to respond to terror.
→ read full articleHomophobia in Africa
Peter Kenworthy – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Sep 2011
Many African leaders in particular see homosexuality as “un-natural” and “un-African” and do not believe that homosexuals should have any rights at all. Homophobia is therefore not only illegal and punishable in many African countries, but also legitimised by the leaders of these countries, and African homosexuals are frequently assaulted, expelled from their jobs, or chased from their homes.
→ read full articleBrazil-Africa: Teaching Diplomacy
Fabíola Ortiz – Inter Press Service-IPS,
26 Sep 2011
African countries are increasingly taking up Brazil’s offer of training in the art of diplomacy, seeing it as a partner that could help them set up or improve their own foreign service institutes.
→ read full articleWhy the Middle East Will Never Be the Same Again
Robert Fisk – The Independent,
26 Sep 2011
The Palestinians won’t achieve statehood, but they will consign the ‘peace process’ to history. The US has lost its purchase on the Middle East. It’s over: the “peace process”, the “road map”, the “Oslo agreement”; the whole fandango is history.
→ read full articlePunching Back at Big Oil
Robert Redford - Reader Supported News,
26 Sep 2011
When you challenge Big Oil in Houston, you can bet the industry is going to punch back. So when I wrote in the Houston Chronicle earlier this month that we should say no to the Keystone XL pipeline, I wasn’t surprised when the project’s chief executive weighed in with a different view. Let’s set the record straight, point by point.
→ read full articleTarred and Feathered: Exxon/Murdoch/Cheney … At It Again
Leslie Griffith - Reader Supported News,
19 Sep 2011
“It is said those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And, in my experience, to report on it … again and again … as if the failures of the past offer no instruction at all.” That thought slapped me sober while thinking about tar sands and, moments later, when running across this story on Rupert Murdoch’s and Dick Cheney’s forays into the sticky boondoggle of tar sands’ predecessor – oil shale.
→ read full articleThe Pursuit of Happiness
Robert Constanza – Al Jazeera,
19 Sep 2011
In Bhutan, progress is measured by how happy people are, not how much wealth people have. An oil spill, for example, increases GDP because someone has to clean it up, but it obviously detracts from well-being. More crime, more sickness, more war, more pollution, more fires, storms and pestilence are all potentially positives for GDP because they can cause an increase in economic activity. GDP also takes no account of how the national income is distributed among people, ignoring the fact that a dollar’s worth of income produces more well-being for a poor person than a rich one.
→ read full articleBrazil: African Refugees in the Amazon
Fabíola Ortiz – Inter Press Service-IPS,
19 Sep 2011
Wilson Nicolas, from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), was the first African refugee to find his way to Brazil’s Amazon jungle region, and seems to have started a trend.
→ read full article
‘unLawful Access’ – Battle for the Net
PressForTruth – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Sep 2011
Unlawful “lawful access” that would allow government’s surveillance of everything you do on the Internet — not only in Canada but everywhere. All the powers that be need is a precedent. Every citizen is a suspect – Preposterous!
→ read full articleThere Is a Better Way: How the Norwegian Tragedy Forces Us to Reexamine Our Response to 9/11
Ida Hartmann - AlterNet,
19 Sep 2011
“This country has become dependent on the dead of 9/11 — who have no way of defending themselves against how they have been used — as an all-purpose explanation for our own goodness and the horrors we’ve visited on others, for the many towers-worth of dead in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere whose blood is on our hands.”
→ read full articleThe Imperial Delusions of the United States
Robert Jensen – Al Jazeera,
12 Sep 2011
Ten years ago, critics of the United States’ mad rush to war were right, but it didn’t matter. Ten years later, we are still right and it still doesn’t matter. Empires rarely learn in time, because power tends to dull people’s capacity for critical self-reflection. While ascending to power, empires believe themselves to be invincible. While declining in power, they cling desperately to old myths of remembered glory. Today, the United States is morally bankrupt and spiritually broken. The problem is that we are still operating on delusional notions about manifest destiny, American exceptionalism, the right to take more than our share of the world’s resources by whatever means necessary.
→ read full articleFor 10 Years, We’ve Lied to Ourselves to Avoid Asking the One Real Question
Robert Fisk – The Independent,
12 Sep 2011
I’m talking about the volumes, the libraries – nay, the very halls of literature – which the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001 have spawned. Many are spavined with pseudo-patriotism and self-regard, others rotten with the hopeless mythology of CIA/Mossad culprits, a few (from the Muslim world, alas) even referring to the killers as “boys”, almost all avoiding the one thing which any cop looks for after a street crime: the motive.
→ read full articleBaha Mousa inquiry: It’s Not the Brutality That Is ‘Systematic’. It’s the Lying About It.
Robert Fisk – The Independent,
12 Sep 2011
It was Baha Mousa’s dad I will always remember. On an oppressively scorching day in Basra, Daoud Mousa first spoke of his son’s death, telling me how the boy’s wife had died of cancer just six months earlier, how Baha’s children were now orphans, how – not long after the British Army had arrested Baha Mousa and beaten him to death, for that is what happened – a British officer had come to his home and stared at the floor and offered cash by way of saying sorry.
→ read full articleAnalysis of Financial Terrorism in America
David DeGraw – AmpedStatus Report,
15 Aug 2011
Over 1 Million Deaths Annually, 62 Million People With Zero Net Worth, As the Economic Elite Make Off With $46 Trillion
→ read full articleA Rebellion against Racism and Poverty
James Illingworth – Socialist Worker,
15 Aug 2011
Symbolically, the riots in London broke out as world financial markets were in turmoil over concerns that the American economy is going back into recession and the European debt crisis is spreading to Italy and Spain. The crisis-ridden capitalist system has nothing to offer young people, and it was only a matter of time before their anger exploded into action. These aren’t the first riots of the crisis, and they won’t be the last.
→ read full articleMainstream Media Ignores S&P Attack on Republicans
Thom Hartmann – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Aug 2011
Have you seen, anywhere, in any media, or even heard reported or repeated on NPR, the following sentence? “We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.”
→ read full article
Norwegian Muslish Gunman’s Islam-Esque Atrocity
Colbert Report – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Aug 2011
July 25, 2011
→ read full articleCan’t Pay Back, Won’t Pay Back: Iceland’s Loud No
Silla Sigurgeirsdóttir and Robert H Wade – Le Monde Diplomatique,
8 Aug 2011
The small island of Iceland has lessons for the world. It held a referendum in April to decide, more or less, whether ordinary people should pay for the folly of the bankers (and by extension, could governments control the corporate sector if they depended on it for finance). Sixty per cent of the population rejected an agreement negotiated between Iceland, the Netherlands and the UK to pay back the British and Dutch governments for the money they spent to recompense savers with the failed bank Icesave. That was less resistance than the first referendum last spring, when 93% voted no.
→ read full articleNeocons Fume over US Boat to Gaza
Ray McGovern – Consortium News,
18 Jul 2011
My co-passengers and I of the U.S. Boat to Gaza have now gone from “High-Seas Hippies,” according to the right-wing Washington Times, to participants in a flotilla full of “fools, knaves, hypocrites, bigots, and supporters of terrorism,” says Alan Dershowitz in his usual measured prose.
→ read full articleThe World’s Largest Human Experiment: GMOs, Roundup and the Monsanto Monstrosity
Madison Ruppert - Activist Post,
18 Jul 2011
Informed consent is one of the most basic aspects of patient-physician relations, as well as subject-researcher relations in the case of research studies. This involves making the patient aware of and verifying that they understand the risks, benefits, facts, and the future implications of the procedure or test they are going to be subjected to. In the case of genetically modified organisms we have not been made aware of the risks. In fact, the GMO industry has deliberately hidden the real dangers behind the seeds and herbicides they peddle.
→ read full articleWhy I Had To Leave The Times
Robert Fisk – The Independent,
18 Jul 2011
When he worked at The Times, Robert Fisk witnessed the curious working practices of the paper’s proprietor, Rupert Murdoch. Despite their jocular exchanges, the writer knew he couldn’t stay… “He is a caliph, I suppose, almost of the Middle Eastern variety.”
→ read full articleDefaulting Rescued Argentina. It Could Work for Athens Too
Heather Stewart – The Guardian,
11 Jul 2011
Struggling under an impossible burden after its IMF bailouts, Buenos Aires knew its one hope was to stop paying its debts and become a pariah – and so it proved.
→ read full articleOn Flotillas and the Law
Lawrence Davidson - Reader Supported News,
11 Jul 2011
Civil Society Movements vs. Corrupt Politics – Most of us are unaware of the potential of organized civil society because we have resigned the public sphere to professional politicians and bureaucrats and retreated into a private sphere of everyday life, which we see as separate from politics. This is a serious mistake. Politics shapes our lives whether we pay attention to it or not. By ignoring it we allow the power of the state to respond not so much to the citizenry as to special interests.
→ read full article