Articles by ICH
We found 2433 results.
Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Sows Confusion
Richard E. Rubenstein – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Sep 2019
If Democrats are unable to recognize Trump’s (and their own) addiction to power as the sole means of dealing with conflicts, they will not understand that “toughness” and “softness” constitute a false dichotomy in foreign affairs. Power does not solve the social problems that generate war. Creativity, empathy, analysis, and determination are needed to solve those problems and generate effective options for conflict resolution. We have reason to believe that younger members of the opposition, in particular, have already begun to understand this.
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The Pompeo Doctrine
Michael T. Klare - TomDispatch,
16 Sep 2019
How to Seize the Arctic’s Resources, Now Accessible Due to Climate Change (Just Don’t Mention Those Words!) Perhaps no aspect of humanity’s response to the climate crisis is more diabolical than this. The greater the number of fossil fuels we consume, the more rapidly we alter the Arctic, inviting the further extraction of just such fuels and their contribution to global warming.
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By the way…
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Sep 2019
A little girl comes running and says, “Father, my toothbrush fell into the toilet!”
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Burning Amazonia, Denying Climate Change, Devastating Syria, Starving Yemen, Ignoring Kashmir
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Sep 2019
5 Sep 2019 – What is suggested is the dependence of human wellbeing on the emergence of a transnational activist movement that demands major structural reforms of world order that seek a favorable resolution of the bio-ethical crisis. If this seems utopian, you are quite right to react as if there is no plausible path leading from here to there. Yet I believe it is more illuminating to insist that activating the utopian imagination is the only source of a transformed realism that is sensitive to the distinctive challenges and opportunities of the 21stcentury.
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It’s Coming Soon: Can the UN Rethink Its Future in a Few Months?
Richard Ponzio and Cristina Petcu | PassBlue – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Sep 2019
On 26 Jun 2020 the international community will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations Charter. That doesn’t leave much time to hammer out a “concise, substantive, forward-looking and unifying declaration” that captures member states’ commitment to multilateralism and to the UN before the world leaders’ summit meeting on Sept. 21, 2020 — as the General Assembly resolved this month.
→ read full articleIntelligent Design
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Sep 2019
A little boy went up to his father and asked:
→ read full articleClarification
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Sep 2019
During the German occupation of France, a German soldier entered Picasso’s studio and saw a small reproduction of his painting “Guernica”.
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Scientists Have Been Underestimating the Pace of Climate Change
Naomi Oreskes, Michael Oppenheimer and Dale Jamieson | Scientific American – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Aug 2019
19 Aug 2019 – Recent updates, suggesting that climate change and its impacts are emerging faster than scientists previously thought, are consistent with observations that we and other colleagues have made identifying a pattern in assessments of climate research of underestimation of certain key climate indicators, and therefore underestimation of the threat of climate disruption.
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White Supremacy before Trump: The U.S. Conquest of Hawaii
Michael K. Smith – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Aug 2019
August 21 marks the sixtieth anniversary of Hawaiian statehood. Many Americans know little more than package tours and “Pearl Harbor” about the fiftieth state, and few realize that when the U.S. naval base was attacked by the Japanese, it was not at the time U.S. territory. Even fewer have any idea how Hawaii came to have an important American naval base capable of triggering a world war.
→ read full articleWill Trump’s War-Mongering Lead to War with Iran?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Aug 2019
12 Aug 2019 – This is an edited version of an interview on 11 Aug 2019 by Iranian journalist Nozhan Etezad and published in Iran News. It addresses various aspects of the troubled recent Iran/U.S. relationship.
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Speaking for the Silenced: The Holy Inquisition in Portugal
Richard Zimler | Tikkun – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Aug 2019
Prisoners in Inquisitorial prisons who refused to accept Jesus as the Messiah and make a full confession of their Jewish practices would be burnt at the stake in a public ceremony known as an auto-da-fé, meaning act of faith. In 1560, Portugal imposed this same religious dictatorship in Goa, where tens of thousands of converted Hindus and their descendants were arrested and tortured – and hundreds burnt alive – by the Inquisition from 1560 to 1820. The Inquisition was also a diabolically effective money-making scam, since all the assets of its victims were confiscated and given to the Church.
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Banning U.S. Congresspersons from Israel
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Aug 2019
18 Aug 2019 – The decision to ban, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, two sitting members of the U.S. House of Representatives, disgraces the leaders of both the United States and Israel, confirms the illegitimacy of both political parties by their tepid responses, and confirms once more the unhealthy relationship that has evolved between Trump and Netanyahu, these two most reactionary of political figures, and badly reflects on the political atmosphere in the countries they represent.
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‘A New Hawaiian Renaissance’: How a Telescope Protest Became a Movement
Michelle Broder Van Dyke – The Guardian,
19 Aug 2019
17 Aug 2019 – On Hawaii’s Big Island, a protest against a $1.4bn observatory on Mauna Kea, a mountain considered sacred by many Native Hawaiians, is entering a second month. In that time, the protest site has swelled from a few hundred to several thousands, attracted celebrity visitors, and built a community of Native Hawaiians who see it as a pivotal moment.
→ read full articleFrom Legitimacy Wars to the Politics of Impossibility: Horizons of Hope
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Aug 2019
The Palestinian people are being cruelly pushed hard against walls of submission by violence and threats, which amounts to what has become ‘a lost cause’ somewhat along the lines of Tibet, Western Sahara, and the fates that have befallen most indigenous peoples. This is what Trump is promoting as ‘the deal of the century’ and seems to be what the Arab dynastic autocrats would like to see happen so that they can get on with their business of confronting Iran and keeping their own peoples forever captive.
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“That Was Then, This Is Now.” “Oh, yeah?” The Problem of Anti-Relativism in Political Morality
Richard E. Rubenstein – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Aug 2019
Anti-relativist thinking insists that certain values approved by the speaker are constant and unchangeable. This means that behaviors that we now believe are wrong were ‘always’ unacceptable, and should always have always been recognized as such. Anti-relativism’s opposite, moral relativism, can be summed up in the phrase, “Other times, other customs.” Historical eras, social conditions, and cultural environments change, altering commonly accepted definitions of right and wrong.
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Tulsi Gabbard Has Done the Unpardonable: Criticized US Global Hegemony
David Bromwich | Mondoweiss – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Aug 2019
3 Aug 2019 – The Times’ yellow journalism half disguised as human interest, with a few random points of political information. Headline: “Unorthodox Campaign Shows Isolationism May Have a Hold.” Opening sentence: “Tulsi Gabbard is running for president of a country that she believes has wrought horror on the world.”
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Untitled…
Michael de Adder – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Aug 2019
… and legend unnecessary. Canadian cartoonist Michael de Adder was dropped after creating this drawing.
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Context Matters Except for the Palestinians
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Aug 2019
2 Aug 2019 – Palestinians could and should have done better in setting forth their own vision of peace. The extreme one-sidedness of the Trump approach handed Palestinians a golden opportunity to declare as forcibly as possible the urgent and immediate need for a new peace intermediary that was a facilitator, and not a partisan as past American presidents, or an imposer as this one seems to be. The United States had long overplayed its hand as ‘honest broker.’
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Geopolitical Crimes: A Revolutionary Proposal
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jul 2019
23 Jul 2019 – International criminal law has developed a framework for judging the criminal conduct of states with respect to armed conflict but is silent about even the most severe crimes of diplomacy. It is these ‘geopolitical crimes’ that are more responsible for inflicting mass suffering on civilian populations than are most of the forms of international behavior currently criminalized. I am aware that criminalizing acts of diplomacy is a revolutionary idea, but no less for that, deserving of commentary and debate.
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Nikola Tesla (10 Jul 1856 – 7 Jan 1943)
Biography and Michel Chossudovsky – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jul 2019
Very few people know who Nikola Tesla is. They have heard of the Tesla electric car, but generally the broader public is unfamiliar with Nikola Tesla, the Serbian scientist and his path breaking inventions in electricity and wireless technology. Many of his inventions were stolen by US corporations. Wireless technology was in large part based on Tesla inventions. He contributed to the development of the alternating-current electrical system that’s widely used today and discovered the rotating magnetic field (the basis of most AC machinery).
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Required Reading: Noura Erakat on Palestine and Law
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jul 2019
Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine, by Noura Erakat, Stanford University Press, 2019 – I make no claim to approach this book with an open mind. Making a fuller disclosure, I acknowledge with some pride that I have endorsed Justice for Some even before it was published, and my blurb appears on its back cover.
→ read full articleTwo Necessary and Sufficient Principles
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jul 2019
Life’s (humanity’s and the earth’s) bottleneck problems can be solved, I dare to suggest, by applying just two general principles. The two can be regarded as principles of unbounded organization. Unbounded organization is the name of a conversation, an academy and a movement (one of many, but not one that duplicates what the others do) devoted to making the impossible possible. Here I contribute to its conversation the proposal that implementing just two principles will make the impossible possible; namely, a pro-social attitude plus doing what works; or alternatively, a pro-social attitude plus structural understanding.
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This Dutch City Has Transformed Its Bus Stops into Bee Stops
Michiel de Gooijer | EcoWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2019
8 Jul 2019 – In the Dutch city Utrecht 316 bus stops now have a green roof. They do not only look great, they also help capture fine dust, storage of rainwater and provide cooling in the summertime. From Bus Stops to Bee Stops
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(Italiano) Verso il bordo della guerra: Provocare l’Iran per che cosa? Per chi?
Richard Falk | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2019
10 Luglio 2019 – L’intervista seguente con il giornalista iraniano Javad Hieran-Nia è stata pubblicata in Iran su Iran Mehr News e Tehran Times insieme al Middle Scholar’s Statement sulla politica iraniana di Trump.
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Remembering the World Court Advisory Opinion on Israel’s Separation Wall after 15 Years
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2019
The question that remains is ‘how much longer can the Zionist Project swim against the strong historical current of anti-colonialism?’ The answer in my view depends on whether the global solidarity movement, together with Palestinian resistance, can reach a tipping point that leads Israeli leadership to reconsider its ‘security’ and its future. Such a point was reached in South Africa, admittedly under quite different conditions, but with an analogous sense that the Afrikaner leadership would never give up control without being defeated in a bloody struggle for power.
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Toward the Brink of War: Provoking Iran for What? For Whom?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jul 2019
30 Jun 2019 – The following interview with the Iranian journalist Javad Hieran-Nia was published in Iran’s Mehr News and Tehran Times together with Middle Scholar’s Statement on Trump’s Iran Policy.
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The World’s Leaders Are Terrible – Declaration of Independence from All of Them
Jon Schwarz and Michael Gerber – The Intercept,
8 Jul 2019
4 Jul 2019 – We, therefore, the Sane People of this Planet, who don’t think that anybody will (or should) remember any of us in 500 years, do solemnly publish and declare that all the world’s Leaders are hereby relieved of their positions; that our feeling is, enough already with the Jihads and Crusades and Glorious Struggles and Finest Hours; that we believe we will be much better off without Leaders,…
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What Comes after Bahrain?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jul 2019
6 Jul 2019 – Is There an ‘After’ after the Kushner Show in Bahrain? The growing movement of global solidarity as reinforced by Palestinian acts of resistance to apartheid structures of oppression is the sole basis for a peaceful future for both peoples, Palestinians and Israeli Jews.
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Understanding When Repression Will Help or Hurt a Movement
Michael Wilson-Becerril | Resistance Studies – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jul 2019
27 Jun 2019 – When repression backfires, it can galvanize movements. But sometimes it does the opposite. What explains these different outcomes?
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An American Attack on Iran Would Be an Unmitigated Disaster for the US, Iran and the World: Iran War Statement
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jul 2019
25 Jun 2019 – The following statement on US warmongering in relation to Iran was prepared by Mark LeVine, Professor of History, University of California, Irvine and myself. Some of the early signatories are among the leading scholars in the field of Middle East Studies. Their names are listed below.
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Acting Beyond the State: Toward a Cosmopolitan Awakening?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
20 Jun 2019 – The following review of Ayça Çubukçu’s For the Love of Humanity: The World Tribunal on Iraq, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018, is scheduled to appear in a forthcoming issue of the London Review of International Law.
→ read full articleGreen New Deals
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
Green New Deals can be thought of as bearing new wine in old bottles. The old bottles are demands for social justice. Now they include shock and dismay at threats to the survival of our fragile biosphere. They can easily become just another rationale for tax benefits for investors and for massive public investment financed by public debt even more massive than it already is. The new wine is the creative thinking that is seeking ways to achieve structural changes that will make it possible to succeed where social democracy failed.
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The Psychosis of Hegemony
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Jun 2019
‘Negotiated truth’ has become the standard currency. Robert Mueller’s manner of handling his relations with the Department of Justice fits the pattern. In declaring that William Barr’s gross misrepresentations of his report’s conclusion were ‘well intentioned,’ while making it obvious that Trump had obstructed justice, is a prime example. In this instance, Mueller negotiated the truth among his sense of professional duty, his conscience and his keen desire to maintain a certain standing among his fellow Republicans. In the end, he tilted toward the last while hiding behind the first. Par for the course.
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We Are the World (Music Video of the Week)
Michael Jackson – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Jun 2019
An unbelievable constellation of 47 legendary superstars singing together in a historic music video with a message of love from Michael to the world. Recorded in 1985.
→ read full articleU.S. Government Seeks NGO Help for Removing Iran from Syria
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
29 May 2019 – The U.S. Department of State is offering a grant of $75 million to non-government-organizations to help it to further meddle in Syria. Americans have intoxicated themselves for two and a half years on the vapors emanating from the alleged Russian ‘interference’ in the 2016 election affair–never proven. The strongest odor, if one bothers to inhale, is from the stench of hypocrisy.
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Marxist Economic Theory Easily Explained
Richard Wolff | The Jimmy Dore Show – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
Richard David Wolff is an American Marxian economist known for his work on economic methodology and class analysis. He is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts and a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program of the New School University in New York. Wolff has also taught economics at Yale University, City University of New York, University of Utah, University of Paris I (Sorbonne), and The Brecht Forum. In 1988 he co-founded the journal Rethinking Marxism. In 2010, Wolff published Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It, also released as a DVD.
→ read full articleJurisprudential Notes toward Empowering and Liberating International Law and the United Nations
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
2 Jun 2019 – When law is aligned with injustice it gives rise to resistance, which historically is associated with the hallowed tradition of civil disobedience, influential with Tolstoy, Gandhi, and more recently, Martin Luther King, Jr. In these contexts civil disobedience can involve the nonviolent transgression of any legal norm that calls attention to the specific injustice.
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What You See Is Not What You Get
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
Poem at Springtime
→ read full articleR2P and the Palestinian Ordeal: Humiliating the UN
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 May 2019
23 May 2019 – The fact that Gaza has not even been discussed at the UN, despite the prolonged, intense victimization of its vulnerable and impoverished civilian population is one more indication of the primacy of geopolitics and the marginalization of international law and morality. Only civil society activism can keep the torch of justice burning in this global climate.
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On My 88thBirthday: A Reflection
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
Poem at Springtime
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Required Reading on Palestine
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel, by Andrew Ross, Verso; 2019 – Andrew: “… it would be no exaggeration to say that the ‘stone men’ of Palestine have built every state in the region except their own.” My final assessment: no matter how much you think you know about Palestine, you do not know enough until you have read this book.
→ read full articleNeo-Cons: Origin of the Species
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
18 May 2019 – Before embarking on an etymological exploration, a few prefatory remarks are in order. One, neo-conservativism is as much a state of feeling as it is a state-of-mind. Two, such logical thinking as occurs among its devotees is deductive – downplaying empirical data and encouraging ad hominem conclusions and pronouncements. Finally, it is a highly adulterated species of doctrine. It has interbred with several other intellectual and ideological entities to produce a hybrid.
→ read full articleWhen Conquer We Must, When Our Cause It Is Just
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 May 2019
12 May 2019 – Bellicosity pervades Washington’s ruling circles. Cartoon images of the enemy are disseminated everywhere. He is alien and menacing. The target is portrayed as a clear and ‘imminent’ threat to America who is beyond reason. Fictive provocations are conjured up. No evidence is presented to substantiate the claims – it’s speculation rooted it’s super-secret classified Intelligence. To question is to traffic in ‘fake news’ and disinformation, to serve as ‘useful idiot’ who is handmaiden to the terrible trio of Russia, Syria and Iran… Let’s step back a couple of generations to Vietnam.
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The 5G Revolution: Millions of “Human Guinea Pigs” in Big Telecom’s Global Experiment
Michael Welch and Chris Cook – Global Research,
13 May 2019
12 May 2019 – Welcome to the brave new world of 5G. “If you are one of the millions who seek faster downloads of movies, games and virtual pornography, a solution is at hand, that is, if you do not mind volunteering your living body in a giant uncontrolled experiment on the human population.”
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In Search of Equivalence
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 May 2019
Poem at Springtime
→ read full article(Italiano) L’effimera aspettativa di vita delle democrazie autocratiche
Richard Falk | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 May 2019
Le varie democrazie autocratiche ora dominanti il paesaggio politico del mondo sono condannate in quanto forma politica, ma che cosa verrà dopo di esse non si può prevedere. Potrebbe essere un’occasione di celebrazione o di disperazione, o entrambe se società differenti si sposteranno in direzioni opposte, chi verso più profonde democrazie, chi verso una governance fascista.
→ read full articleIstanbul Elections: A Turkish Constitutional Crisis? Davutoglu’s Manifesto
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 May 2019
10 May 2019 – Despite all the deficiencies of Turkish political life and democracy, the most important power is the legitimacy of the elections. The most fundamental value of our political future is the voice of the people, and this will be manifested at the ballot box. Regardless of the excuse given and whatever the rationale, what happened after the March 31st election and the decision of annulment by the High Electoral Council has inflicted damage on these core values.
→ read full articleSatanic Venezuela vs Saintly America
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 May 2019
5 May 2019 – America’s entire political class, its foreign policy community in particular, agrees that Maduro ‘has to go.’ Just as Assad ‘had to go’, Gaddafi ‘had to go,’ and before them Saddam ‘had to go.’ With the Ayatollahs high on the to-do list. The only debate is on the method. Tactics are discussed endlessly on Op Ed pages, on the talk shows, on think tank row without any reference to why he ‘must go’ – with what implications. It’s little different from the agitated post-game yapping about an NBA play-off game: why did team ‘X’ fail to execute their pick-and-roll as planned, why this match-up rather than that, what adjustments will the coach make before the next game.
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(Italiano) Quando si arriva alla fine della strada è ora di pensare fuori dagli schemi
Howard Richards | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 May 2019
22 Aprile 2019 – il mondo di ieri basato sulla premessa di guadagnarsi da vivere con un lavoro è finito. Finito! Tassare i ricchi per sovvenzionare i poveri – proposta con le migliori intenzioni da qualcuno a sinistra – è impossibile perché se si prova a tassarli, si trasferiscono. Inoltre, nessuno sa davvero quanto denaro è nascosto in fondi fiduciari dei paradisi fiscali sotto nomi fittizi, o quanto ne guizza per il mondo in frazioni di secondo in transazioni speculative mega-milionarie che rendono insignificante l’economia reale.
→ read full articleDoes the Overthrow of el-Bashir in Sudan Signal a Second Arab Spring?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Apr 2019
28 Apr 2019 – Of particular interest is whether the mass movement of the Sudanese people and the counterrevolutionary dangers posed by the retention of emergency powers by the military entourage surrounding the former dictator will destroy the hopes of the mobilized population as happened in Egypt in seemingly analogous circumstances.
→ read full articleAnti-Semitism and Jewish Self-Determination
Richard E. Rubenstein – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Apr 2019
Is There a Jewish Right of Self-Determination?
Self-Determination on What Territory?
Self-Determination for Whom and for What?
The Short-Lived Life Expectancy of Autocratic Democracies
Prof. Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Apr 2019
The rise of autocratic leaders via democratic procedures is an outcome that can be either reversed or accentuated. The various autocratic democracies now dominating the political landscape of the world are doomed as a political form, but what will come after them cannot now be foreseen. It could be either an occasion for celebration or despair, or both if different societies move in opposite directions, some toward a deeper democracies, some toward fascist governance.
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Genetically Modified Babies: The Genetic Editing of Human Life Is “Big Business”
Prof Michel Chossudovsky - Global Research,
29 Apr 2019
28 Apr 2019 – The experiment raises important scientific and ethical issues. Human embryos are not commodities. The Chinese government immediately opened an investigation; Dr He Jiankui was fired by his University in January 2019. Despite government regulations and ethical issues, there are powerful corporate interests involved in the development and patenting of genetic editing of life forms including Dr. He’s findings on “genetically modified babies”.
→ read full articleOn Taking Controversial Public Positions: A Reflection
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Apr 2019
18 Apr 2019 – I have chosen activism to the end, both continuing with sports to the limit of my ability and to honor the political commitments of a citizen pilgrim (dedicated to a journey to a desired and desirable political community that functions now only as an imaginary, yet has the ambition to become a political project) to the best of my ability.
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The Good Friday Agreement
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Apr 2019
Former US Senator George Mitchell played a crucial role as mediator in helping bring about a peace settlement between representatives of the Northern Irish Protestants and Sinn Fein.
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(Castellano) El Final del Camino
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Apr 2019
No hay soluciones económicas (es decir, no hay soluciones pro-vida) porque la economía vive y se mueve y tiene su ser dentro del marco del derecho de propiedad y del derecho contractual tal como se lo desarrolló primero en el Imperio Romano, después en los estados sucesores del Imperio Romano durante el período moderno temprano. La ley europea fue impuesta a los habitantes de las Américas, África y Asia por la fuerza. (Consultar Patriarcado y acumulación a escala mundial de María Mies)
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A Cathedral and a Mosque Engulfed in Fire; One Ravages the Past, the Other Threatens the Future
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich – Global Research,
22 Apr 2019
17 Apr 2019 – The world reacted with shock to the fire that engulfed the Notre Dame Cathedral. A symbol of Paris, this 13th Century architectural marvel is home to precious historical religious relics and artwork. Concurrent with the fire that ravaged Notre Dame, another historical place of worship, the al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem fell victim to a fire of an unknown origin. The Mosque completed in 705 AD is the third holiest site in Islam.
→ read full articleJulian Assange: Criminal or Benefactor?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2019
14 Apr 2019 – I suppose it is of interest that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have found something to agree about—the criminal indictment of Julian Assange. Trump is acutely vulnerable to the exposure of truth and Clinton blames her electoral defeat in 2016 partly on what WikiLeaks disclosed about her improper use of a government computer to send private emails. Such are the perverse ways of the deeply unjust.
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8 Things You May Not Know about Leonardo Da Vinci, on the 500th Anniversary of His Death
Richard Gunderman – The Conversation,
15 Apr 2019
10 Apr 2019 – Dead five centuries, Leonardo retains a rock star’s fame, well known around the world by just one name. Here, some facts about the man and his legacy.
→ read full articleMaking Peace: Israel/Palestine
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2019
Interview with Samu Tamás Gergő, a Hungarian journalist, April 9, 2019, on conditions of peace for the Palestine/Israel, with some initial emphasis on my experience as UN Special Rapporteur addressing human rights in Occupied Palestine on behalf of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
→ read full articleWhen You Get to the End of the Road It Is Time to Think Outside the Box
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2019
Thinking outside the box means thinking outside private law and outside the political and ethical philosophies that legitimate what Karl Polanyi called ‘market society’ (market society is a genus of which capitalism is a species). It means acknowledging that traditional Muslims are not stupid, in the light of their life experience, when they prefer Sharia Law. Sharia Law with all its faults is at least a possible way to organize human life including everybody (at least ‘all the faithful’) and respecting nature.
→ read full articleEvolution
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Apr 2019
Two aliens in their spaceship approached earth.
→ read full articleBlood in the Water: How the U.S. and Israel Conspired to Ambush the USS Liberty, by Joan Mellen
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Apr 2019
29 Mar 2019 – The author on the basis of meticulous research probes every detail to establish beyond a shadow of a doubt that the sinking of USS Liberty in the midst of the 1967 War is the greatest moral and political scandal in all of American history. In what was long described as a ‘mistake’ or ‘accident’ Israeli planes and submarines attacked the Liberty, killing 34, wounding 174 American naval personnel.
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The Matrix 20 Years On: How a Sci-Fi Film Tackled Big Philosophical Questions
Richard Colledge – The Conversation,
1 Apr 2019
27 Mar 2019 – Cult film The Matrix was released 20 years ago this month. From the Vedic Scriptures to Plato to Descartes to Kant to Baudrillard, the film explored philosophical dilemmas humanity wrestles with permanently.
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Fukushima at Eight: Ongoing Cover-Up of the Nuclear Hazards in Japan and Abroad
Michael Welch, Dr. Helen Caldicott, and Arnie Gundersen – Global Research,
25 Mar 2019
As of November 2018, 18,434 people are known to have died from the March 11, 2011 earthquake and the follow-up tsunami which struck the nuclear facility. When the generators failed, three units experienced catastrophic meltdowns. Radioactive water has for years now been draining into the Pacific Ocean. Toxic debris spewed into the Earth’s atmosphere. More than 73,000 people remain evacuated and fully 3,600 die from causes like illness and suicide linked to the aftermath of the event.
→ read full articleThomas Piketty vs. Yanis Varoufakis
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Mar 2019
Markets are the primary institution. Governments are secondary. Markets govern governments. Governments do not control markets. The first imperative for any government is to make the economy work for the people. The government can only comply with that imperative by pleasing the markets… This is why the disagreement between Thomas Piketty and Yanis Varoufakis is a splendid educational opportunity to move the conversation to a deeper level, to take to heart the words of Albert Einstein: ‘We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.’
→ read full articleChallenging Pitzer/Haifa Study Abroad Program: Can Civil Society Act?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Mar 2019
22 Mar 2019 – This post is an open letter to the President of Pitzer College urging support for reconsideration of his veto of a resolution urging the college to suspend its study abroad program with the University of Haifa until Israel ends its discriminatory policies in the educational sphere that affect Palestinians and anyone exercising rights of free expression in a manner that Israel disapproves, and more specifically the BDS Campaign.
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Planetary Collapse Threatens Our Survival: A New Study Says That More Than 1,200 Species “Will Almost Certainly Face Extinction”
Michael Snyder |The Economic Collapse – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Mar 2019
14 Mar 2019 – We are witnessing a worldwide environmental collapse, and nobody seems to know how to stop it. A study just released looked at more than 5,000 species of birds, mammals, and amphibians and discovered that nearly a quarter of them “will almost certainly face extinction”. Yet the vast majority of the population doesn’t seem concerned about what is happening. Species after species is being permanently wiped out, and most of us couldn’t care less.
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Vaping Is an Urgent Threat to Public Health
Elliott M. Reichardt and Juliet R. Guichon – The Conversation,
25 Mar 2019
14 Mar 2019 – Youth are using e-cigarettes (also known as vaping devices) at a rapidly increasing rate — a practice that constitutes an urgent threat to public health. The evidence shows that vaping is creating a generation of nicotine-addicted youth, who start with e-cigarettes and move on to smoke tobacco products.
→ read full articleBig Mistake
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Mar 2019
A new young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to help the other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the church by hand.
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Footage Contradicts U.S. Claim That Nicolás Maduro Burned Aid Convoy
Nicholas Casey, Christoph Koettl and Deborah Acosta – The New York Times,
18 Mar 2019
10 Mar 2019 – Top U.S. officials have said Nicolás Maduro’s regime burned an aid convoy last month. But TV footage contradicts that claim and shows how this unverified information spread across Twitter and television.
→ read full articleIlhan Omar, AIPAC, Congress, and the Future of American Democracy
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Mar 2019
The Ilhan Omar Incident: A Zionist Witch Hunt?
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Elizabeth Warren Is Right – We Must Break Up Facebook, Google and Amazon
Robert Reich – The Guardian,
18 Mar 2019
10 Mar 2019 – The presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren announced on Friday [8 Mar] she wants to bust up giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon. The titans of the new Gilded Age must be busted and the idea has bipartisan support. It’s time big tech was brought to heel.
→ read full articleSince You Insist…
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Mar 2019
A woman taught English to immigrants in London.
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15 Years Ago: US Sponsored Coup d’état. The Destabilization of Haiti
Prof Michel Chossudovsky – Global Research,
11 Mar 2019
29 Feb 2019 – Author’s Note: This article was written 15 years ago, in the last days of February 2004 in response to the barrage of disinformation in the mainstream media. It was completed on 29 Feb 2004, the day of President Jean Bertrand Aristide’s kidnapping and deportation by US Forces. The armed insurrection which contributed to unseating President Aristide was the result of a carefully staged military-intelligence operation, involving the US, France and Canada.
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Will 5G Cell Phone Technology Lead to Dramatic Population Reduction as Large Numbers of Men Become Sterile?
Michael Snyder | End of the American Dream – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Mar 2019
3 Mar 2019 – I know that the title of this article is controversial, but the scientific research that has been done in this area inevitably leads us to some conclusions that are inescapable. Our current cell phone technology produces electromagnetic radiation that damages male fertility, and the radiation produced by the new 5G technology will be much more powerful and therefore much more dangerous.
→ read full articleWorrying about Huawei: Is China Winning the G5 Race?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Mar 2019
20 Feb 2019 – My responses to questions posed by Sputnik News Agency a few days ago. The effort to warn European countries not to use equipment from the Chinese telecom giant, Huawei, is part warning and part threat. It claims to be a matter of security, but seems like an effort to avoid the competitive challenge posed by the superior technology of Huawei by claiming a threat to the security of European countries because China will be able to engage in unauthorized data surveillance.
→ read full articleVacationing
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Mar 2019
“How was your vacation in the mountain resort?”
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Peace Journalism in Theory and Practice
Silvia De Michelis | E-IR – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Mar 2019
23 Dec 2018 – Peace journalism, as the name suggests, is a form of journalism committed to exploring root causes of conflict in order to “create opportunities for society at large to consider and value nonviolent responses to conflict.” Its history can be tracked back to 1965, when Johan Galtung and Mari Ruge analysed what makes foreign news newsworthy. Jake Lynch and Johan Galtung further developed the notion of peace journalism and argued that the media (war reporting, in particular) predominantly exhibit biases towards violence and rest on the conceptual belief that ‘conflict’ equals ‘war’.
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The Misuses of Histories and Historiography by the state in Myanmar: The Case of Rakhine and Rohingya
Michael W. Charney | SOAS University of London – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Feb 2019
10 Feb 2019 – I am not a lawyer but a historian so my talk will be a little different than the others we listened to yesterday. While everyone else is looking for solutions, I am not doing that necessarily. Ultimately, some look to find solutions in holding Myanmar to account through international law. That’s what they can do.
→ read full articleIn Bygone Times…
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Feb 2019
In Vienna, everything that is not explicitly forbidden is permitted.
→ read full articleCan We Imagine Peace for Palestine?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Feb 2019
In such a binational situation, the newly created single state could offer homelands to Jews and Palestinians, while finding a name for the new state that is congenial to both peoples. Maybe this will never happen, but it the most sustainable vision of a peaceful future that responds to decades of diplomatic failure, massive Palestinian suffering and abuse, and recognizes the moral authority and political potency of national resistance and global solidarity, a legislative victory by that unacknowledged Parliament of Humanity.
→ read full articleA Response to Heikki Patomaki: Is the Time Right for a World Political Party?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Feb 2019
16 Feb 2019 – My commentary on an essay by Heikki Patomiki, a leading Finnish scholar, where he explores and cautiously advocates a civil society global effort to establish a world political party in a form appropriate to global conditions and with the overriding goal of the enhancement of the individual and collective wellbeing of humanity.
→ read full articleGlobal Cooperation
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Feb 2019
The first advanced civilizations emerged about 6,000 years ago in the Nile, Euphrates and Yellow River valleys when farmers faced problems that they could not solve alone.
→ read full articleProfessional Integrity
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Feb 2019
During the French revolution, a doctor, a lawyer and an engineer were sentenced to be beheaded by the guillotine.
→ read full articleDenouncing Socialism, Practicing Fascism
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Feb 2019
8 Feb 2019 – With Trump the silences are usually as expressive of his intentions as the incoherent dogmas. Indeed, his Second State of the Union Address (delivered in Congress on February 5, 2019) gives a clear insight into the political mentality of tormentor in chief when it comes to the human condition.
→ read full articleEurope is in Danger! But Why?
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Feb 2019
8 Feb 2019 – Now a hue and cry has gone up that Europe is in danger. The continued existence of Europe’s core ideals –of its very essence– is said to be threatened. The occasion of today’s hue and cry is the possibility that the populist far right might sweep the elections of May 2019. I take this opportunity to question what I take to be the conventional wisdom of the official story.
→ read full articleTrump vs. the Anti-Trumps: It’s the System That Needs Changing, Not just the Personnel
Richard E. Rubenstein – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Feb 2019
President Trump’s adversaries do not understand that in making attacks on his character their primary strategy, they are playing his game, in his stadium, according to his rules. By doing so, they reinforce the stereotypes that Trump has successfully marketed to his base. This sort of personalism excludes a discourse that is essential to solving the problems that gave Trump the presidency: the discourse of systems and system-change.
→ read full articleThe Future of Statehood: Israel & Palestine
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Feb 2019
3 Feb 2019 – Fatah, Hamas, the Future of Statehood and Peace Prospects – Interview from Brazilian journalist Rodrigo Craveiro for Correio Braziliense on current prospects of Palestinian national movement.
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Trump’s Brilliant Strategy to Dismember U.S. Dollar Hegemony
Michael Hudson | Unz Review – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Feb 2019
1 Feb 2019 – A must read on US foreign policy: “The end of America’s unchallenged global economic dominance has arrived sooner than expected, thanks to the very same Neocons who gave the world the Iraq, Syria and the dirty wars in Latin America. Where is the left in all this?”
→ read full articleA Talel of Two Speeches: Marc Lamont Hill on Palestine, Martin Luther King, Jr., on Vietnam
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Jan 2019
21 Jan 2019 – In my last post I criticized the news approach of CNN, and by indirection, that of the MSM. I complained that by being Trump-obsessed CNN ever since 2016 helps pacify the American political scene, making us view demagogic politics as nothing more serious than ‘a reality show.’ Beyond the obsession itself, is the inexplicable redundancy in which successive news programs cover the latest episode from virtually identical viewpoints, while ignoring the whole panorama of major developments elsewhere in the world.
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Misunderstanding
Prof. Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Jan 2019
A family with children enjoyed a day at the beach, splashing in the water and building sand castles. Suddenly they saw what looked like an old beggar woman, walking along the beach looking for refuse and putting items in her bag.
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What’s Wrong with CNN?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Jan 2019
16 Jan 2019 – CNN presents itself as the most ‘trusted name in news’ available to the TV viewing public. Of course, this claim of integrity is to be greatly valued if the news channel lives up to such a standard when fairly scrutinized.
→ read full articleWhat Is the Question?
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Jan 2019
“The question is whether finance will promote economic growth and rising living standards or create unproductive credit and use government to enforce creditor claims by imposing austerity and reducing large swathes of the population to debt peonage.” This précis of the pickle that is our prison was written by Michael Hudson but could have been written by Yanis Varoufakis, Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Reich, Bernie Sanders’ advisor Stephanie Kelton, or any of the distinguished scholars which I shall call “the Economists on the side of the Angels.” (EA)
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A Butterfly
Prof. Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Jan 2019
One day a small opening appeared on a cocoon. A man sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole.
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Israel Spraying Herbicides inside Gaza Violates Int’l Law, Rights Groups Say
Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man | +972 Magazine – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Jan 2019
9 Jan 2019 – The Israeli army is continuing to spray dangerous herbicides on agricultural fields inside the Gaza Strip, three years since +972 Magazine first reported on the practice. This week, three Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups sent a letter to Israeli military officials demanding they immediately cease spraying the dangerous chemicals into Gaza.
→ read full articleToward Geopolitical Disengagement: Uncertain yet Desirable
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Jan 2019
13 Jan 2019 – For a region that has endured so much suffering and abuse, I offer fervent wishes that we will be surprised by hopeful developments during coming months. Already the shakeup of regional politics and perceptions due to the Trump withdrawal move is ambiguous in its implications, but seemingly leading in the positive direction of U.S. political disengagement, and an end to the delusions of being ‘a force for good.’
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Palestinian Aspirations versus Zombie Geopolitics
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Jan 2019
8 Jan 2019 – The mental processes that infuse zombie geopolitics with political vitality long after their viability has vanished is partly mysterious, and partly a calculated effort to deny a changed reality. More concretely, I have in mind the afterlife of ‘the two-state solution’ to the long Israel-Palestine confrontation. It retained its status as the only practical solution for years after it became crystal clear to even semi-informed observers that it would never happen.
→ read full articleArt Divine
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Jan 2019
A kindergarten teacher was observing her class while the children drew pictures.
→ read full articleReflections for the New Year: 2019
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Jan 2019
31 Dec 2018 – My private commitment for 2019 is to nurture humility, while trusting the formation of identities that link a progressive vision for our nation to a cosmopolitan embrace of humanity, with a major infusion of empathy. And as citizens, we need to be rooted in our particular personal and public experiences, while reaching out to the world and to the future.
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