Articles by ICH
We found 2475 results.
Reconciling Ecological Imperatives and the Right to Food at a Time of Bio-Ethical Crisis
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Dec 2019
15 Dec 2019 – Humanity faces an unprecedented challenge in the coming decades that threatens the foundations of life itself, and yet to date societal reactions have been disappointingly weak and evasive, aside from voices in the wilderness. Despite expertly documented studies from the most qualified climate scientists, the overall response of supposedly responsible political and economic elites has been tepid, escapist, and even denialist.
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(Italiano) Pax Gandhiana: La Filosofia Politica del Mahatma Gandhi
Howard Richards | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Dec 2019
In un mondo in cui gli studi prevalenti di pace e politica sono dominati da ciò che passa per realismo e ciò che passa per ordine mondiale, l’emerito studioso di Gandhi Anthony Parel ha derivato da un attento studio delle opera di Gandhi una filosofia politica che promette di essere alla lunga più realistica di quella/e dei cosiddetti realisti.
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Europe Agonistes
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Dec 2019
If America in the late eighteenth century was born against others’ history, Western Europe in the mid-twentieth century succeeded in liberating itself from its own history.
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Learning from Others: Germans and White Supremacists in South USA
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Dec 2019
8 Dec 2019 – Susan Neiman has written a remarkable book, Learning from Others: Race and the Problem of Evil. We are challenged by Neiman not to consider racism or evil as matters of destiny, but fully subject to the vagaries of human responsibility, which includes the domain of a free society.
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Ignorant Good Intentions Lost in Translation
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Dec 2019
During the Iranian hostage crisis, UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim flew to Teheran and announced at a news conference at the airport, “I have come here to mediate a compromise.”
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Inside the Organized Crime Syndicate Known as the CIA
Heidi Boghosian and Michael Steven Smith | CovertAction Magazine – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Dec 2019
21 Nov 2019 – Douglas Valentine is an investigator and author with a rare and tenacious approach toward research. His writing results in uniquely incisive and revealing books on the dark side of U.S. intelligence activities and the National Security State. His latest book draws parallels between CIA operations in Vietnam and recent/current operations in Afghanistan, El Salvador, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.
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Climate Tipping Points — Too Risky to Bet Against
Timothy M. Lenton, Johan Rockström, Owen Gaffney, Stefan Rahmstorf, Katherine Richardson, Will Steffen and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber - Nature Magazine,
9 Dec 2019
27 Nov 2019 – Politicians, economists and natural scientists have tended to assume that tipping points in the Earth system — such as the loss of the Amazon rainforest or the West Antarctic ice sheet — are of low probability and little understood. Yet evidence is mounting that these events could be more likely than was thought, have high impacts and are interconnected across different biophysical systems, potentially committing the world to long-term irreversible changes.
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Health and Human Rights in Gaza: Shame on the World
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Dec 2019
27 Nov 2019 – I take alarmed note of the refusal of the mainstream media to accord attention to the misery so long endured by the people of Gaza. If ever the norm of ‘the responsibility to protect’ was applied according to humanitarian need, Gaza would be at the top of the list, but of course there is no list, and if ever there were one, given the present international atmosphere, Gaza would remain among the unlisted! This neglect of the people of Gaza is so acute as to extend the web of criminal complicity far beyond the borders of Israel.
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Contra Israeli Apartheid
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Dec 2019
1 Dec 2019 – This is a modified version of remarks made at the opening plenary session of the “1st Global Conference on Israeli Apartheid: Dimensions, Repercussions and the Means to Combat It,” 29-30 Nov 2019, Istanbul.
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Gandhi’s Economics: Practical Ethics for Systemic Transformation
Prof. Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Dec 2019
Here the concept of basic cultural structure is used to argue that Gandhi, with deep roots in a different basic cultural structure, is able to offer a deeper and in the end more realistic critique of, and alternative to, neoliberalism than critiques that remain within the basic cultural structure of modernity. Why have moral economies failed to materialize? Is it now too late to prevent inevitable irreparable disastrous ecocide? Is it really true that by practicing the ideals of Gandhi and other great moral exemplars we are contributing to building a peaceful, just and sustainable world?’
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A New Cycle of Gaza/Israel Violence
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Nov 2019
22 Nov 2019 – Whether this latest cycle of violence has ended as of now is difficult to assess, and it should not be confused with the violence at the Gaza Fence as a result of weekly demonstrations of Palestinians in the course of the Great March of Return, a civil society initiative that has continued since March 30, 2018, a remarkable exhibition of sumud on the Palestinian side and of excessive lethal force on the Israel side.
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Pax Gandhiana: The Political Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Nov 2019
In a world where mainstream studies of peace and politics are dominated by what passes for realism and for world order, the distinguished Gandhi scholar Anthony Parel has derived from a close study of Gandhi’s works a political philosophy that promises in the long run to be more realistic than the so-called realists. It rests on a deeper order, an order in the human soul, than the global political and economic order established after World War II whose current disintegration mainstream scholars are now lamenting.
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(Castellano) La Transformación de la Estructura Cultural Básica (ECB): Nada Menos nos Salvará
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Nov 2019
11 Nov 2019 – Chile no es un caso único. También se registran ahora mismo conflictos sociales masivos en Argelia, Bolivia, China, Ecuador, Egipto, Estados Unidos, Francia, Guinea, Haití, Honduras, Hong Kong, Iraq, Kazakstán, Kashmir, Líbano, Mozambique, Nigeria, Pakistán, Rusia, Siria, Sud África, Venezuela, Yemen unos cuantos países más. No hay país donde, aunque sea relativamente tranquilo ahora mismo, no se encuentre germinando las semillas de la rebelión.
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(Castellano) Chile Despertó, pero Chile no Despertó
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Nov 2019
11 Nov 2019 – De lo que he podido constatar, participando en unas manifestaciones en la quinta región, y enterándome por los medios y por las redes sociales de lo que pasa en el resto del país, los manifestantes son principalmente jóvenes, sinceros y comprometidos con el bien común, y sin ninguna intención de hacer mal a nadie. Simplemente quieren una vida digna normal, garantizada en el plano material por una seguridad económica confiable, es decir, no precaria. Otra cosa es la violencia que ha acompañado el despertar.
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Becoming 89
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Nov 2019
— Istanbul, 13 Nov 2019 [From TMS editor: Richard was born on 13 Nov 1930]
→ read full articleThe Basic Cultural Structure: A Comment from Chile as It Burns
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Nov 2019
An immediate payoff for peace is that once one analyses the main causes at work in history as structures, not as people, one should (if one is logical) tone down one’s anger. The world works the way it does because its main dynamics (capital accumulation, war) and other principal dynamics were socially constructed during long centuries when none of our contemporaries had yet been born. Another immediate payoff for peace is guidance on how to do peace-making.
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The War in Syria
Prof. Richard Falk | TRT – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Nov 2019
24 Oct 2019 – Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, Distinguished Research Fellow, UC Santa Barbara, author of 40 books, and a speaker and activist. In 2008, the UN Human Rights Council appointed Falk to a six-year term as a UN Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” His most recent book is Achieving Human Rights (2009).
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Did the West Win the Cold War?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Nov 2019
6 Nov 2019 – It was assumed and almost never challenged that the outcome of the Cold War was a victory for liberal values, human rights, political democracy, economic growth, and certainly world peace. And since democracies supposedly do not go to war against each other, and if Communism was discredited, then democracy would spread naturally and quickly, and the world would become more peaceful and its people better off.
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Casting Doubt: Trusting Whistleblowers More Than International Institutions–Syrian Alleged Chemical Weapons Attack on Douma
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Nov 2019
Courage Foundation Panel Challenges International Finding of Syrian Responsibility for the 2018 Attack on Douma
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The Future of Human Rights: Regressive Trends and Restorative Prospects
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Nov 2019
31 Oct 2019 – The main objective of this essay is to sketch the profound challenges to human rights that arise from a series of interrelated and overlapping developments, and to give some sense that to restore and enhance human rights is a difficult undertaking that now seems almost impossible given the ultra-nationalist outlook of the governments of most leading states. Yet the future is uncertain, and will be influenced by what peoples variously situated choose to do or refrain from doing.
→ read full articleInterpreting Turkey’s Military Operation in Syria
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Oct 2019
18 Oct 2019 – Ever since things started to go badly wrong in Syria after the uprising prompted by the 2011 Arab Spring, the situation has converted the customary fog of war into an impenetrable black box. None of the intervening political actors including Turkey, United States, Iran, Russia, Israel, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia calculated correctly, nor did the various non-state extremist groups associated with al Qaeda and later ISIS, as well as a variety of anti-Damascus Syrian insurgencies.
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Courtroom
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Oct 2019
Taking his seat in his chambers, the judge faced the opposing lawyers.
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Narrative: Whistleblower Denounces Lies, Deceit and Cover-up by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Report on Syria
Courage Foundation & Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Oct 2019
23 Oct 2019 – Panel Criticizes ‘Unacceptable Practices’ in the OPCW’s Investigation of the Alleged Syria Chemical Attack of April 2018 – The Courage Foundation convened a panel of concerned individuals in Brussels on 15 Oct, which met with a member of the investigation. On this basis the panel issued the following statement. [Foreword by Richard Falk]
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In Praise of Kamila Shamsie’s ‘Home Fire’
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Oct 2019
13 Oct 2019 – It took the withdrawal of the Nelly Sachs Prize to make me familiar with the fine literary achievements and compassionate politics of Kamila Shamsie. Selfishly, I cannot thank the Dortmund City Council enough for its outrageous behavior, evidently canceling the award because a right-wing newspaper outed Shamsie as a supporter of the BDS Campaign. I can imagine Shamsie’ feeling of hurt as well as disappointment as this incident unfolded.
→ read full articleThe Climate Crisis (and Other Crises) Require the Transformation of the Basic Cultural Structure of the Modern World (Part 2)
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Oct 2019
This is a revised version of the TMS Editorial with same title published on 14 Oct 2019–to clarify and answer questions from readers.
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The Eurozone in Crisis? New President of the European Central Bank has a Criminal Record. Christine Lagarde
Prof Michel Chossudovsky – Global Research,
21 Oct 2019
14 Oct 2019 – Lagarde was found “guilty” without the enforcement of a one year jail term ordered by the Court: criminals in high office are given special treatment. She was accused of “negligence” rather than “complicity” in a multimillion euro fraud. In a bitter irony, Lagarde was rewarded rather than penalized. Despite her criminal record, she was appointed to lead both the IMF (2011-2019) and the ECB (2019- ).
→ read full articleWhen Is It ‘Politically Correct’ to Be Politically Correct?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Oct 2019
Only a day after I published ‘In Praise of Kamila Shamsie’ [posted in TRANSCEND Members below], the Nobel Committee awarded their 2019 Literature Prize to Peter Handke, the Austrian novelist known for his support of ultra-nationalist behavior and endorsement of the crimes of Serbian leaders during the Bosnian War. By contrast, in Shamsie’s case her sin was to honor her conscience by supporting the nonviolent BDS-Boycott Divestment Sanctions Campaign that seeks an end to the violation of the basic rights of the Palestinian people.
→ read full articleIran’s Gulf Peace Proposal: HOPE
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Oct 2019
7 Oct 2019 – As I understand President Hassan Rouhani’s plan it concentrates upon regionalizing the protection of navigation and safeguarding of energy flows in the Persian Gulf with a particular emphasis on providing security for oil tanker traffic. The proposal comes against a background of months of warmongering threats, harsh sanctions, and dangerous incidents that pose unacceptable risks of provoking violent incidents, and even war.
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Ecuador under President Neo-coño Moreno: The IMF’s Deadly “Economic Medicine”, the Weaponization of Neoliberal Reforms
Prof. Michel Chossudovsky – Global Research,
14 Oct 2019
12 Oct 2019 – A popular insurrection is unfolding against the adoption of sweeping IMF reforms imposed by the government of President Lenin Moreno, aka Neocon Moreno. In March 2019, a 4.2 billion dollar IMF loan was granted to Ecuador: payment for Julian Assange’s arrest.
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Why We Need Resistance Studies
Richard Jackson | Waging Nonviolence – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Oct 2019
5 Oct 2019 – The challenges we face are daunting. That’s why we need Resistance Studies now more than ever. This could be the Golden Age for the study of resistance. For starters, we are going to need a great deal of nonviolent resistance to cope with the coming climate warming crisis.
→ read full articleThe Kurdish-Turkish Crisis
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Oct 2019
12 Oct 2019 – Here we are again: a major series of events in the Middle East accompanied by thin and misleading MSM coverage. It is the background, context and interpretation of implications that are distorted and prejudiced; also, spiked with a drizzle of lies. Par for the course.
→ read full articleThe Climate Crisis (and Other Crises) Require the Transformation of the Basic Cultural Structure of the Modern World (Part 1)
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Oct 2019
It is in the news that millions of people around the world –inspired by a Swedish teenager so honest that looking at a picture of her will cure a headache—have taken to the streets demanding that something must be done. I will use this editorial to offer an answer to the question what must be done: The basic cultural structures of the modern world must be transformed. I will not try to prove this thesis here. I will try to state clearly the thesis to be proven.
→ read full articleWill Confronting Iran Lead to War or Peace?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Oct 2019
1 Oct 2019 – This is a slightly modified version of an interview published in The Nation on 25 Sep following the 14 Sep attack on Saudi oil facilities. It follows a pattern, with respect to Iran, of accusations, denials, and public uncertainties. This combination of elements, given the leadership in Washington and Tehran, one blustering, the other inflexible, can easily produce an unintended stumble into war.
→ read full article(Castellano) Eventos actuales en una perspectiva histórica
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Oct 2019
Pretoria: Cyril Ramaphosa, anteriormente presidente de la Unión Nacional de Mineros, y ahora presidente de la República de Sudáfrica, ha estado hablando recientemente mientras dormía: “no entiendo lo que me pasó. No entiendo lo que me pasó. No entiendo lo que me pasó”. Un ratón, que se abrió paso debajo de sus mantas y estaba en condiciones de morder uno de sus dedos de los pies, al escuchar sus gemidos, como el Daily Maverick y el Globe and Mail, y aparentemente por razones similares, decidió no atacar.
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Work Partnership
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Oct 2019
Rufus Jones (1863-1948), the American Quaker who helped found the American Friends Service Committee in 1917, went to England after World War I to help with the reconstruction.
→ read full articleDark Clouds and the Human Condition: Youth to the Rescue!
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Sep 2019
25 Sep 2019 – If the young and old act together this kind of UN can be nurtured. In the meantime, we should resist the temptation to pretend that this UN of the peoples already exists, but we should never forget that we have it within our potential collective power to make it happen, and by doing, to make the sort of difference that youth are rightfully demanding.
→ read full articleRisk-Taking
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Sep 2019
Never be afraid to try something new.
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The Origins of European Unification
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Sep 2019
After World War II, the French economist and diplomat Jean Monnet thought that the best way to end the century old hostility between Germany and France was to tie the two countries together in some mutually beneficial economic venture.
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Chained to Its Past: A German Recipe for Injustice toward the People of Palestine
Hans von Sponeck and Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Sep 2019
17 Sep 2019 – The Bundestag resolution that condemned the BDS Campaign as contributing to a rising threat of antisemitism in Europe is a grave cause of concern. It brands the BDS, a nonviolent Palestinian initiative, anti-Semitic and takes this stand pointing out Germany’s special responsibility toward Jews, without any reference at all to Israel’s prolonged abuse of the most fundamental of human rights, that of self-determination, of the Palestinian people.
→ read full articleCurrent Events in an Historical Perspective
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Sep 2019
To rebuild the world, to build a world that works, we do not need ‘other economists’ as much as we need people trained in other fields who are able to look at problems now classified as ‘economic’–like ‘unemployment’–from other perspectives using different conceptual and mathematical tools.
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A Lake without Fish
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Sep 2019
Someone flew in a seaplane over a lake and saw two people fishing down there.
→ read full articleRight!
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Sep 2019
Sunday school teacher: “What do we have to do so that our sins can be forgiven?”
→ read full articleDonald 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.
→ read full articleBy the way…
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Sep 2019
A little girl comes running and says, “Father, my toothbrush fell into the toilet!”
→ read full articleBurning 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.
→ read full articleContext 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.’
→ read full articleGeopolitical 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).
→ read full articleRequired 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.
→ read full articleToward 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.
→ read full article
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?
→ read full articleAn 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.
→ read full articleThe 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.
→ read full articleThe 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.
→ read full article(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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