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Peace Journalism Perspective

EDITORIAL

A Call to Apply the TRANSCEND Method to the Middle East Conflict

Before the UN Conference on a Nuclear Weapons [WMD] Free Zone in the Middle East

TRANSCEND VIDEOS

Nuclear Weapons as Theological Statements

Johan Galtung on the way forward for nuclear disarmament and sustainable global security.

FEATURED RESEARCH PAPER

Planetary Condominium: The Legal Framework for the Common Home of Humanity

Inspired by the thoughts of Garrett Hardin and Elinor Ostrom the submission proposes to legally recognize the Earth System as Natural Intangible Common Heritage of Humankind and scale-up the legal model of condominiums to the global level: A condominium is an object with a unitary structure and common functional systems, with private rights for determined fractions and, simultaneously, common ownership and governance for common structures and functions. Different legal regimes would be able to coexist. A revived UN Trusteeship Council would be the guardian of the new heritage and others global commons, as well as for addressing global catastrophic risks using the planetary boundaries framework as a guidance system.

NOBEL LAUREATES

Neither Victims nor Executioners

30 Nov 1946 - Yes, we must raise our voices. Up to this point, I have refrained from appealing to emotion. We are being torn apart by a logic of history which we have elaborated in every detail — a net which threatens to strangle us. It is not emotion which can cut through the web of a logic which has gone to irrational lengths, but only reason which can meet logic on its own ground.

Other Commentaries

TRANSCEND MEMBERS

A Short History of the High Costs of Military Air Shows

Part of the process that led many to killing and dying for their nation’s financial elites began with the thrill of experiencing military air shows. America's soldiers, airmen, seamen and marines have been, in reality, working not for the US constitution to which they pledged allegiance, but rather for a whole host of nefarious special interest groups that stopped supporting them when their broken bodies, their broken brains and the body bags came home under cover of darkness.

Venezuela Building Socialism in the Midst of a War: Report from the Left Forum

5 Jul 2019 - The U.S. is currently unilaterally sanctioning not only Venezuela but also some 30 other countries. The increasing danger of major power confrontation and consequently of world war urgently calls for building a unified movement against militarism, because only a peace movement within the U.S. can overcome this war mongering.

Comprehension of Requisite Variety via Rotation of the Complex Plane

15 Jul 2019 - Faced with global crises, it is useful to recall the variants of the well-known insight: There Is Always a Well-Known Solution to Every Human Problem -- Neat, Plausible, and Wrong. How many of the advocated global strategies can be recognized in that light?

Lives in the Peace Movement

I would like to announce the publication of a book describing the lives of some of the people who have contributed importantly to the peace movement. The book can be freely downloaded from the following link: I hope that the lives of these women and men can inspire us as we work together to abolish the institution of war.

Stifling the Amman Message

14 Jul 2019 - In the case of the aborted Amman Message Seminar in Malaysia, since names and identities are known, and as one of the three organisers of the seminar, the International Movement for a Just World (JUST) would like to know what action has been taken against the individual and group that threatened to bomb the venue. The public has a right to know.

150,000,000 More Child-Mothers?

So far, 650 million women alive today were married as children.

Give Peace a Chance: Don’t Believe the War Profiteers

11 Jul 2019 - Last month I had the opportunity to share some thoughts at a Divest Philly from the War Machine event, hosted by Wooden Shoe Books and sponsored by World Beyond War, Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, and other anti-war groups. Below are my remarks, slightly edited for clarity. My thanks to everyone involved.

Fruits for All — Eating, Sharing, Curing

Most countries grow different types of fruits. Cold countries such as Europe, Canada USA and colder parts of other countries grow apples of different shapes, sizes and flavors. These regions also have cherries, plums and other varieties that grow best in relatively cool climates.

Happenings in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave

11 Jul 2019 - The books were published by two old and respected publishing houses: Harper and Little Brown. However, something was odd, for the word fuck was spelled f*ck. These books were about hope, acceptance, and living the good life, cliché topics in a feel-good culture: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Everything is F*cked, and Calm the F*ck Down. It seemed you had to be fucked first before you could accept the hope that the good life was coming your way.

ACTIVISM

Take a Trip to the Digital Library of Nonviolent Resistance

Nonviolence International and IIP have created an open access online collection of training manuals and handbooks from the 1960s onward.

Defining Constructive Resistance

What does it mean when people start to build the society they desire independently of structures of power?

Activists Walk “Cease and Desist” Order into Nuclear Weapons Base in Germany

10 Jul 2019 — News advisory on antinuclear protests that Voices for Creative Nonviolence co-coordinator Brian Terrell is currently attending in Büchel, Germany. Included is the "Treaty Enforcement Order" presented to Büchel Air Base today and a photograph of the eleven activists' entry to the base.

IN FOCUS

Debunking the Indo-Pacific Myth

9 Jul 2019 - The Trump administration is obsessively spinning the concept of a “free and open Indo-Pacific”. Apart from a small coterie of scholars, very few people around the world, especially across the Global South, know what that means. Now everything one needs to know – and especially not know – about the Indo-Pacific is contained in a detailed Pentagon report.

And Ye Shall Inherit the Whirlwind or Learn to Live in Gratitude and Grace (Parts 1 to 3)

We are free to become free. This is the lesson taught by Socrates. It is also the essence of Buddhism. The word “Buddha” means “awake.” Awakening, as Plato would say, is recollecting the sanity we were born with. Nietzsche quotes Pindar: “Become who you are.” We are inextricable strands in the holistic web of being and becoming. Said the poet Byron: “Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part of me and of my soul, as I of them?” John Lennon said: “I am the walrus.”

ANGLO AMERICA

Soros and Koch Funding New ‘Anti-War’ Think Tank— and We Should Probably Be a Little Bit Suspicious

4 Jul 2019 - There’s a new “anti-war” think tank coming to town. It will promote a new US foreign policy — one based on diplomacy instead of sanctions and war. Sounds great, until you hear it's being funded by Soros and Koch.

Most Veterans Say America’s Wars Are a Waste. No One’s Listening to Them.

12 Jul 2019 - There's a widening gap between Washington's bipartisan militarism and veterans' bipartisan war-skepticism.

Trump Is Forcing Iran to Follow North Korea’s Dangerous Example

4 Jul 2019 - With the United States openly gearing up for war with Iran, while actively seeking to empower Saudi Arabia with the technology it needs to develop its own nuclear weapons, is it any wonder that Iran has just announced it will begin amassing and enriching uranium again? Iran had been adhering to the terms of its multilateral nuclear deal, even after Trump pulled the United States out of the agreement.

CIA Torture Unredacted: Revealing What Was Hidden in the US Senate Torture Report

10 Jul 2019 - Masood Anwar, a prominent Pakistani journalist, received an unexpected tip: "There were men in masks. They took a hooded man onboard in the early hours. Someone videotaped the entire thing." Anwar's story would be the start of a thread which led to the heart of the CIA's most secret “War on Terror” operation: the "rendition, detention, interrogation" programme, a nine-year covert effort which had scores of prisoners flown around the globe to be tortured in undisclosed sites.

In Most of America, It’s Saturday – in Tennessee, It’s a Day to Honor the KKK’s First Grand Wizard

13 Jul 2019 – Today is “Nathan Bedford Forrest Day” in Tennessee, according to a proclamation signed by Gov. Bill Lee (R). Forrest, for those who may not know their Civil War history, was a Confederate general who was elected to be the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. He was also a slave trader and perpetrator of the Fort Pillow Massacre of hundreds of black Union troops.

HISTORY

July 16, 1945: First Successful Test of Atomic Bomb

On16 Jul 1945, members of America’s Manhattan Project held their first successful test of the atom bomb in Alamogordo, New Mexico. [A day to live in infamy]

ASIA-UPDATES ON MYANMAR ROHINGYA GENOCIDE

In Myanmar’s Conflict-Torn Rakhine, Fresh Allegations of ‘War Crimes’

12 Jul 2019 - When 35-year-old Ah Hla showed up to a police station in western Myanmar in late April hoping to see her husband among the prisoners, she didn’t know whether he was alive or dead. “I went there with the hope that I am going to see my husband, but he was not there,” said Ah Hla, who had walked to the police station with a group of relatives of the detained men. When she arrived, police told her that her husband of 15 years had hanged himself in his cell, and that his body had already been disposed of.

Bangladesh Can Make Myanmar Pay for Crimes against Rohingya

8 Jul 2019 - Bangladesh simply lacks the resources to cope with the burden of having to shelter and feed 1.2 million Rohingya genocide survivors. It is also unfair to Dhaka to be left to handle a huge refugee burden alone without adequate financial support from the international community. Dhaka should move International Court of Justice to force Myanmar to pay reparations to for hosting victims of genocide.

BRICS

Budget 2019: India’s Super-Rich Peak Tax Rate at 42.7%

5 Jul 2019 - Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced today that individuals earning more than Rs 5 crore [approx. € 630,000 or US$ 740,000] a year would pay a surcharge of 37.5 percent on their tax, over above their 30 percent marginal tax.

EUROPE

EU Sanctions Regime Cannot Be an ‘EU Magnitsky Act’

The name 'Magnitsky Act' was originally used by the Obama administration in 2012 for a sanctions regime limited to human rights violations in Russia... The EU's commitment to human rights, including the human rights of those sanctioned, requires the EU to distinguish its sanctions regime from the US Global Magnitsky sanctions, not just in substance but also in name.

LATIN AMERICA & THE CARIBBEAN

Response to the Report on Venezuela by the High Commissioner of the UN Human Rights Council, Michelle Bachelet

8 Jul 2019 - The International Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity, strongly rejects the Report on Venezuela presented on 4 July by the High Commissioner of the UN Human Rights Council, Michelle Bachelet. The Report lies outrageously about the reality of Venezuela, using the same narrative used over and over again by the U.S. government in condemning and disqualifying the legitimate government of President Nicolas Maduro.

PALESTINE - ISRAEL

US Duty Free Shop Owners Give Millions to Israeli Settlements

1 Jul 2019 - When travelers shop at Duty Free Shops at airports worldwide, they may be paying for more than a bottle of vodka or box of chocolates. The Falic family of Florida, owners of the ubiquitous chain, funds a generous and sometimes controversial philanthropic empire in Israel that runs through the corridors of power and stretches deep into the occupied West Bank. The family supports many far right causes considered extreme even in Israel.

Settlers Seize another Home in Jerusalem

11 Jul 2019 - Israeli soldiers evicted a Palestinian family from their east Jerusalem home and handed it over to settlers yesterday. The police forcefully removed the family from their home after a court dismissed their appeal and ruled in favor of the settler group ending a 25-year-long battle over the property against Elad settlement association.

Religious Fanatics Have Hijacked America’s Israel Policy–and They’re Not Even Evangelicals

8 Jul 2019 - With ten-pound hammers in their hands and ecstatic religious-nationalist zeal in their hearts, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and White House Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt stood underneath the most religiously volatile place on earth, and smashed a wall – and with it, any last semblance of reasonable U.S. policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

R2P-R2K, the Responsibility to Protect and the Right to Know: Reflections on the Question of Palestine

What can R2P mean in a period when the most powerful state in the world is one that violates international law with impunity, as in the decision by the U.S. President on March 25, 2019 to legitimize Israel's control over the Occupied Golan Heights? What, then, does it mean to endorse R2P in Palestine/Gaza in this context? Who has the power to enforce the Responsibility to Protect in an environment defined by Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza?

Remembering the World Court Advisory Opinion on Israel’s Separation Wall after 15 Years

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.

BIG BROTHER - SPYING - SURVEILLANCE - WHISTLEBLOWING

Facial Recognition Tech Is Growing Stronger, Thanks to Your Face

13 Jul 2019 — Dozens of databases of people’s faces are being compiled without their knowledge by companies and researchers, with many of the images then being shared around the world, in what has become a vast ecosystem fueling the spread of facial recognition technology.

ENVIRONMENT

This Dutch City Has Transformed Its Bus Stops into Bee Stops

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

7,000+ Colleges and Universities Declare Climate Emergency and Unveil Three-Point Plan to Combat It

10 Jul 2019 - More than 7,000 colleges and universities across the globe declared a climate emergency today and unveiled a three-point plan to collectively commit to addressing the crisis. "We all need to work together to nurture a habitable planet for future generations and to play our part in building a greener and cleaner future for all."

‘Ghost Nets’: How Lost and Abandoned Fishing Gear Is Destroying Marine Wildlife

12 Jul 2019 - Up to 800,000 tonnes of ghost fishing gear gets into oceans each year. "When a net's lost, it continually fishes — it doesn't stop fishing, and since the animals that are caught aren't being harvested or removed, it baits more animals into the net. The result is an ongoing death trap."

Land Thieves Ramp up Deforestation in Brazil’s Jamanxim National Forest

4 Jul 2019 - Deforestation is rising dramatically in Brazil, with satellite data showing the country's Amazonian region lost more forest in May than during any other month in the past decade.

ENERGY

Why Stimulus Can’t Fix Our Energy Problems

10 Jul 2019 - Economists tell us that within the economy there is a lot of substitutability, and they are correct. However, there are a couple of not-so-minor details that they overlook: There is no substitute for energy. It is possible to harness energy from another source, or to make a particular object run more efficiently, but the laws of physics prevent us from substituting something else for energy.

ECONOMICS

The Problem with “Modern Monetary Theory” Is That It’s True

When a government keeps its affairs in order, and acts as if it does not need to rely on money-printing to get by, it actually gets a small advantage from the money-creation process. But when a government declares, via various silly justifications, that it intends to use the printing press to finance itself, it typically finds that it cannot without a currency breakdown.

CAPITALISM

Owned

8 Jul 2019 - All billionaires want the same thing – a world that works for them. For most, this means a world in which they are scarcely taxed and scarcely regulated, where labour is cheap and the planet can be used as a dustbin, where they can flit between tax havens and secrecy regimes, using the earth’s surface as a speculative gaming board, extracting profits and dumping costs. The world that works for them works against us.

HEALTH

Controlling Deadly Malaria without Chemicals

28 Jun 2019 - Scientists have finally found malaria’s Achilles’ heel, a neurotoxin that isn’t harmful to any living thing except Anopheles mosquitoes that spread malaria.

INSPIRATIONAL

Against Busyness and Surfaces: Emerson on Living with Presence and Authenticity

“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons — the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night.” -- Walt Whitman

SPIRITUALITY

Choosing a Material or Spiritual Lifestyle–or a Balance of Both

Quite often I get questions from young people who may be in college or starting out in their career, regarding the decision of whether they should take up a serious spiritual lifestyle or remain engaged in material pursuits such as education, career, family, etc. Others are worried that their family will not understand or will wonder what will become of them if they become overly spiritual. Or the family may even become overly upset if they show too much spiritual inclination. Let us think this over.

BIOGRAPHIES

Frantz Fanon (20 Jul 1925 – 6 Dec 1961)

Frantz Omar Fanon was a Martinique-born French psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer whose works are influential in the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory, and Marxism. As an intellectual, Fanon was a political radical, and an existentialist humanist concerning the psychopathology of colonization, and the human, social, and cultural consequences of decolonization.

Nelson Mandela (18 Jul 1918 – 5 Dec 2013)

Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa in 1994, serving until 1999. A symbol of global peacemaking, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

POETRY FORMAT

Men

Pity the hollow men who only know how to say No! After creating false gods and phallic weapons in the image of

ORIGINAL LANGUAGES

(Castellano) La mente limitada: por qué el miedo está llevando la humanidad a la extinción

Mi propia preocupación es poner fin a la violencia, evitar la extinción humana y construir de nuevo y de manera sostenible nuestras relaciones con la Tierra y con los demás. ¿Tú que dices?

(Italiano) Verso il bordo della guerra: Provocare l’Iran per che cosa? Per chi?

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.

(Português) Quando John C. Reilly desistiu de filme por ser contra a morte de um burro

Reilly estava participando das filmagens em Trollhättan, na Suécia, quando afirmou que não continuaria na produção ao saber que um burro seria assassinado.

SHORT VIDEO CLIPS

Cows with ‘Portholes’ into Stomach Filmed by Animal Rights Group

20 Jun 2019 - An undercover video released by a French animal rights group showed live cows whose sides have been perforated with a "porthole" into their stomach to study their digestion.

Indian Child Lydian Nadhaswaram Plays the Piano Masterfully (Music Video of the Week)

Word in the streets is that Lydian Nadhaswaram is an incarnation of Chopin… Who am I to judge or contradict? Just enjoy…

EDITORIAL CARTOON / SATIRE

Ring Any Bells? Again?

Lack of Imagination? False Flag? New Axis of Evil? Provocation? Fake News? Déjà-vu all over again? All of the above?

JOKE OF THE WEEK

Astronaut

One of those…