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Ten Worst Acts of the Nuclear Age
David Krieger | Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jul 2016

The ten worst acts of the Nuclear Age described below have set the tone for our time. They have caused immense death and suffering; been tremendously expensive; have encouraged nuclear proliferation; have opened the door to nuclear terrorism, nuclear accidents and nuclear war; and are leading the world back into a second Cold War.

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(Português) Como o vegetarianismo entrou na vida de Franz Kafka
David Arioch | Jornalismo Cultural - TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jun 2016

Um dos escritores mais influentes do século 20, o tcheco Franz Kafka, famoso por clássicos intrapessoais como A Metamorfose, O Processo e Um Artista da Fome, é um exemplo de ser humano que, contrariando todas as expectativas, se tornou vegetariano ainda na juventude. “Agora eu posso olhar para vocês e me sentir em paz”, disse aos peixes no aquário.

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No Big Bang? Quantum Equation Predicts Universe Has No Beginning
Lisa Zyga | Physics – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jun 2016

The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once.

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(Português) Cientistas europeus descobrem anticorpos que atacam vírus Zika
Nuno Noronha | Sapo – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jun 2016

Cientistas europeus anunciaram esta quinta-feira[23 Jun] a descoberta de anticorpos que atacam o Zika, um passo que pode permitir o desenvolvimento de uma vacina contra o vírus que causa lesões cerebrais em fetos e distúrbios neurológicos em adultos.

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TransCanada Files NAFTA Suit Demanding More Than $15 Billion for Keystone XL Rejection
Michael Brune | EcoWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jun 2016

On Jun 24 2016, foreign oil company TransCanada filed a lawsuit against the U.S. under NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, arguing that the U.S. rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline violated NAFTA’s broad rights for foreign investors by thwarting the company’s “expectations.” As compensation, TransCanada is demanding more than $15 billion from U.S. taxpayers.

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America Trashes NATO Founding Act; Rushes Weapons to Russia’s Borders
Eric Zuesse | Strategic Culture Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jun 2016

The NATO Founding Act was agreed to between the U.S. and Russia in 1997 in order to provide to Russia’s leader Boris Yeltsin some modicum of assurance that America wouldn’t invade his country. When his predecessor Mikhail Gorbachev had ended the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact military alliance in 1991, the representatives of U.S. President GHW Bush told him that NATO wouldn’t move “one inch to the east.”

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Motivation
Prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jun 2016

We in Palestine do not have too many answers since most of our people are still at that subsistence level. It is irritating to see the elites (including Palestinian and Israelis) who have their basic needs met refuse to rise to higher levels and get motivated to do something different to make this a better world. At least they should/could follow Howard Zinn’s advice and get off the train (His book “you can’t be neutral on a moving train”).

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The Science of How Our Minds and Our Bodies Converge in the Healing of Trauma
Maria Popova | Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jun 2016

“When our senses become muffled, we no longer feel fully alive… If you have a comfortable connection with your inner sensations … you will feel in charge of your body, your feelings, and your self.”

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Prof. Haunani Kay Trask: Hawai’ian Islands Stolen from Hawai’ians by the USA
Antonio C. S. Rosa | Editor – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jun 2016

May 29, 2016 – “You caller, need to learn about Hawai’ian history and about where you are.” Haunani-Kay Trask was featured on an episode of Island Issues discussing racism in Hawai’i. Here she responds to one of many “woefully ignorant” callers.

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Helen Keller: Socialist, Pacifist, Women’s & Workers’ Rights Advocate
Rivera Sun | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jun 2016

Helen Keller is one of the most beloved figures in American history. Few people, however, remember her as a socialist, pacifist, and activist. Wikipedia reports, “A prolific author, Keller was well-traveled and outspoken in her convictions. A member of the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, she campaigned for women’s suffrage, labor rights, socialism, and other similar causes.”

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Orlando Killings, Guns & War
James ‘Jim’ Albertini | Malu 'Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jun 2016

Like any addict, be it an addiction to alcohol, drugs, violence, video games, consumerism, etc. it is hard for an addict to admit the addiction. The U.S. is a nation addicted to violence — guns, war, and global domination. Isn’t it time to stop the killing both at home and abroad? The U.S. needs a 12-step program to recovery; to help build a world with liberty, justice, and peace for all.

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Participatory Economics and the Next System
Robin Hahnel | The Next System Project – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jun 2016

Only when a majority are sufficiently disgusted by capitalism and confident that workers and consumers can manage and coordinate their own economic affairs will it be possible to leave capitalism in the dustbin of history where it belongs.

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(Français) Russie et Chine, un couple solide face à la contre-attaque de l’empire
Philippe Stroot | Investig’Action – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jun 2016

22 Juin 2016 – Face à l’expansion sans limite de l’OTAN qui se rapproche sans cesse de ses frontières, à la campagne de dénigrement systématique de Vladimir Poutine dans les médias occidentaux ainsi qu’à une hystérie antirusse sans équivalent même à l’époque de la guerre froide et qui n’a pratiquement plus rien d’idéologique, la Russie cherche et trouve d’autres partenaires à l’Est et au Sud.

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Genocide Scholars Pull Out of Israel Conference
Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jun 2016

25 Jun 2016 – The vice-president of the International Network of Genocide Scholars, Univ. of Cape Town Prof. Mohamed Adhikari, has pulled out of the group’s conference at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. British genocide scholar Martin Shaw also announced he is pulling out. South Africa’s Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation also withdrew citing concerns about Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights.

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The War on Weed Is Winding Down – But Will Monsanto Be the Winner?
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jun 2016

The war on cannabis that began in the 1930s seems to be coming to an end. Research shows that this natural plant, rather than posing a deadly danger to health, has a wide range of therapeutic benefits. But skeptics question the sudden push for legalization, which is largely funded by wealthy investors linked to Big Ag and Big Pharma.

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The End of M.A.D. — The Beginning of Madness
Eric Zuesse | The Saker – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

Mutually Assured Destruction, or M.A.D., isn’t only a reality in a nuclearly armed multipolar world, but it is also a mass-psychology, of belief that there cannot be any winner of a nuclear war. But the concept that we are all in this together is gone in the West. If it doesn’t exist in both the West and the ‘East’ (namely, in Russia, where it does exist), then a nuclear war is extremely likely, and the real question is: When will it be likeliest to happen?

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(Português) Touradas em Portugal
Cláudia Vantacich | RiseUp Portugal – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

Reportagem espectacular sobre touradas. Todos os argumentos, todos os factos, todas as razões num brilhante trabalho.

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Bridges, Not Walls, Foster Peace and Security as Refugees Arrive
Jeff Pugh | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

Calls for the exclusion of refugees ignore basic principles of human dignity while undermining the goal of keeping citizens safe. Extremists have used video clips of U.S. politicians’ xenophobic rhetoric as a recruiting tool, trying to convince Muslims that the United States will never welcome them, and that violence is the only way to deal with Westerners.

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Enjoy These 10 Detox Water Recipes All Year Long!
Dr. Edward Group | Global Healing Center – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

Detox water is basically water infused with fruits, vegetables, and/or herbs. Sometimes called infused water, many people use it as part of a body detox strategy. I know many people who don’t enjoy drinking water. Some say it’s tasteless and dull. That’s what makes detox water so excellent. It adds flavor to plain water while also infusing key, beneficial nutrients.

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Undeterred: Amid Terror Attacks in Europe, US H-bombs Still Deployed There
John LaForge | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

A little more than 60 miles from Brussels airport, Kleine Brogel Air Base is one of six European sites where the United States still stores active nuclear weapons; these bombs “evade public attention to the extent that a post-terror attack nuclear scare in Belgium can occur without the bombs even being mentioned.” Today, only 180 — out of more than 7000 US nukes once deployed in Europe — are still kept at the ready: in Belgium, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, and Turkey. Soviet nuclear weapons have even been removed from Eastern Europe.

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Brazil’s Interim President Temer Named in Petrobras Kickback Scandal
Bill Van Auken | WSWS – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

With the surfacing Wednesday [15 Jun] of charges that Brazil’s interim president, Michel Temer, solicited bribes in return for contracts with the state-run oil conglomerate Petrobras, the right-wing regime installed through the drive to impeach Workers Party (PT) President Dilma Rousseff has been thrown into deeper crisis.

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Legalized Tyranny: India’s Armed Forces Special Powers Act
Hasnat Sheikh | Dissident Voice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

12 Jun 2016 – Thousands of extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, mass graves and recurrent incidents of violence brushed under the carpet away from plain sight. Under the power of the world’s largest democracy, an organized system of institutionalized violence has evolved, specifically in the occupied territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

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Why Go to Russia?
Kathy Kelly | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

“Prior to the Wall’s removal, President Reagan assured Secretary General Gorbachev that if he would support bringing down the Wall separating East and West Berlin, NATO would not move ‘a finger’s width’ closer to Russia than East Germany’s border. With this assurance Gorbachev gladly signed on. Little could he or the world have guessed that this promise would soon be broken during the next administration – and that the redeveloping distrust between the countries would threaten to become a second Cold War, due to NATO’s expansion up to Russia’s borders.”

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It’s Time for Transparency in the US Lethal Drone Program
Rachel Stohl | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

Civilian casualties have raised a number of legal and ethical questions regarding use of this technology, particularly outside of active combat zones. Central to this debate is the secrecy surrounding the US lethal drone program, including a lack of official information on casualty figures and accountability for mistakes.

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Message to the Wall
David Krieger | Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

Dear Wall,
Your polished surface deceives.
You appear serene, yet you are bursting with anguish and lost potential.

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Mass Karma
Robert C. Koehler | Common Wonders – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

On the battlefield you are supposed to try to kill a person whom you’ve never met before. You are shooting because he is wearing the enemy uniform. Under official circumstances, we glorify this sort of behavior. And this glory permeates the American social structure, creating a sort of standing permission for every troubled individual — every potential army of one — to wage war against a self-perceived wrong.

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Pathways of Transition to Agroecological Food Systems
Adam Parsons | Share the World’s Resources – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

A new report by leading sustainability experts has reaffirmed the case for a paradigm shift from industrial agriculture to diversified agroecological systems – fundamental to which is a call for redistributing power back into the hands of those who feed the world.

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Queerness and the Next System: Opening Up the Discussion on Homosexuality
Erik Lampmann | The Next System Project – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

12 Jun 2016 – For centuries, the erasure of LGBTQ people from public policy has been the norm. Trapped within the confines of our closets by regimes of sexual and gender conformity enforced by brutal violence, sterilization, and incarceration, LGBTQ people have long been denied formal political agency, legal recognition, and the ability to live as our full, authentic selves. It can be tempting to forget that, even in 2016, a presupposition of heterosexuality remains an integral component of the cultural firmament.

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UN Security Council Agrees to Military Intervention off Libyan Coast
Marianne Arens | WSWS – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

20 Jun 2016 – Last week, the UN Security Council in New York adopted unanimously a resolution which empowered European member states to search all ships off the Libyan coast for weapons and munitions. With the passage of this resolution, a new war in Libya draws ever closer.

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Can Suu Kyi Bring Change for Myanmar Expats?
The Nation | Editorial – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

14 Jun 2016 – Aung San Suu Kyi’s stated readiness to discuss migrant issues with her counterparts here when she visits Thailand next week as state counsellor and foreign minister of Myanmar is welcome news. Optimism must be tempered, however, unless she arrives with a comprehensive plan covering not just migrant labourers but also refugees – and the benighted Rohingya in particular.

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[Nobel Peace Laureate] Dalai Lama Urges Myanmar’s [Nobel Peace Laureate] Suu Kyi to Ease Rohingya Tensions
David Brunnstrom | Reuters – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jun 2016

Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has a moral responsibility to try to ease tensions between majority Buddhists and minority Rohingya Muslims, her fellow Nobel laureate, the Dalai Lama, said on Monday [13 Jun]. “She already has the Nobel Peace Prize, a Nobel Laureate, so morally she should … make efforts to reduce this tension,” he told Reuters in an interview in Washington.

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NATO Allies Launch Large-Scale Military Exercise in Poland before Key Summit
Wiktor Szary | Reuters – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jun 2016

6 Jun 2016 – A large-scale military training exercise involving more than 20 NATO and partner countries kicked off in Poland on Monday [6 Jun], part of efforts to reassure east European nations rattled by Russia’s actions in nearby Ukraine.

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No Recognition of ‘One Humanity’ at the World Humanitarian Forum
Rajesh Makwana | Share the World’s Resources – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jun 2016

In light of the overwhelming moral imperative to share planetary resources more equitably and protect the lives of those facing humanitarian emergencies, the World Humanitarian Summit is yet another reminder of the huge gulf between government priorities and the desperate reality of the world situation.

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Morocco Continues Occupation of Western Sahara, in Defiance of UN
Stephen Zunes | National Catholic Reporter – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jun 2016

6 Jun 2016 – As Morocco continues to defy the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and much of the international community in its continued occupation of Western Sahara, the United States continues supporting that autocratic government. Morocco has illegally occupied the former Spanish colony for more than 40 years.

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Dorothy Day Refuses to Duck-And-Cover
Rivera Sun | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jun 2016

On June 15th, 1955, Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day joined a group of pacifists in refusing to participate in the civilian defense drills scheduled on that day. In this particular case, Operation Alert was a nationwide, mandated, legally enforced drill.

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Muhammad Ali Has Passed the Torch of Justice and Peace to Us
James Albertini | Malu ‘Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jun 2016

Muhammad Ali, who died June 3, 2016 at the age of 74, courageously took a stand against the Vietnam War risking years in prison and giving up millions of dollars in income for principles of peace and justice. He refused to be drafted to fight in Vietnam and was given the maximum sentence of 5 years in prison, stripped of his world heavyweight boxing title, and banned from boxing for nearly 4 years in the prime of his life.

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A Tree for the Victims
David Krieger | Global Poetry – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jun 2016

As far away as London, there is a solid tree,
a stately tree, I would say, casting a broad shadow
on a cool green lawn.

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(Français) Amérique Latine: le rôle des médias et des journalistes dans la restauration conservatrice
Cartagena J.C & Briatte Nadine | Investig’Action – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jun 2016

L’actuelle offensive réactionnaire en Amérique Latine a été préparée par des campagnes de presse qui perdurent, en vue de désinformer la population et discréditer les gouvernements que l’orthodoxie néolibérale, composée de l’empire américain, de ses larbins locaux et de ses alliés occidentaux, met à l’index.

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How the Media Spins Today’s South Africa
Hanief Haider | The BRICS Post – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jun 2016

Why certain sections of SA media are more inclined toward foreign capital than Black economic empowerment?

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Building Trust in Afghanistan
Kathy Kelly | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jun 2016

2 Jun 2016 – Here in Kabul, I read a recent BBC op-ed by Ahmed Rashid, urging a “diplomatic offensive” to build or repair relationships with the varied groups representing armed extremism in Afghanistan. Rashid has insisted, for years, that severe mistrust makes it almost impossible for such groups to negotiate an end to Afghanistan’s nightmare of war.

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This Month in Nuclear Threat History
Jeffrey W. Mason | Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jun 2016

June 23, 1942 – The first nuclear weapons-related accident occurred on this date in the city of Leipzig, Germany involving Nazi atomic scientists Werner Heisenberg and Robert Doepel. While demonstrating Germany’s first neutron propagation experiment, workers checked the atomic pile for a heavy water leak. During the inspection, air leaked in igniting the uranium powder inside.

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Glyphosate Found in Urine of 93 Percent of Americans Tested
Organic Consumers Association | EcoWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jun 2016

29 May 2016 – Glyphosate, labeled a “probable human carcinogen” by the World Health Organization’s cancer agency IARC in 2015, has now been revealed to be ubiquitous in the first ever comprehensive and validated LC/MS/MS testing project to be carried out across America.

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Who Says Nothing Is Made in the USA Anymore? America Excels in Business of Death
JP Sottile | theAntiMedia – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jun 2016

Next Time Someone Says Nothing Is Made in the USA Anymore, Show Them This – America may lag behind the developed world in many categories, but it is No. 1 in the ‘merchant of death’ business, experiencing a boom in the commerce of boom, especially in areas destabilized by U.S. invasions.

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Austria Elects a New Green President against the Rising Right
Rene Wadlow | Toward Freedom – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jun 2016

There was a sense of relief among Europeans when it was announced that Alexander Van der Bellen won the election for President of Austria over his far right-wing opponent Norbert Hofer. Austria was split: 50.3% for Van der Bellen, leader of the Green Party and an active ecologist, and 49.7% for Hofer. The vote was also a rural-urban split that also reflected educational levels as well as a generation gap.

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El Niño and the Acceleration of Global Warming
Matthew MacEgan | WSWS – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jun 2016

1 June 2016 – New temperature records have been set in the early months of 2016, according to data compiled by NASA. A driver behind what one researcher referred to as “extraordinary” temperatures has been the presence of an abnormally long El Niño. At the same time, research over the last several years has shown how El Niño and its cool-water counterpart, La Niña, have been affected and made more extreme by human-induced climate change.

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Let Them Drown: The Violence of Othering in a Warming World
Naomi Klein | London Review of Books – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jun 2016

All you morons vomiting your xenophobia … about how money should only be spent ‘on our own’ need to look at yourselves closely in the mirror. I request you ask yourselves a very important question … Am I a decent and honourable human being? Because home isn’t just the UK, home is everywhere on this planet. I think that makes for a very fine last word.

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Peace Jobs – A Student’s Guide to Starting a Career Working for Peace
David J. Smith | George Mason University – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jun 2016

This book is a guide for college students exploring career options who are interested in working to promote peacebuilding and the resolution of conflict. High school students, particularly those starting to consider college and careers, can also benefited from this book. A major feature of the book is 30 stories from young professionals, most recently graduated from college, who are working in the field.

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Johan Galtung: The World beyond Global Disorder
World Public Forum | Dialogue of Civilizations – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jun 2016

Johan Galtung, a professor of peace studies, dr hc mult, is founder of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment and rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University-TPU. He has published 164 books on peace and related issues, of which 41 have been translated into 35 languages, for a total of 135 book translations, including ‘50 Years-100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives,’ published by the TRANSCEND University Press-TUP.

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Taiwan Recalls Quaker Oats Products Imported from US after Detecting Glyphosate
Lorraine Chow | EcoWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 May 2016

29 May 2016 – More bad news for Quaker Oats. A random inspection from Taiwan’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) detected glyphosate in 10 out of 36 oatmeal products it tested, exceeding the country’s legal limit.

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Google Wipes Palestine Off the Map
Kevin Barrett | Veterans Today – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 May 2016

After Googling around, I have discovered that when you ask what time it is in any country on earth, Google tells you – right there in that prominently-placed box above the search results. Except Palestine. Google is apparently part of the Zionist entity dedicated to wiping Palestine off the map. The only “Palestine” Google knows is a town in Texas.

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Putin Vows Retaliation over US Missile Shield; Warns Poland, Romania Now in the “Cross Hairs”
Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 May 2016

28 May 2016 – While Obama was in Hiroshima as the first standing president of the only nation to have ever used a nuclear weapon during wartime, and without offering an apology to Japan, Russian president Putin was in Greece. The Greek people have turned increasingly against remaining in the Eurogroup, a shift Putin certainly hopes to capitalize on. But it wasn’t the latest Greek pivot toward Russia that was the highlight of Putin’s trip: it was his latest warning that the Russian response to the most recent NATO provocation in Europe will be significant.

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Bayer and Monsanto: A Marriage Made in Hell
Martha Rosenberg and Ronnie Cummins | Organic Consumers Association – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 May 2016

24 May 2016 – If Monsanto, the most hated GMO company in the world, joins hands with Bayer, one of the most hated Big Pharma corporations on Earth (whose evil deeds date back to World War I and the Nazi era), the newly formed seed-pesticide-drug behemoth would have combined annual sales of $67 billion.

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(Italiano) Quando la Siria ospitava i rifugiati europei
Evan Taparata e Kuang Keng Kuek Ser | PRI – Frontiere News, 30 May 2016

Nei primi anni ’40, Aleppo (così come Nuseirat in Palestina e diverse località in Egitto) ha accolto migliaia di europei in fuga dagli orrori e dalle tragedie della seconda guerra mondiale.

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BDS Is Free Speech, Says Dutch Government
Michael Deas | The Electronic Intifada – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 May 2016

25 May 2016 – The Netherlands has affirmed that activism calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel is a form of free speech. Dutch foreign minister Bert Koenders said that “statements or meetings concerning BDS are protected by freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, as enshrined in the Dutch constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.”

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Famed Feminist British Historian Refuses Prestigious Israeli Award
Haggai Matar | +972 Magazine – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 May 2016

Catherine Hall withdraws from $330,000 prize due to Tel Aviv University’s complicity in the occupation of Palestine.

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Hammering for Peace
Kathy Kelly | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 May 2016

Their artistic project embraces a vision from the biblical “Book of Isaiah” which longs for the day when “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they study war anymore.” Our friends quite literally enact this vision.

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Major Police Operation against Roma in Berlin
Andy Niklaus and Karola Kleinert | WSWS – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 May 2016

On Sunday [22 May] evening, the Berlin police conducted a brutal raid on Roma families protesting against their deportation at the memorial to the Sinti and Roma murdered by the Nazis. On April 8, a commemorative day for the murdered Sinti and Roma took place at the same place. German President Joachim Gauck along with other prominent politicians proclaimed their solidarity with Sinti and Roma. The deployment of police against a peaceful Roma protest at the same location demonstrate how hollow such words are.

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Ireland Latest EU State to Defend BDS
Kevin Squires | The Electronic Intifada – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 May 2016

28 May 2016 – In another blow to the Israeli campaign to criminalize Palestine solidarity activism, the Irish government has affirmed that the global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement represents a “legitimate” means of protest “intended to pressure Israel into ending the occupation.”

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Deepening National Antagonisms Dominate G7 Summit
Nick Beams | WSWS – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 May 2016

The G7 nations are seeking to ramp up military pressure against China, amid a deepening economic slump and divisions within their own ranks.

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Toward Democratic Eco-socialism as the Next World System
Hans A. Baer | The Next System Project – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 May 2016

Hans Baer proposes a new approach to what he calls “authentic socialism.” As opposed to past experiments with socialism – associated with sudden revolutions, violence, and adverse economic contexts – democratic eco-socialism in his vision would emerge slowly through a series of “system challenging reforms” and pressures from social movements.

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How Leo Tolstoy Found His Purpose: The Beloved Author on Personal Growth and the Meaning of Human Existence
Maria Popova | Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 May 2016

So I too shall be safe in taking for the aim of my existence a conscious striving for the universal development of everything existent. I should be the unhappiest of mortals if I could not find a purpose for my life, and a purpose at once universal and useful… Wherefore henceforth all my life must be a constant, active striving for that one purpose.

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Commoning as a Transformative Social Paradigm
David Bollier | The Next System Project – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 May 2016

In facing up to the many profound crises of our time, we face a conundrum that has no easy resolution: how are we to imagine and build a radically different system while living within the constraints of an incumbent system that aggressively resists transformational change? Our challenge is not just articulating attractive alternatives, but identifying credible strategies for actualizing them. I believe the commons—at once a paradigm, a discourse, an ethic, and a set of social practices—holds great promise in transcending this conundrum.

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How Much It Sucks to Be a Sri Lankan Worker Making Beyoncé’s New Clothing Line
Sirin Kale | Vice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 May 2016

According to a newspaper investigation, the sweatshop workers making the Ivy Park collection for Topshop are only making 64 cents an hour. We ask an expert on the Sri Lankan clothes industry just how bad the situation really is.

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A Brief History of the ‘Nakba’ in Israel
Eitan Bronstein Aparicio | Mondoweiss – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 May 2016

This text describes the discourse on the Nakba — mostly the concept but also the historical event — in Israel. When did it appear? When did it decline and was repressed? What caused these changes? It deals with the attitude towards the Nakba in Hebrew and does not attempt to describe the attitudes and changes it went through in Arabic and in the Arab world.

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How Big Pharma Uses Charity Programs to Cover for Drug Price Hikes
Benjamin Elgin and Robert Langreth | Bloomberg – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 May 2016

A billion-dollar system in which charitable giving is profitable.

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(Français) Les “hotspots”, une négation de l’humanité aux portes de l’Europe
Selma Benkhelifa | Investig’Action – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 May 2016

Depuis janvier, un hotspot défigure le petit port de pêche de la ville. Un hotspot c’est – en théorie- une « approche européenne améliorant le procédé servant à identifier, enregistrer et prendre les empreintes digitales des migrants arrivant en Europe. » Une sorte de centre de tri entre les bons et les mauvais réfugiés, ceux qui seront autorisés à pénétrer en Europe et ceux qui seront refoulés vers l’Afrique.

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(Italiano) Una critica amichevole alle azioni per il clima
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. | Centro Studi Sereno Regis - TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 May 2016

Ma le mie considerazioni, amichevolmente critiche, sono rivolte agli organizzatori principali, che hanno progettato quelle azioni nonviolente senza capire in che modo la dedizione e il coraggio delle persone che sono state coinvolte potessero avere il massimo impatto possibile.

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Will One of the World’s Most Endangered Whales Be Saved Before It’s Too Late?
Alicia Graef | Care2, EcoWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 May 2016

13 May 2016 – Conservationists took legal action this week to get protection for one of the most endangered species of whales on Earth. At the time of their discovery, the best estimate of their population put their number at fewer than 50 individuals, which raised concerns that they are one of the most endangered whales on earth who will likely disappear entirely without intervention.

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USA, Stop Threatening Russia & the World! Prevent Nuclear War!
James Albertini | Malu ‘Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 May 2016

Russia has two bases in the Middle East and a handful in Central Asia. The U.S. has 662 bases around the world and Special Forces deployed in between 70 and 90 countries at any moment. Last year SOFs were active in 147 countries. The U.S. is actively engaged in five wars and is considering a sixth in Libya. Russian military spending will fall next year, and the U.S. will out-spend Moscow by a factor of 10. Who in this comparison looks threatening?

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Campaign for the Removal of the EU Sanctions on Syria
Marinella Correggia | Italian Committee for the End of the UE Sanctions on Syria – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 May 2016

The renewal of the shameful European Union sanctions against the war-torn Syria is going to be discussed at the end of May by the European Council, as every year since 2011. Note: In 2012, the sanctions were removed from the opposition/armed jihadists-controlled areas (including the now Daesh/ISIS-controlled areas!). The link to the online petition:

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What Race Were the Greeks and Romans? The Evidence Is Clear — but Often Ignored
John Harrison Sims | American Renaissance – Unz Review, 23 May 2016

The Encyclopædia Britannica published in 1911, “Survival of fair hair and complexion and light eyes among the upper classes in Thebes and some other localities shows that the blond type of mankind which is characteristic of north-western Europe had already penetrated into Greek lands before classical times.” It added that the early Greeks, or Hellenes, were Nordic, one of “the fair-haired tribes of upper Europe known to the ancients as Keltoi.” Sixty years ago even Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher and socialist, believed that the Hellenes “were fair-haired invaders from the North, who brought the Greek language with them.”

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North Korea, Following China and India, Pledges No-First-Use of Nuclear Weapons. So Could Obama
John LaForge | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

15 May 2016 – North Korea’s May 7 declaration that it would not be first to use nuclear weapons was met with official derision instead of relief and applause. Not one report of the announcement I could find noted that the United States has never made such a no-first-use pledge. None of three dozen news accounts even mentioned that North Korea hasn’t got one usable nuclear warhead.

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(Français) Amérique Latine: Fin d’un cycle ou épuisement du post-néolibéralisme
Francois Houtart | Investig’Action – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

L’Amérique latine fut l’unique continent où des options néolibérales furent adoptées par plusieurs pays. Après une série de dictatures militaires, appuyées par les États-Unis et porteuses du projet néolibéral, les réactions ne se firent pas attendre. Le sommet fut le rejet en 2005 du Traité de Libre Échange avec les États-Unis et le Canada, fruit d’une action conjointe entre mouvements sociaux, partis politiques de gauche, ONG et Églises chrétiennes.

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Conspiracy Theories, Disinformation Agents, and the CIA
Gary G. Kohls, MD | Duty to Warn – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

It is quite easy for a disinformation agent to spin a rich disinformation tale and then craft several different versions of the tale with new ‘facts’ to support the story in each one. These tales are usually a good mix of verifiable facts and cleverly designed lies, so that people who check the ‘facts’ tend to believe the lies that are mixed in. The disinformation agent has only to feed these versions of his tale to several of the many conspiracy-oriented websites out there, and it’s all over the Internet – but not on reliable websites. They will use pseudonyms to join in on the discussions generated by their “news” so that they can manipulate the direction that comments take.

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In Praise of the Tamed Metaphysicist: Einstein on Reality, Rationality, and the Human Passion for Comprehension
Maria Popova | Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

“Reason is a tool, a machine, which is driven by the spiritual fire,” Dostoyevsky wrote in 1838 as he contemplated how we come to know truth.

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SF Int’l Film Festival: The Return, about released prisoners, and other social dramas (or comedies)
Joanne Laurier | WSWS – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

The increasingly dire conditions of life are inevitably impressing themselves upon filmmakers. However, it remains a difficult task for the artist to discover the essential truths and communicate them. In some cases, there is a lack of intellectual and historical preparedness––the artist is simply over his or her head. In others, complacency and social indifference play a role, allowing the filmmakers to avoid the crisis raging before their eyes.

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Glenn Greenwald on Brazil: Goal of Rousseff Impeachment Is to Boost Neoliberals & Protect Corruption
Amy Goodman | Democracy NOW! – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

10 May 2016 – We speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, who lives in Brazil. “People have started to realize, internationally but also here in Brazil, that although this impeachment process has been sold, has been pitched as a way of punishing corruption, its real goal, beyond empowering neoliberals and Goldman Sachs and foreign hedge funds, the real goal is to protect corruption,” Greenwald says.

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Building a Cooperative Solidarity Commonwealth
Jessica Gordon Nembhard |The Next System Project – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

The next system that we need, and that hopefully we are moving toward, is a cooperative commonwealth within interlocking local solidarity economies. Such a system is created from the bottom up, building upon multiple grassroots cooperative enterprises, and democratic community-based economic practices. These networks collaborate and federate from the local to municipal, regional, national, and international levels.

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Putin Declines World Humanitarian Summit Invitation as Russia Cries Foul
Ben Parker | IRIN News – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be attending the upcoming World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul as Russia is refusing to be bound by the results of a process it says failed to include its views.

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A Perfect Storm
Andrew P. Napolitano | LewRockwell – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

A below the radar yet largely known debate in the Kremlin between the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Intelligence Services to determine whether they should release some 20,000 of Mrs. Clinton’s emails they obtained either by hacking her directly or by hacking into the email of her confidante, Sid Blumenthal.

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Russia Warns of Retaliation as NATO Plans More Deployments in Eastern Europe
Dmitry Solovyov and Lidia Kelly | Reuters – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

4 May 2016 – Russia will reinforce its western and southern flanks with three new divisions by the year-end, officials said on Wednesday [4 May], threatening retaliation to NATO’s plans to boost its military presence in eastern members Poland and the Baltic States.

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Beekeepers Lost 44% of Honey Bee Colonies Last Year in the USA
Friends of the Earth | EcoWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

On Tuesday [10 May] the Bee Informed Partnership, in collaboration with the Apiary Inspectors of America and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, released its annual report on honey bee losses in the U.S. Beekeepers reported losing 44 percent of their total number of colonies managed over the last year. These losses are considered too high to be sustainable for U.S. agriculture and the beekeeping industry.

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Support for Palestinians Triples among US Youth, Survey Finds
Ali Abunimah | Electronic Intifada – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

“Currently, 43 percent of Millennials, born after 1980, report sympathizing more with Israel, while 27 percent are more sympathetic to the Palestinians,” Pew states. “The share sympathizing with the Palestinians has risen significantly in recent years, from nine percent in 2006 to 20 percent in July 2014 to 27 percent today” – in other words it has tripled. Among Baby Boomers – those born between 1946 and 1964 – 61 percent are more pro-Israel, while just 14 percent back the Palestinians.

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Yes to Assertive, No to Aggressive
Tom H. Hastings | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

10 May 2016 – I teach and write in the field of Peace and Conflict Studies, with a special focus on strategic nonviolence. It is a rich field, growing in its scholarship and its widespread usage. I’m so enthused by this—the more we wage our conflicts with nonviolence the lower the costs.

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EU: Results of Glyphosate Pee Test Are In ‘and It’s Not Good News’
Lorraine Chow | EcoWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

12 May 2016 – Last month, Members of the European Parliament volunteered to take a urine test to see if glyphosate—the cancer-linked weedkiller—is in their system. Forty-eight MEPs from 13 different EU countries participated. Test results from the accredited Biocheck Laboratory in Germany: “All participants excreted glyphosate by urine.”

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Edward Snowden: The Media Isn’t Doing Its Job
Emily Bell | Columbia Journalism Review – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

Edward Snowden about his experiences working with journalists and his perspective on the shifting media world. This is an excerpt of a conversation that will appear in a forthcoming book: Journalism After Snowden: The Future of the Free Press in the Surveillance State.

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Israel Imposes Travel Ban on BDS Co-Founder Omar Barghouti
Ali Abunimah | The Electronic Intifada – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 May 2016

Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said that “Israel’s refusal to renew Barghouti’s travel document appears to be an effort to punish him for exercising his right to engage in peaceful, political activism, using its arsenal of bureaucratic control over Palestinian lives.”

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Largest Civil Disobedience in History of the Environmental Movement Begins Today
350.org | EcoWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

3 May 2016 – Starting today, a global wave of peaceful direct actions lasting for 12 days will take place across six continents targeting the world’s most dangerous fossil fuel projects, under the banner of Break Free.

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President Obama Should Meet A-Bomb Survivors, and Heed Their Call to Ban the Bomb
Kevin Martin | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

5 May 2016 – President Obama is considering a visit to Hiroshima during the G-7 economic summit in Japan later this month. Remarkably, many Hibakusha, atomic bomb survivors, are still alive today, though they often suffer from various radiation-caused illnesses or other physical ailments 71 years after the bombs were dropped.

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Remembering Nonviolent History: Freedom Rides
Rivera Sun | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

The Freedom Rides are a powerful example of the use of nonviolent direct action to enforce justice and fair laws.

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Anarchism’s Mid-Century Turn
Kristian Williams | Toward Freedom - TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

Review & Response: Unruly Equality: U.S. Anarchism in the Twentieth Century, By Andrew Cornell, University of California Press, 2016, 300 pages. No matter how one feels about it, the current state of anarchism has represented something of a mystery: What was once a mass movement based mainly in working class immigrant communities is now an archipelago of subcultural scenes inhabited largely by disaffected young people from the white middle class.

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Their Next Act: The Ringling Brothers’ Elephants Are Retiring
James Sullivan | Slate – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

—And Moving to Florida to Contribute to Cancer Research – In its 145th year on the road, the ‘Greatest Show on Earth’ is taking its biggest attraction – the symbol of the circus since P.T. Barnum, that quintessential American showman, brought the famed captive Jumbo to the States – off the road for good, finally capitulating to years of pressure from animal rights activists.

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Cowardice and Exoneration in Kunduz
Robert C. Koehler | Common Wonders – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

“The aircrew appeared to be confused by the directions from the Americans on the ground. At one point, the crew was told it would need to hit a second target after the strike it was about to commence, and ‘we will also be doing the same thing of softening the target for partner forces.’” This is the reality: An action that wound up killing 42 hospital workers and patients –men, women and children, some of whom were burned alive in their beds – was instigated in order to “soften the target” . . .

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Nobel-Winning Physicist Frank Wilczek on Complementarity as the Quantum of Life and Why Reality Is Woven of Opposing Truths
Maria Popova | Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

“You can recognize a deep truth by the feature that its opposite is also a deep truth.” When confronted with the world’s complexity, we default into navigating it by creating artificial binaries, perceiving contradiction where they might in fact only be complementarity. Wilczek points to one familiar example — the fact that light is neither inherently a particle nor inherently a wave, but can be either depending on how we measure it.

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Ships to Nowhere: The Brutal Trafficking of Rohingya Refugees
Mili Mitra | Brown Political Review-Brown University – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

Thus far, the global response has been limited and misguided. While the plight of the Rohingya has come into the media spotlight recently, there has been little coordinated effort to mitigate the crisis. Unless there is greater security and support for Rohingya in Myanmar and increased rehabilitation of these refugees across Southeast Asia, the Rohingya refugee crisis will continue to be one of the greatest and most overlooked humanitarian disasters of our time.

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North Korea’s New Weapons: Full Speed Ahead
Mel Gurtov | PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

The best and only chance of dissuading Kim Jong-un from continuing on the path of weapons modernization, which is both dangerous and ruinous in terms of human development, is to put before him a package of alternative incentives— a peace treaty to end the Korean War, security guarantees, sustainable energy options, and meaningful economic aid.

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Zupta Scandal Causes South African Government to Intervene to Save Indian Investor
Richard Smallteacher | CorpWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

The South African government has intervened to support the Indian-born Gupta brothers, owners of a sprawling conglomerate with interests from mining to media, following a scandal that suggested that the brothers had accumulated so much power that they could dictate cabinet-level decisions in the country.

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Onshore Tax Havens: American Elites Don’t Have to Go to Panama to Hide Their Money — They Can Go to Delaware
Josh Hoxie | Other Words – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

Who needs offshore tax havens in Panama? Nearly 300,000 corporations — including some owned by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton — are incorporated at a single Delaware address.

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(Français) The Economist met en garde : “les profits sont bien trop élevés!”
Marc Vandepitte | Investig’Action – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

Ce n’est pas nous, ni le gouvernement qui vivons au-dessus de nos moyens, ce sont les ultra-riches. Générer les méga-bénéfices des grandes entreprises n’est pas tenable, ni socialement ni économiquement. L’analyste politique Marc Vandepitte nous explique pourquoi et esquisse comment inverser la tendance.

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The Chernobyl Secret Protocols: Lies in the Aftermath of Disaster
Alla Yaroshinskaya | The Right Livelihood Award Foundation - TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2016

In my journalistic archives there are mountains of classified Chernobyl documents from the USSR Communist Party and Soviet government. The price paid for these archives is tens of thousands of dead emergency responders and other victims of the fallout, as well as nine million people who lost their health and quality of life and are still surviving in the affected areas.

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