Articles by RD
We found 3631 results.
Evangelicals for Trump
Khalil Bendib | Other Words - TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Mar 2020
No comment…
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Weaponizing Lawfare in the Philippines
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Feb 2020
22 Feb 2020 – Rodrigo Duterte, despite leaving by now a long trail of blood-stained abuse, retains an approval rating of more than 80%. As in the United States, we ask the question that prompted the leading thinkers in ancient Athens to abandon democracy—‘how can we trust the citizenry if they are drawn to support demagogues whose policies are self-destructive for the political community?” If not, the people, then whom? Surely, not the financial oligarchs. Plutocracy is not the answer.
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(Português) Ética e Espiritualidade face aos desastres ecológicos atuais
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Feb 2020
15 fev 2020 – As grandes chuvas com inundações desastrosas que afetaram muitas cidades do Brasil e paralelamente os incêndios fenomenais na Austrália, seguidos imediatamente de inesperadas inundações, constituem sinais inequívocos da Terra de que nela algumas mudanças importantes estão ocorrendo. É praticamente consenso de que estas mudanças para pior se devem à ação irresponsável dos seres humanos (a era do antropoceno).
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COVID-19 Contagion: Reality and Myth
Catherine Offord | The Scientist – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Feb 2020
21 Feb 2020 – Scientists’ Latest Understanding of the Facts, the Suspicions, and the Discounted Rumors of SARS-CoV-2’s Transmission from Person to Person
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Painting a True Christ
Edward Curtin | Behind the Curtain – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Feb 2020
A Review of Terrence Malick’s Film “A Hidden Life”- Franz, a devout Roman Catholic, is deeply disturbed by the rise of Hitler and the thought of participating in his immoral killing machine.
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‘All We Can Offer Is the Chain’: The Scandal of Ghana’s Shackled Sick – Exposé
Tracy McVeigh – The Guardian,
17 Feb 2020
3 Feb 2020 – For the families of Ghanaians with mental health or substance abuse issues, shackling their loved ones can seem the only option, as faith healers compete to fill the mental health void.
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Meeting Grand Ayatollah 41 Years Ago
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Feb 2020
15 Feb 2020 – In February 1979, along with two others, I had a meeting with Ayatollah Khomeini. The post below is an edited text of an interview by two Iranian journalists, Maryam Khormaei & Javad Heiran-Nia, which was published a few weeks ago in Iran. As few Westerners had such an opportunity to meet the leader of the Iranian Revolution in a relatively relaxed atmosphere and for an ample length of time, there seemed interest in Iran and elsewhere in my recollections of that meeting.
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Deaths of 16 Rohingya at Sea Raises Fears Trafficking Ring Has Been Revived
Kaamil Ahmed – The Guardian,
17 Feb 2020
12 Feb 2020 – Activists fear a dangerous transnational trafficking network is being revived after at least 16 Rohingya refugees drowned in the Bay of Bengal yesterday morning. Smugglers responsible for mass atrocities in Thailand may be linked to capsized boat carrying refugees from Bangladesh to Malaysia.
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Drought and Hunger: Why Thousands of Guatemalans Are Fleeing North
José García Escobar and Melisa Rabanales – The Guardian,
17 Feb 2020
7 Feb 2020 – The threat of famine and the battle for dwindling natural resources are increasingly being recognised as major factors in the exodus.
→ read full articleWhy International Law Is Crucial for Human Wellbeing
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Feb 2020
If we are attentive to current events, as the media reports war/peace issues we would quickly conclude that invoking international law in these high profile settings is to be out of touch with how sovereign states go about pursuing their most important economic and political interests, which in areas touching on security is by trusting their defensive capabilities and alliance relations, and not by believing that as long as their actions and policies stay on the right side of the law, they have nothing to worry about.
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Trump/Netanyahu Diplomacy: Orientalism by any Other Name
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
1 Feb 2020 – This so-called contribution to ‘peace’ requires Palestine to give up its most fundamental rights, and accept a permanent condition of subjugation and victimization. It is framed in such a one-sided pro-Israel manner as if designed to ensure its instant and overwhelming rejection by Palestinian government representatives and by Palestinian public opinion.
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The United States of America’s Doll House: A Vast Tapestry of Lies and Illusions
Edward Curtin | Behind the Curtain – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
3 Feb 2020 – While truth-tellers Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning sit inside jail cells and Edward Snowden lives in exile in Russia, the American people hole up in an illusionary dwelling constructed to reduce them to children afraid of the truth. Or is it the dark? It has become a more sophisticated haunted doll’s house, an electronic one with many bells and whistles and images that move faster than the eye can see. We now inhabit a digital technological nightmare controlled by government and corporate forces intent on dominating every aspect of people’s lives.
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‘Try to Stop Me’ – The Mantra of Our Leaders Who Are Now Ruling with Impunity
George Monbiot – The Guardian,
10 Feb 2020
5 Feb 2020 – Trump, Bolsonaro, Modi, Johnson. Across the world, flouting the law has become normalised. We have to stop it. It is not a sufficient condition for fascism to take root, but it is a necessary one: the willingness of political leaders not only to break the law but to revel in breaking it is a fatal step towards the replacement of democracy with authoritarian terror.
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Figures of Thought
Howard Nemerov – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
To lay the logarithmic spiral on
Sea-shell and leaf alike, and see it fit,
To watch the same idea work itself out…
A Rationale for Unbounded Organization: A Path to Positive Peace
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
This is a proposal for a pragmatic, functional and realistic framework for talking, thinking and building institutions.
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Making the Earth Charter Happen: A Necessary Utopia
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Feb 2020
7 Feb 2020 – Twenty years ago Kamla Chowdhry, one of the founding members of the Earth Charter Commission asked, “How can we ensure that ethical and spiritual values get a fair hearing with the economist, technologist, and the industrialist? How do we weld economics with ethics, and have a technology with a human face?” Answering those questions remains central to our efforts today for a more just, sustainable and peaceful world.
→ read full articleThe Decline of International Law: Reflections of a True Believer
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
27 Jan 2020 – There is widespread agreement that international law is experiencing a sharp decline in relevance when it comes to foreign policy, especially in the eye of the public. At first glance, this seems surprising. The impression of decline derives from high profile issues of governments acting without regard for international law, especially in the area of peace and security.
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On the Eve of the Release of Trump’s ‘Deal–Farce of the Century’
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
28 Jan 2020 – Interview by Rodrigo Craveiro from the Brazilian daily Correio Braziliense –
Craveiro: Why are Palestinian leaders rejecting to talk with president Trump about this new peace plan?
How the ‘Venice of Africa’ Is Losing Its Battle against the Rising Ocean
Monika Pronczuk – The Guardian,
3 Feb 2020
28 Jan 2020 – Saint-Louis, the old colonial capital of Senegal, faces a flooding threat that has already seen entire villages lost to the Atlantic.
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World’s 22 Richest Men Wealthier Than All the Women in Africa, Study Finds
Kate Hodal – The Guardian,
3 Feb 2020
20 Jan 2020 – The world’s 22 richest men have more combined wealth than all 325 million women in Africa. Startling scale of inequality laid bare as Oxfam report highlights chronically undervalued nature of care work.
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The Outbreaks of both the Wuhan Coronavirus and SARS Likely Started in Chinese Wet Markets
Aylin Woodward | Business Insider – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Feb 2020
1 Feb 2020 – The coronavirus spreading in China and the SARS outbreak of 2003 both are from the coronavirus family, and both likely started in wet markets. At such markets, outdoor stalls are squeezed together to form narrow lanes and put people and live and dead animals — dogs, chickens, pigs, snakes, civets, and more — in constant close contact. That makes it easy for a virus to jump from animal to human.
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Trump Extends Travel Ban to Six Countries — But Is OK with Selling Arms to Them
A. Trevor Thrall and Jordan Cohen – NBC News,
3 Feb 2020
31 Jan 2020 – The Trump administration announced today that it is adding six new countries to the existing travel ban, joining the seven already on the list. If these places are so threatening, the U.S. shouldn’t continue to give their governments the very weapons that can make them even more unsafe.
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Edward Snowden: Trump Has Created a Global Playbook to Attack Those Revealing Uncomfortable Truths
Edward Snowden – The Washington Post,
3 Feb 2020
27 Jan 2020 – On Tuesday [21 Jan], Brazilian federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and founding editor at the Intercept Brazil, for his explosive reporting on corruption at the very highest levels of Brazil’s government. The public importance of these stories was staggering… The most essential journalism of every era is precisely that which a government attempts to silence. These prosecutions demonstrate that they are ready to stop the presses — if they can.
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The Far-Right Bolsonaro Movement Wants Us Dead. But We Will Not Give Up
Glenn Greenwald and David Miranda – The Guardian,
3 Feb 2020
29 Jan 2020 – Courage is contagious. Those are the people who inspire us and so many like us in Bolsonaro’s Brazil who are confronting state repression to defend the democracy that so many people suffered so much to bring about. Demagogues and despots like Bolsonaro are a dime a dozen. They centrally rely on intimidation, fear and the use of state repression to consolidate power. A refusal to give into that fear, but instead to join hands with those who intend to fight against it, is always the antidote to this toxin.
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Contesting Nuclearism: Management or Transformation? An Urgent Challenge
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jan 2020
22 Jan 2020 – This essay calls attention to the generally unappreciated tensions between managing nuclear weapons and eliminating them altogether. It stresses the crucial point that management inevitably produces a structure of ‘nuclear apartheid’ that is to some extent ‘legalized’ by way of the Nonproliferation Treaty of 1961, and depends for implementation, not on law, but on geopolitical muscle, including war. This geopolitical pattern of NPT enforcement has been mainly undertaken by the United States, but is generally supported by most of the other nuclear weapons states.
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One World Digital Dictatorship
Soren Korsgaard | Crime and Power – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jan 2020
5 Jan 2020 – The accelerating movement by both Western-style democracies and one-party states towards world-wide ongoing digital disempowerment and digital imprisonment of humanity involving mass data collection on everyone, mass surveillance, facial recognition-based tracking, cryptocurrency-based cashless societies, and social credit-based disempowerment. A Must Read.
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UN Biodiversity Chief: Humans Risk Living in an ‘Empty World’ with ‘Catastrophic’ Consequences
Jordan Davidson | EcoWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jan 2020
20 Jan 2020 – Talk is cheap, says the acting executive secretary of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, who begged governments around the world to make sure that 2020 is not another year of conferences and empty promises, but instead is the year to take decisive action to stop the mass extinction of wildlife and the destruction of habitat-sustaining ecosystems.
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Chilling Role of ‘the Preacher’ Confirmed at CIA Waterboarding Hearing in Guantánamo
Julian Borger – The Guardian,
27 Jan 2020
25 Jan 2020 – There were three men authorised by the CIA to carry out waterboarding on detainees in America’s “war on terror”. Two of them were contractors who are in Guantánamo Bay this week to give evidence. The third has still not been identified 17 years after the torture was committed.
→ read full articleHovering in Cyberspace
Edward Curtin | Behind the Curtain – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jan 2020
24 Jan 2020 – We live in a fabricated reality where the visible world became nearly meaningless once the screen world became people’s “window on the world.” An electronic nothingness replaced reality as people gleefully embraced digital wraparound apparitions. These days people still move about in the physical world but live in the electronic one. The result is mass hallucination.
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(Português) A História Foi Escrita pela Mão Branca
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jan 2020
14 Jan 2020 – Uma das realidades mais perversas da história humana foi o milenar estatuto da escravidão. Aí se mostra o que também podemos ser: não só sapiens, portadores de amor, empatia, respeito e devoção, mas também demens, odientos, agressivos, cruéis e sem piedade. Este nosso lado sombrio parece dominar a cena social de nosso tempo e também do Brasil.
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Less Unholy Than Thou
Khalil Bendib – Other Words,
20 Jan 2020
The U.S. is condemning China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims, but not with much moral authority.
→ read full articleFacing the Global Crisis
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jan 2020
16 Jan 2020 – This is an amplified version of an interview published on 7 Jan in the online journal, Global Policy. As the interview was conducted in Dec 2019, it fails to address the various disruptive consequences of the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, including the violation of Iraqi sovereignty, Baghdad being the site of the drone attack, as well as the risks of war arising from an escalating tit-for-tat cycle of actions and reactions.
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With Costs Approaching $100 Billion, the Fires Are Australia’s Costliest Natural Disaster
Paul Read and Richard Denniss – The Conversation,
20 Jan 2020
17 Jan 2020 – It’s hard to estimate the eventual economic cost of Australia’s 2019-20 megafires, partly because they are still underway, and partly because it is hard to know the cost to attribute to deaths and the decimation of species and habitats, but it is easy to get an idea of its significance – the cost will be unprecedented.
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James Murdoch Criticises Father’s News Outlets for Climate Crisis Denial
Jim Waterson – The Guardian,
20 Jan 2020
14 Jan 2020 – Rupert Murdoch’s son has strongly criticised his family’s news outlets for downplaying the impact of the climate crisis, as bushfires continue to burn in Australia. James Murdoch and his wife, Kathryn, issued a rare joint statement directly criticising his father’s businesses for their “ongoing denial” on the issue, which has been reflected in the family’s newspapers repeatedly casting doubt on the link between the climate emergency and the bushfires.
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2020 U.S. Presidential Elections: Reflections outside the Box
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jan 2020
14 Jan 2020 – Four Reflections on What Would Help Democrats Defeat Trump
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The Prosecution of Julian Assange, the Destruction of Legality and the Rise of the National Security State
Richard Hoffman | WSWS – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jan 2020
15 Jan 2020 – It is worthwhile to consider briefly the lawless character of Assange’s persecution by Britain, the United States and Sweden. Since the beginning, Assange has been subjected to endless procedural abuses and political interference in the legal process. Virtually every customary precept, practice and procedural protection, which an accused is traditionally afforded, has been discarded in the effort to railroad him. The disintegration of the democratic system and the rise of the national security state are hallmarks of the deepening crisis of imperialism.
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Greenpeace Included with Neo-Nazis on UK Counter-Terror List
Vikram Dodd and Jamie Grierson – The Guardian,
20 Jan 2020
17 Jan 2020 – Extinction Rebellion, Sea Shepherd, Stop the Cull and PETA also named in anti-extremism briefing alongside Combat 18 and National Action.
→ read full articleOpen Letter to Members of the U.S. Congress
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jan 2020
8 Jan 2020 – I listened to Trump from my own perspective and with an attempt to hear his words as if I were an Iranian living in Iran. I found the statement belligerent, and formulated in an imperialist/hegemonic language, avoiding a diplomatic sequel, and instead resuming the ‘maximum pressure’ approach involving threats and further intensified sanctions and other coercive moves that will bring additional suffering to the Iranian people.
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Welcome to Hawaii’s ‘Plastic Beach’, One of the World’s Dirtiest Places
Liz Barney and Michelle Broder Van Dyke – The Guardian,
13 Jan 2020
10 Jan 2020 – Hawaii has long evoked images of a Pacific paradise but Kamilo Beach, located on the Big Island, presents a starkly different reality.
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Iran Ends Nuclear Deal Commitments as Fallout from Suleimani Killing Spreads
Martin Chulov and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad – The Guardian,
13 Jan 2020
5 Jan 2020 – Iran has announced that it will no longer abide by any of the limits imposed by the unravelling 2015 nuclear deal, and Iraq’s parliament urged its leaders to expel troops from the US-led coalition, as the aftershocks of the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani reverberated through the Middle East.
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(Italiano) Che cosa muove l’antisemitismo? Forme fasulle e reali
Richard Falk | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jan 2020
30 Dicembre 2019 – Solo il tribalismo più estremo può spiegare l’etichettatura di coloro che si oppongono al trattamento abusivo di Israele nei confronti del popolo palestinese come “antisemiti”. Consideriamo l’incapacità di Aung San Suu Kyi di condannare l’abuso da parte del Myanmar dei Rohingya come il lancio delle nuvole più scure sul suo Nobel Premio per la Pace. È un insulto agli ebrei e agli altri semiti consentire ai sionisti di imprimere solidarietà alla lotta palestinese per i loro diritti fondamentali come antisemitismo.
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Forgetting 2019
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jan 2020
31 Dec 2019 – At this age, having exhausted prose options, I indulge myself during holidays by sharing poems that seek also your indulgence. I searched 2019 for some glimmers of good news, and felt stymied. Of course here, there, everywhere there were glorious private exceptions.
→ read full articleThe Searching Life and Enigmatic Death of Albert Camus
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jan 2020
Albert Camus’ search ended sixty years ago on January 4, 1960, the day he died. Although he had already written The Stranger, The Rebel, The Plague, and The Fall, and had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, he felt his true work had barely begun.
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The Fight to Expose Israel’s Arms Sales to the World’s Most Repressive Regimes
Sahar Vardi | +972 Magazine – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jan 2020
25 Dec 2019 – In the span of less than 10 years, activists from across the political spectrum went head to head with the Israeli government, trying to bring an end to its arms exports to tyrannical governments worldwide.
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(Français) Paroles sur les Crises au Mali et les Limites de la Démocratie
Dr Robin Edward Poulton – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Dec 2019
Expériences et Analyses Pour Favoriser la Paix – Le Mali est victime d’un Choc des Corporations – Extrait Du Livre
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House of Mirrors: Who Is the Mostest?
Benton – Other Words,
30 Dec 2019
Ughh!!
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The Most Important Free Press Stories of 2019
Leonard C. Goodman | Independent Media Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Dec 2019
23 Dec 2019 -Assange and Manning are being persecuted for speaking truth to power.
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Four Criteria for Differentiating Faith-Based Entities
Abbas Aroua | Cordoba Peace Institute Geneva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Dec 2019
Religious currents, especially Islamic schools of thought, are often considered as monolithic blocs, and sometimes opposed to each other. In fact, not only do some academic and political elites regard various currents of Islamic thought as a form of extremism, but they also do the same with regard to the practice of religion itself.
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Canada, Netherlands Join Gambia’s Fight for Rohingyas
The Standard [Gambia] – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Dec 2019
5 Dec 2019 – On 11 Nov 2019, The Gambia filed a lawsuit at The Hague demanding accountability on the systematic violations of the rights of minority Rohingya Muslims by the Government of Myanmar. Following this, Canada, Netherlands and The Gambia have agreed to form a tripartite joint working group to pursue the case.
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Terra Incognita
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Dec 2019
Sitting dark and tight
In crepuscular light,
You pass the shuttered houses
That line the half-lit streets,
DRC: I Saw the Unbearable Grief Inflicted on Families by Cobalt Mining–I Pray for Change
Siddharth Kara – The Guardian,
23 Dec 2019
16 Dec 2019 – When Raphael turned 15, he started digging tunnels at the cobalt mine where he worked – two years later he was dead. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is that global tech companies have yet to devote adequate attention and resources to ensure safety, dignity, and decency for those who mine their cobalt in DRC.
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Three Cheers for the Cheerfully Deluded!
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Dec 2019
Let’s hear three cheers for the cheerfully deluded! Instead of telling them that their dreams are very likely to be disappointed, let’s change the world to make it possible for more of their dreams to come true. Soul medicine. What is not possible in pure neoliberal markets is possible in impure African and Latin American markets. Public policies and human sympathy can rescue not only the bodies of the poor, but also the dignity of the poor.
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Nepal Makes First ‘Period Hut’ Arrest after Woman Dies during Banned Custom
Arun Budhathoki – The Guardian,
23 Dec 2019
9 Dec 2019 – A 21-year-old woman has died after spending three nights in an outdoor “period hut”, prompting police in Nepal to make their first ever arrest in connection with the illegal practice. The tradition of chhaupadi, where menstruating women in Nepal are banished from their homes, is still widespread in remote and poorer parts of the country.
→ read full articleWhat Drives Anti-Semitism? Fake and Real Forms
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Dec 2019
Only the most extreme tribalism can explain labeling those who oppose Israel’s abusive treatment of the Palestinian people as ‘anti-Semites.’ We look upon Aung San Suu Kyi’s failure to condemn the Myanmar abuse of the Rohingya as casting the darkest of clouds over her Nobel Peace Prize. It is an insult to Jews and other Semites to allow Zionists to brand solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for their most basic rights as anti-Semitism.
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‘I Feel Constant Pain’: Drug Resistance Adds to Misery of Gaza Gun Victims
Karen McVeigh and Hazem Balousha – The Guardian,
23 Dec 2019
5 Dec 2019 – The suffering of people wounded in conflict zones is being compounded by what doctors say are ‘horrifying levels’ of antibiotic resistance. “I thought about suicide several times,” says Nasser, 28, a former blacksmith. “I was wishing the Israeli soldier [who shot me] had killed me with the bullet.”
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(Português) O Complô dos USA para Derrubar o Papa Francisco
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Dec 2019
7 dez 2019 – É importante que os católicos, os cristãos e pessoas interessadas em assuntos religiosos saibam da enorme e até perversa campanha articulada por multibilionários estadounidenses, ultraconsrevadores, junto com pessoas de dentro do Vaticano, ocupando altos cargos, interessados em distorcer suas doutrinas, criticar suas práticas pastorais e diretamente difamar a pessoa do Papa Francisco.
→ read full articleReconciling 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.
→ read full articleThe Art of Doublespeak: Bellingcat and Mind Control
Edward Curtin | Behind the Curtain – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Dec 2019
The U.S./U.K./NATO propaganda outfit Bellingcat, like all effective war-promoting intelligence agency propaganda, needs the support of left-wing intellectuals to give it credence. The CIA recognized this in the 1950s and created multiple methods to get that support, which it has done effectively up to the present day. This left-wing support is necessary to control the thinking of the portion of the population that considers itself “educated” and in the know, who in turn pass on their compromised “knowledge” to others in a sophisticated game of mind control.”
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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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(Português) Ecologia e Teologia da Libertação
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Dec 2019
4 dez 2019 – A Ecologia Integral e a Teologia da Libertação ambas partem de um grito. A ecologia do grito da Terra, dos seres vivos, dos ecossistemas agredidos pelo crescimento material ilimitado. A Teologia da libertação nasceu ao escutar o grito dos pobres econômicos, das classes exploradas, das culturas humilhadas, dos negros discriminados, das mulheres oprimidas pela cultura patriarcal, dos LGBT e portadores de necessidades especiais. Todos gritam por libertação.
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Persecution of the Uyghurs: The West Must Respond to Chinese Oppression
Bernhard Zand – Der Spiegel,
9 Dec 2019
4 Dec 2019 – There are many disturbing aspects to modern-day China, but its treatment of the Uighurs is the most despicable. The West must come up with a response to the inhuman persecution.
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Turner Prize Awarded Four Ways after Artists’ Plea to Judges
Mark Brown – The Guardian,
9 Dec 2019
3 Dec 2019 – All four artists shortlisted for the 2019 Turner prize have been named winners after they came together and made a plea for judges to recognise the causes of “commonality, multiplicity and solidarity”.
→ read full articleLearning 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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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.
→ read full articleHealth 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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Oxford Campaign to Defend Julian Assange
Jake Lynch | LRC Oxfordshire – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Dec 2019
Campaign to Defend Julian Assange Conference, 7 Nov 2019
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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.
→ read full articleEt Tu, Macron?
Khalil Bendib | OtherWords – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Nov 2019
RIP Cold War
→ read full article
The 2001 Anthrax Deception: Review of the Book by Graeme MacQueen
Antony C. Black | OffGuardian – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Nov 2019
If the notion that, ‘truth always lies 180 degrees opposite to the direction pointed by the corporate media’ is not yet a modern maxim, it should be. A useful corollary might be added to the effect that, ‘the depth to which an event is consigned to the establishment memory hole is inversely related to its actual significance’.
→ read full article(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.
→ read full article
A Brief Account of «the Destruction of the Indians» in Brazil
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Nov 2019
11 Nov 2019 – Due to the white invader’s diseases, against which the Indigenous people had no immunity: flu, chickenpox, measles, malaria and syphilis; to the Cross and the sword; the degradation of their lands, making hunting and farming impossible; because of slavery; the wars officially declared by Don João VI on May, 1808, against the Krenak in the Rio Dulce Valley; the systematic humiliation and denial of their identity… the five million indigenous were reduced to the current 930.000.
→ read full article
The Costs of Post 9/11 Wars through FY2020: $6.4 Trillion
Prof. Neta C. Crawford - Global Research,
18 Nov 2019
14 Nov 2019 – Since late 2001, the United States has appropriated and is obligated to spend an estimated $6.4 Trillion through Fiscal Year 2020 in budgetary costs related to and caused by the post-9/11 wars—an estimated $5.4 Trillion in appropriations in current dollars and an additional minimum of $1 Trillion for US obligations to care for the veterans of these wars through the next several decades.
→ read full article
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]
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Good Old US of A
Tango Gao – Other Words,
18 Nov 2019
Nothing New Under the Sun…
→ 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.
→ read full article
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).
→ read full article
What’s Joker’s Joke?
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Nov 2019
The joker’s joke is no joke at all. It is deadly serious. When Arthur Fleck says, “I used to think my life was a tragedy, but now I realize it’s a comedy,” and unleashes his murderous violent rage with a Joker’s smile, he was turning into those he condemned as his oppressors. Their nihilism became his own; their violence his. The film asks us to contemplate such a marriage of seeming opposites, its dialectic, and not turn away from the faces in the mirror.
→ read full articleDid 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.
→ read full article
‘Our only Aim Is to Go Home’: Rohingya Refugees Face Stark Choice
Sarah Marsh and Redwan Ahmed – The Guardian,
11 Nov 2019
4 Nov 2019 – Life in the world’s largest refugee camp has grown harder in the past few months. With citizenship in Myanmar still denied, Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh must either live under severe restrictions or move to an isolated island.
→ read full articleCasting 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
→ read full article
Critique of Nonviolent Politics from Mahatma Gandhi to the Anti-Nuclear Movement
Howard Ryan – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Nov 2019
Critique of Nonviolent Politics may be the only comprehensive critique of nonviolent theory that has been written. Since 1977, I had been active in the movement against nuclear power and weapons which, in California, focused its protests at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant and at the Lawrence Livermore Labs where nuclear weapons are designed. Nonviolence was the prevailing political theory in the movement, especially in the “direct action” wing which organized mass blockades and occupations at nuclear facilities. Nonviolence informed our tactics and strategies, our group processes, and our general ethos and outlook.
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A Foie Gras Ban Was Overdue – but What About Other Foods Made from Animal Suffering?
Jacy Reese – The Guardian,
4 Nov 2019
On 30 Oct the New York City Council passed a ban on foie gras, which has transformed many animal lovers from conscious consumers to passionate protesters. Its production process is particularly disturbing: a bird is painfully force-fed three times a day with a long, metal pipe down their throat. But there are countless other foods made from animal suffering. Fish and octopus are chewed to death while still alive. Others are boiled alive, ripped or cut apart, or even salted to death.
→ read full articleThe Metamorphosis of the Deep State
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Nov 2019
2 Nov 2019 – To think that the deep state is government employees just doing their patriotic duty is plain idiocy and plainer propaganda, just as denying its existence was. It is a trick, not the treat it is made to seem.
→ read full article(Português) A Vantagem da Imperfeição
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Nov 2019
30 out 2019 – Em tempos em risco de nossa liberdade, é importante pensarmos em sua importância. Nascemos completos mas imperfeitos. Não possuímos nenhum órgão especializado, como a maioria dos animais. Para sobreviver, temos que trabalhar e intervir na natureza. Os mitos esclarecem esta asituação.
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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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The Pathocracy of the Deep State: Tyranny at the Hands of a Psychopathic Government
John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Oct 2019
There is no difference between psychopaths and politicians. Nor is there much of a difference between the havoc wreaked on innocent lives by uncaring, unfeeling, selfish, irresponsible, parasitic criminals and elected officials who lie to their constituents, trade political favors for campaign contributions, turn a blind eye to the wishes of the electorate, cheat taxpayers out of hard-earned dollars, favor the corporate elite, entrench the military industrial complex, and spare little thought for the impact their thoughtless actions and hastily passed legislation might have on defenseless citizens.
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Amazon Rainforest ‘Close to Irreversible Tipping Point’
Dom Phillips – The Guardian,
28 Oct 2019
23 Oct 2019 – Soaring deforestation coupled with the destructive policies of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, could push the Amazon rainforest dangerously to an irreversible “tipping point” within two years, a prominent economist has said. Forecast suggests rainforest could stop producing enough rain to sustain itself by 2021.
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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.
→ read full articleWhen Time Stands Still
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Oct 2019
I am finding that far too much of what is being published about our world situation is doing little good. We need different approaches. Here’s one.
→ read full articleThe Neo-Liberal Project in the World and in Brazil Is Anti-Life and the Enemy of Nature
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Oct 2019
18 Oct 2019 – I will address the reflections of one of our best philosophers, Manfredo de Oliveira, from the Federal University of Ceara, specialist in the relationship between the economy, society and ethics. His work on the topic is vast. We will summarize here a lengthy study on the project developed elsewhere, and now in Brazil: the ultra radical neo-liberalism.
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Kashmir–The Curious Case of Indian Collective Conscience
Dr Mudasir Firdosi | Countercurrents – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Oct 2019
19 Oct 201 9 – Kashmir has been cut off from the rest of the world for more than two months now. The perpetual worry about that ‘phone call’ has traumatized so many. One fears that people are developing traumatic stress even when not physically present in the valley. Even when people do manage a phone call after begging or borrowing, the harrowing silence on the other side says it all.
→ read full article
‘It Breaks Down Innocent People’: The Interrogation Method at Center of Ava Duvernay Lawsuit
Sam Levin – The Guardian,
21 Oct 2019
16 Oct 2019 – Police consulting firm behind widely criticized ‘Reid interrogation technique’ claims Netflix drama When They See US misrepresents method. The Central Park Five case is one of the most notorious examples of police coercing people into giving false confession. The five teens went to prison and were eventually exonerated by DNA evidence.
→ 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 article