Articles by RD
We found 3662 results.
From Shahs to the CIA: The History of Western Intervention in Iran (Part 1)
Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
When Americans hear the word Iran, many have a sort of knee-jerk visceral reaction. The very mention of the word conjures up frightful images of be-turbaned bearded imams leading mobs of Kalashnikov-carrying Muslim men and women whose faces are grotesquely contorted by intense anger as they enthusiastically wave banners bearing squiggly lines, no doubt saying, “Death to America”.
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From Shahs to the CIA: The History of Western Intervention in Iran (Part 2)
Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
In part 1 we examined the early history of the West’s domination of Persian natural resources, especially the establishment and rise of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company which led to multiple 20th century British interventions in Iranian politics in an attempt to ensure permanent access to oil. Part 2 tells the story of Operation Ajax.
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Forest Twice Size of UK Destroyed in Decade for Big Consumer Brands – Report
Karen McVeigh – The Guardian,
24 Jun 2019
11 Jun 2019 – An area twice the size of the UK has been destroyed for products such as palm oil and soy over the last decade, according to analysis by Greenpeace International. It estimates 50m hectares cleared by 2020, warning companies must evolve to prevent ‘climate breakdown’.
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Acting Beyond the State: Toward a Cosmopolitan Awakening?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
20 Jun 2019 – The following review of Ayça Çubukçu’s For the Love of Humanity: The World Tribunal on Iraq, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018, is scheduled to appear in a forthcoming issue of the London Review of International Law.
→ read full articleGreen New Deals
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
Green New Deals can be thought of as bearing new wine in old bottles. The old bottles are demands for social justice. Now they include shock and dismay at threats to the survival of our fragile biosphere. They can easily become just another rationale for tax benefits for investors and for massive public investment financed by public debt even more massive than it already is. The new wine is the creative thinking that is seeking ways to achieve structural changes that will make it possible to succeed where social democracy failed.
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Fukushima’s Three Nuclear Meltdowns Are “Under Control” – That’s a Lie
William Boardman - Reader Supported News,
24 Jun 2019
22 Jun 2019 – The bland language of the official IAEA report is itself a form of lying, offering the false appearance of reassurance that a catastrophic event will be safely managed “for several decades.” There is no way to know that: it is a hope, a prayer, a form of denial. The IAEA, as is its job in a sense, offers this optimism that is unsupported by the realities at Fukushima.
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Once Upon a Time Never Comes Again: Bob Dylan, a Masked Man in Search of Redemption?
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
21 Jun 2019 – It is quite a story, powerful enough to induce one to ask: Who are we becoming in this American Dream? Will we keep sleeping through the nightmares we create and support, or will be return home with Dylan and embrace the radical truth he once gifted us with and dare to “tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it/And reflect from the mountains so all souls can see it” that our country continues to kill and oppress people all around the world as it did once upon a time very long ago?
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Ring any bells?
Wordinfo – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Jun 2019
Right!
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The Omnipresent Surveillance State: Orwell’s 1984 Is No Longer Fiction
John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Jun 2019
10 Jun 2019 – Tread cautiously: the fiction of George Orwell has become an operation manual for the omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state. It’s been 70 years since Orwell depicted the ominous rise of ubiquitous technology, fascism and totalitarianism in ‘1984’. Who could have predicted that after Orwell typed the final words to his dystopian novel, “He loved Big Brother,” we would fail to heed his warning and come to love Big Brother.
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(Castellano/Português) A tecnologia 5G e seus riscos para a vida em geral e para a humana
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jun 2019
¿Por qué la tecnología 5G representa un nuevo peligro para la vida? – Mario Enrique De León, sociólogo da Universidad do Panamá, nos apresenta um resumo das questões referentes à nova tecnologia 5G, motivo de grande disputa entre EEUU e a China. Aqui ele ressalta, o que nos interessa sumamente, os efeitos sobre a vida em sua diversidade, em particular, sobre a vida humana.
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UN Staffer to SG Guterres: 5G Is War on Humanity—He Admits Own Ignorance, Wants to Know More
Claire Edwards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jun 2019
The first eight months of WWII with no fighting was called The Phony War. Using millimeter waves as a fifth-generation or 5G wireless communications technology is a phony war of another kind. It is also silent, but this time shots are being fired – in the form of laser-like beams of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from banks of thousands of tiny antennae – and almost no one in the firing line knows that they are being silently, seriously and irreparably injured.
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‘Socialism for the Rich’: The Evils of Bad Economics
Jonathan Aldred – The Guardian,
10 Jun 2019
6 Jun 2019 – In most rich countries, inequality is rising, and has been rising for some time. The economic arguments adopted by Britain and the US in the 1980s led to vastly increased inequality – and gave the false impression that this outcome was not only inevitable, but good.
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The Climate Crisis Is Our Third World War. It Needs a Bold Response
Joseph Stiglitz | Nobel Economics Laureate – The Guardian,
10 Jun 2019
4 Jun 2019 – Advocates of the Green New Deal say there is great urgency in dealing with the climate crisis and highlight the scale and scope of what is required to combat it. They are right. They use the term “New Deal” to evoke the massive response by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the United States government to the Great Depression. An even better analogy would be the country’s mobilization to fight World War II.
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(Português) As corporações alimentam a ultra-direita mundial: Jean Ziegler
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
26 maio 2019 – Jean Ziegler suiço, professor universitário e pesquisador,ocupa a vice-presidência do Comitê Consultivo do Conselho de Direitos Humanos da ONU. O texto nos ajuda a entender a real situação dramática do mundo, especialmente para os pobres e os que passam fome permanentemente. Ou somos nós que mudaremos essa ordem canibal do mundo, ou ninguém o fará.
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Speeding into the Void of Cyberspace as Designed
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
While Internet billionaires like Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Mark Zuckerberg slam government surveillance, talk up freedom, and embrace Snowden and crypto privacy culture, their companies still cut deals with the Pentagon, work with the NSA and CIA, and continue to track and profile people for profit. It is the same old split-screen marketing trick: the public branding and the behind-the-scenes reality.
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The Perils of Financialization
Lyndsey Jefferson and Matthew Oxenford | Chatham House – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
28 May 2019 – The enduring risks of the financial sector in the global economy and how the mistakes of the 2008 financial crisis continue to resonate. Financialization – it’s a bit of a buzzword, but what does it actually mean? In the most general sense, it means that financial services are taking up a larger and larger portion of the global economy. There are really two different types of financialization if you want to talk about this broadly.
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Marxist Economic Theory Easily Explained
Richard Wolff | The Jimmy Dore Show – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
Richard David Wolff is an American Marxian economist known for his work on economic methodology and class analysis. He is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts and a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program of the New School University in New York. Wolff has also taught economics at Yale University, City University of New York, University of Utah, University of Paris I (Sorbonne), and The Brecht Forum. In 1988 he co-founded the journal Rethinking Marxism. In 2010, Wolff published Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It, also released as a DVD.
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Jurisprudential Notes toward Empowering and Liberating International Law and the United Nations
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
2 Jun 2019 – When law is aligned with injustice it gives rise to resistance, which historically is associated with the hallowed tradition of civil disobedience, influential with Tolstoy, Gandhi, and more recently, Martin Luther King, Jr. In these contexts civil disobedience can involve the nonviolent transgression of any legal norm that calls attention to the specific injustice.
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Technotyranny: The Iron-Fisted Authoritarianism of the Surveillance State
John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
29 May 2019 – Red pill or blue pill? You decide. We are living the prequel to The Matrix with each passing day, falling further under the spell of technologically-driven virtual communities, virtual realities and virtual conveniences managed by artificially intelligent machines that are on a fast track to replacing us and eventually dominating every aspect of our lives. Science fiction has become fact.
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What You See Is Not What You Get
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2019
Poem at Springtime
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R2P and the Palestinian Ordeal: Humiliating the UN
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 May 2019
23 May 2019 – The fact that Gaza has not even been discussed at the UN, despite the prolonged, intense victimization of its vulnerable and impoverished civilian population is one more indication of the primacy of geopolitics and the marginalization of international law and morality. Only civil society activism can keep the torch of justice burning in this global climate.
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Raw Ivory Sales: Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia Call for End to Ban
Nyasha Chingono – The Guardian,
27 May 2019
21 May 2019 – The watchdog, Cites, prohibits unregulated commercial trade in endangered species around the world. The three southern African countries, home to 61% of the continent’s elephants, will make their application for the change at the next Cites conference in Sri Lanka. Their last appeal for a lifting of the measures was rejected.
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Eco-Friendly Ending: Washington State Is First to Allow Human Composting
Associated Press – The Guardian,
27 May 2019
Ashes to ashes, guts to dirt. Governor Jay Inslee signed legislation Tuesday [21 May 2019] making Washington the first state to approve composting as an alternative to burying or cremating human remains.
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There’s Far More Diversity in Venezuela’s ‘Muzzled’ Media than in US Corporate Press
Lucas Koerner and Ricardo Vaz – FAIR|Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 May 2019
20 May 2019 – The international corporate media have long displayed a peculiar creativity with the facts in their Venezuela reporting, to the point that coverage of the nation’s crisis has become perhaps the world’s most lucrative fictional genre. Fairy tales about totalitarian state censorship in Venezuela reflect US corporate media regime’s own self-censorship, which is far more efficacious than any so-called “authoritarian” leader could imagine.
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(Français) “Notre problème, c’est l’obéissance civile”, par Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn | Les Crises – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
1 May 2019 – “Le problème n’est pas la désobéissance civile. Notre problème, c’est l’obéissance civile.”
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On My 88thBirthday: A Reflection
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
Poem at Springtime
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The Problem Is Civil Obedience
Howard Zinn | Zinn Reader – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
I start from the supposition that the world is topsy-turvy, that things are all wrong, that the wrong people are in jail and the wrong people are out of jail, that the wrong people are in power and the wrong people are out of power, that the wealth is distributed in this country and the world in such a way as not simply to require small reform but to require a drastic reallocation of wealth. I start from the supposition that we don’t have to say too much about this because all we have to do is think about the state of the world today and realize that things are all upside down.
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Required Reading on Palestine
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel, by Andrew Ross, Verso; 2019 – Andrew: “… it would be no exaggeration to say that the ‘stone men’ of Palestine have built every state in the region except their own.” My final assessment: no matter how much you think you know about Palestine, you do not know enough until you have read this book.
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Monsanto Must Pay Couple $2bn in Largest Verdict Yet Over Cancer Claims
Sam Levin – The Guardian,
20 May 2019
13 May 2019 – A California jury has ordered Monsanto to pay more than $2bn to a couple that got cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, after using its weedkiller, marking the third and largest verdict against the company over Roundup.
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Answering the Mysterious Call of an Artist’s Spiritual Vocation
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2019
What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance, by Carolyn Forché – If you are like me, you will be inspired by what the poet Char called “wisdom with tear-filled eyes.” This book is just that. It is a call to Americans to face the truth and resist.
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(Castellano) Los 10 Mandamientos para Salvar el Planeta, la Humanidad y la Vida
Evo Morales Ayma [by Leonardo Boff] – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 May 2019
5 mayo 2019 – El presidente de Bolivia, Evo Morales Ayma, se ha destacado mundialmente por proponer los 10 mandamientos para salvar el planeta, la humanidad y la vida. Proclamó estos 10 mandamientos en un famoso discurso en la ONU cuando se aprobó unánimemente que este día, el 22 de abril, no sería simplemente el Día de la Tierra sino el Día de la Madre Tierra.
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Howard Zinn on How Karl Marx Predicted Our World Today
Howard Zinn – In These Times,
13 May 2019
4 May 2019 – In the September 2000 issue of In These Times, Howard Zinn wrote this review of a book about the life of Karl Marx by Francis Wheen. On the 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth, we present Zinn’s review in full, in which he discusses how “Marx predicted the world of today, with ever increasing concentrations of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, with capitalism roaming the globe in search of profits, with a deepening contradiction between the colossal growth of production and the failure to distribute its fruits justly.”
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In Search of Equivalence
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 May 2019
Poem at Springtime
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(Italiano) L’effimera aspettativa di vita delle democrazie autocratiche
Richard Falk | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 May 2019
Le varie democrazie autocratiche ora dominanti il paesaggio politico del mondo sono condannate in quanto forma politica, ma che cosa verrà dopo di esse non si può prevedere. Potrebbe essere un’occasione di celebrazione o di disperazione, o entrambe se società differenti si sposteranno in direzioni opposte, chi verso più profonde democrazie, chi verso una governance fascista.
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Blackwater Founder Calling for 5,000 Mercenaries to Topple Maduro
Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 May 2019
30 Apr 2019 – As if the past months of US push for regime change in Venezuela with officials like Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra conviction infamy at the helm wasn’t bizarre enough, things just got weirder, as Erik Prince has apparently been pitching a plan around Washington to privatize US coup efforts using his latest Blackwater inspired mercenary empire.
→ read full articleIstanbul Elections: A Turkish Constitutional Crisis? Davutoglu’s Manifesto
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 May 2019
10 May 2019 – Despite all the deficiencies of Turkish political life and democracy, the most important power is the legitimacy of the elections. The most fundamental value of our political future is the voice of the people, and this will be manifested at the ballot box. Regardless of the excuse given and whatever the rationale, what happened after the March 31st election and the decision of annulment by the High Electoral Council has inflicted damage on these core values.
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D Is for a Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy
John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 May 2019
7 May 2019 – What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of political theater. We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered a new age. You can call it the age of authoritarianism. Or fascism. Or oligarchy. Or the American police state. Whatever label you want to put on it, the end result is the same: tyranny.
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Plastic in Paradise: The Battle for the Galápagos Islands’ Future
The Guardian – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 May 2019
3 Apr 2019 – The Galápagos Islands are one of the most pristine locations on the planet, but plastic pollution arriving by sea is threatening this unique habitat. How the archipelago is hoping to lead the worldwide fight against plastic.
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(Français) Êtes-vous plutôt tourismophobe ou touristophobe?
Bernard Duterme | CETRI – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 May 2019
15 avril 2019 – «Tourismophobie », « touristophobie », les deux néologismes sont apparus ces dernières années dans la foulée d’un autre, le « surtourisme », lui-même avatar 2.0 du « tourisme de masse », boosté par l’explosion des minitrips low-costs et l’« airbnbisation » des centres-villes historiques. Qui est touristophobe, qui est tourismophobe aujourd’hui ? Les critiques du tourisme international publiées par le CETRI le sont-elles ? Focus sur les contours et les raisons d’une aversion… moins récente qu’il n’y paraît.
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Venezuelan Military Putsch Defeated as Leopoldo Lopez Takes Refuge in Spanish Embassy
Ricardo Vaz | Venezuelanalysis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 May 2019
30 Apr 2019 – “Interim President” Juan Guaido and right-wing opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez spearheaded an unsuccessful coup attempt in Caracas today. Opposition protesters clashed with security forces while government supporters swiftly mobilized to defend the presidential palace.
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(Italiano) Quando si arriva alla fine della strada è ora di pensare fuori dagli schemi
Howard Richards | Centro Studi Sereno Regis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 May 2019
22 Aprile 2019 – il mondo di ieri basato sulla premessa di guadagnarsi da vivere con un lavoro è finito. Finito! Tassare i ricchi per sovvenzionare i poveri – proposta con le migliori intenzioni da qualcuno a sinistra – è impossibile perché se si prova a tassarli, si trasferiscono. Inoltre, nessuno sa davvero quanto denaro è nascosto in fondi fiduciari dei paradisi fiscali sotto nomi fittizi, o quanto ne guizza per il mondo in frazioni di secondo in transazioni speculative mega-milionarie che rendono insignificante l’economia reale.
→ read full articleMy TED Talk: How I Took on the Tech Titans in Their Lair
Carole Cadwalladr – The Guardian,
29 Apr 2019
21 Apr 2019 – For more than a year, the writer has been probing a darkness at the heart of Silicon Valley. Last week, at a TED talk that became a global viral sensation, she told the tech billionaires they had broken democracy. What happened next? [Watch the Video in the end]
→ read full articleDoes the Overthrow of el-Bashir in Sudan Signal a Second Arab Spring?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Apr 2019
28 Apr 2019 – Of particular interest is whether the mass movement of the Sudanese people and the counterrevolutionary dangers posed by the retention of emergency powers by the military entourage surrounding the former dictator will destroy the hopes of the mobilized population as happened in Egypt in seemingly analogous circumstances.
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(Português) Amor em Tempos de Ira e de Ódio
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Apr 2019
25 abr 2019 – Vivemos no Brasil bolsonariano e no mundo afora tempos de ira e de ódio, fruto do fundamentalismo e da intolerância como se viu em Siri Lanka onde centenas de cristãos foram assassinados no momento em que celebravam a vitória do amor sobre morte na festa de ressurreição. Este cenário macabro nos faz renovar a esperança de que, apesar de tudo, o amor é mais forte do que a morte.
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Anti-Semitism and Jewish Self-Determination
Richard E. Rubenstein – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Apr 2019
Is There a Jewish Right of Self-Determination?
Self-Determination on What Territory?
Self-Determination for Whom and for What?
The Short-Lived Life Expectancy of Autocratic Democracies
Prof. Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Apr 2019
The rise of autocratic leaders via democratic procedures is an outcome that can be either reversed or accentuated. The various autocratic democracies now dominating the political landscape of the world are doomed as a political form, but what will come after them cannot now be foreseen. It could be either an occasion for celebration or despair, or both if different societies move in opposite directions, some toward a deeper democracies, some toward fascist governance.
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‘We Are Hostages’: Indigenous Mapuche Accuse Chile and Argentina of Genocide
Mat Youkee – The Guardian,
29 Apr 2019
12 Apr 2019 – Representatives of South America’s indigenous Mapuche people have petitioned the International Criminal Court to take action against the governments of Chile and Argentina for acts of genocide and crimes against humanity.
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The Essence of Evil: Sex with Children Has Become Big Business in America
John W. Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Apr 2019
23 Apr 2019 – Children, young girls—some as young as 9 years old—are being bought and sold for sex in America. The average age for a young woman being sold for sex is now 13 years old. This is America’s dirty little secret.
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2019 World Press Freedom Index – A Cycle of Fear
Reporters Without Borders – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Apr 2019
The 2019 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) shows how hatred of journalists has degenerated into violence, contributing to an increase in fear. The number of countries regarded as safe, where journalists can work in complete security, continues to decline, while authoritarian regimes continue to tighten their grip on the media.
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On Taking Controversial Public Positions: A Reflection
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Apr 2019
18 Apr 2019 – I have chosen activism to the end, both continuing with sports to the limit of my ability and to honor the political commitments of a citizen pilgrim (dedicated to a journey to a desired and desirable political community that functions now only as an imaginary, yet has the ambition to become a political project) to the best of my ability.
→ read full articleBetween Yes and No, Heaven and Earth with Albert Camus on a Spring Morning
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Apr 2019
18 Apr 2019 – For a writer to fight injustice to the exclusion of creating beauty and living passionately contradicts the deepest desires of the human heart. Albert Camus taught us this. The love of life must inform the rebel’s resistance to injustice… You are right, Albert, “We must simultaneously serve suffering and beauty.”
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(Castellano) El Final del Camino
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Apr 2019
No hay soluciones económicas (es decir, no hay soluciones pro-vida) porque la economía vive y se mueve y tiene su ser dentro del marco del derecho de propiedad y del derecho contractual tal como se lo desarrolló primero en el Imperio Romano, después en los estados sucesores del Imperio Romano durante el período moderno temprano. La ley europea fue impuesta a los habitantes de las Américas, África y Asia por la fuerza. (Consultar Patriarcado y acumulación a escala mundial de María Mies)
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Why Can’t the World’s Greatest Minds Solve the Mystery of Consciousness?
Oliver Burkeman – The Guardian,
22 Apr 2019
Philosophers and scientists have been at war for decades over the question of what makes human beings more than complex robots. The answer might lie with the spiritualists.
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Dismay as Trump Vetoes Bill to End US Support for War in Yemen
Ed Pilkington – The Guardian,
22 Apr 2019
17 Apr 2019 – Donald Trump has vetoed a bill passed by Congress to end US military assistance in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. Politicians decry Trump’s decision as a cynical move and missed opportunity for humanitarian help.
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US Makes Stuff Up to Grease the Skids for War on Iran
William Boardman - Reader Supported News,
22 Apr 2019
19 Apr 2019 – With absolutely zero good reasons for waging war on Iran, the Trump administration goes on making stuff up to lie the country into yet another war. The template looks like the Bush administration’s successful effort to lie the US into the Iraq War, the catastrophic effects of which keep unfolding.
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Julian Assange: Criminal or Benefactor?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2019
14 Apr 2019 – I suppose it is of interest that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have found something to agree about—the criminal indictment of Julian Assange. Trump is acutely vulnerable to the exposure of truth and Clinton blames her electoral defeat in 2016 partly on what WikiLeaks disclosed about her improper use of a government computer to send private emails. Such are the perverse ways of the deeply unjust.
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8 Things You May Not Know about Leonardo Da Vinci, on the 500th Anniversary of His Death
Richard Gunderman – The Conversation,
15 Apr 2019
10 Apr 2019 – Dead five centuries, Leonardo retains a rock star’s fame, well known around the world by just one name. Here, some facts about the man and his legacy.
→ read full articleMaking Peace: Israel/Palestine
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2019
Interview with Samu Tamás Gergő, a Hungarian journalist, April 9, 2019, on conditions of peace for the Palestine/Israel, with some initial emphasis on my experience as UN Special Rapporteur addressing human rights in Occupied Palestine on behalf of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
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Leonardo da Vinci (15 Apr 1452 – 2 May 1519)
Leonardo da Vinci – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2019
In 1466, at the age of fourteen, Leonardo was apprenticed to one of the most successful artists of his day, Andrea di Cione, known as Verrocchio. Verrocchio’s workshop was at the centre of the intellectual currents of Florence, assuring the young Leonardo of an education in the humanities. Leonardo would have been exposed to a vast range of technical skills and had the opportunity to learn drafting, chemistry, metallurgy, metal working, plaster casting, leather working, mechanics and carpentry as well as the artistic skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and modeling.
→ read full articleWhen You Get to the End of the Road It Is Time to Think Outside the Box
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2019
Thinking outside the box means thinking outside private law and outside the political and ethical philosophies that legitimate what Karl Polanyi called ‘market society’ (market society is a genus of which capitalism is a species). It means acknowledging that traditional Muslims are not stupid, in the light of their life experience, when they prefer Sharia Law. Sharia Law with all its faults is at least a possible way to organize human life including everybody (at least ‘all the faithful’) and respecting nature.
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Zimbabwe’s £118,000 Outlay on Judges’ Wigs Met with Fury
Nyasha Chingono – The Guardian,
15 Apr 2019
5 Apr 2019 – Lawyers in Zimbabwe have hit out at a government decision to spend thousands of pounds on wigs made in England for local judges, saying the tradition evokes a colonial past that should not exist in modern Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans reacted with anger questioning the wisdom of the government’s expenditure at a time when courtrooms are cramped and ill-equipped, the national economy is crumbling and, according to the World Food Programme, 63% of the population live below the poverty line.
→ read full articleThe CIA Takeover of America in the 1960s Is the Story of Our Times
Edward Curtin – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Apr 2019
A Quasi-Review of, A Lie Too Big To Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, by Lisa Pease
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I Fought South African Apartheid. I See the Same Brutal Policies in Israel
Ronnie Kasrils – The Guardian,
8 Apr 2019
3 Apr 2019 – As a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist I look with horror on the far-right shift in Israel ahead of this month’s elections, and the impact in the Palestinian territories and worldwide. I was shut down in South Africa for speaking out, and I’m disturbed that the same is happening to critics of Israel now.
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The Communitarianism of Violence in the Sahel: States Confronted with the Challenge of Identity
Abdoulaye Bâ | Cordoba Foundation of Geneva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Apr 2019
31 Mar 2019 – The new violent intrusion of “jihadism” in the Sahel in the early 2000s has plunged the region into a new, atypical phase of insecurity, which is putting a strain on social cohesion in these countries. Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon, among others, have increasingly been hit in the last decade, and to varying degrees, by groups proclaiming “jihad”.
→ read full articleBlood in the Water: How the U.S. and Israel Conspired to Ambush the USS Liberty, by Joan Mellen
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Apr 2019
29 Mar 2019 – The author on the basis of meticulous research probes every detail to establish beyond a shadow of a doubt that the sinking of USS Liberty in the midst of the 1967 War is the greatest moral and political scandal in all of American history. In what was long described as a ‘mistake’ or ‘accident’ Israeli planes and submarines attacked the Liberty, killing 34, wounding 174 American naval personnel.
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The Matrix 20 Years On: How a Sci-Fi Film Tackled Big Philosophical Questions
Richard Colledge – The Conversation,
1 Apr 2019
27 Mar 2019 – Cult film The Matrix was released 20 years ago this month. From the Vedic Scriptures to Plato to Descartes to Kant to Baudrillard, the film explored philosophical dilemmas humanity wrestles with permanently.
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Operation Condor and the United States: Torture, Death Squads and Echoes in the New Millennium
Edward B. Winslow – Global Research,
1 Apr 2019
25 Mar 2019 – On December 2, 1823 in the wake of rebellions in Latin America that had ended Spanish rule in the Western Hemisphere, US President James Monroe announced that European colonial powers that attempted to assert influence in the region would be an overt threat to the national security of the US. Monroe claimed that European monarchies and colonialism were incompatible with the notions of democracy and republicanism that were featured in the New World. Monroe’s proclamation set the stage for US foreign policies for nearly 200 years: US hegemony over Latin America was a natural extension of the messianic visions of Manifest Destiny and US exceptionalism.
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Brunei Introduces Death by Stoning as Punishment for Gay Sex
Hannah Ellis-Petersen – The Guardian,
1 Apr 2019
28 Mar 2019 – Brunei is to begin imposing death by stoning as a punishment for gay sex, rape and adultery from next week, as part of the country’s implementation of sharia law. Homosexuality has been illegal in Brunei since British colonial rule but under the new laws it is now punishable by whipping or death by stoning rather than a prison sentence. The announcement was met with horror by human rights groups.
→ read full articleThomas Piketty vs. Yanis Varoufakis
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Mar 2019
Markets are the primary institution. Governments are secondary. Markets govern governments. Governments do not control markets. The first imperative for any government is to make the economy work for the people. The government can only comply with that imperative by pleasing the markets… This is why the disagreement between Thomas Piketty and Yanis Varoufakis is a splendid educational opportunity to move the conversation to a deeper level, to take to heart the words of Albert Einstein: ‘We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.’
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Total Recall: The People Who Never Forget
Linda Rodriguez McRobbie – The Guardian,
25 Mar 2019
An Extremely Rare Condition May Transform Our Understanding of Memory – If you ask Jill Price to remember any day of her life, she can come up with an answer in a heartbeat. What was she doing on 29 August 1980? “It was a Friday, I went to Palm Springs with my friends.
→ read full articleChallenging Pitzer/Haifa Study Abroad Program: Can Civil Society Act?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Mar 2019
22 Mar 2019 – This post is an open letter to the President of Pitzer College urging support for reconsideration of his veto of a resolution urging the college to suspend its study abroad program with the University of Haifa until Israel ends its discriminatory policies in the educational sphere that affect Palestinians and anyone exercising rights of free expression in a manner that Israel disapproves, and more specifically the BDS Campaign.
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Vaping Is an Urgent Threat to Public Health
Elliott M. Reichardt and Juliet R. Guichon – The Conversation,
25 Mar 2019
14 Mar 2019 – Youth are using e-cigarettes (also known as vaping devices) at a rapidly increasing rate — a practice that constitutes an urgent threat to public health. The evidence shows that vaping is creating a generation of nicotine-addicted youth, who start with e-cigarettes and move on to smoke tobacco products.
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Brazil to Open Indigenous Reserves to Mining without Indigenous Consent
Sue Branford and Maurício Torres | Mongabay – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Mar 2019
14 Mar 2019 – For many years, international and Brazilian mining companies have dreamed of getting access to the mineral wealth lying beneath indigenous lands. And finally, the government of Jair Bolsonaro seems determined to give them that opportunity. On 4 March, while Brazilians were distracted by Carnival celebrations, the new Minister of Mines and Energy Admiral Bento Albuquerque announced plans to permit mining on indigenous land.
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The Attack on the Amazon Accelerates under Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro
Andre Cardoso | Tricontinental Institute for Social Research – Independent Media Institute,
25 Mar 2019
19 Mar 2019 — As the largest tropical forest, biggest reserve of minerals, and main biogenetic reserve on the planet, the Amazon is among the most sought-after territories by global capital. As the attack against the Amazon advances under Brazil’s right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research launches its 14th dossier analyzing the socio-environmental impact on the region.
→ read full article(Italiano) Perché la chiesa ufficiale non vuole discutere né la sessualita né la legge del celibato
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Mar 2019
15 mar 2019 – È innegabile il coraggio di Papa Francesco nell’affrontare apertamente la questione della pedofilia all’interno della chiesa. Ha fatto consegnare alla giustizia civile i pedofili, a cominciare dai preti e religiosi fino ai cardinali per farli giudicare e punire. Nell’incontro di Roma verso la fine di febbraio del 2019 sulla protezione dei minori, il Papa ha imposto otto punti tra i quali “pedofilia zero” e la “protezione dei bambini abusati”.
→ read full articleIlhan Omar, AIPAC, Congress, and the Future of American Democracy
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Mar 2019
The Ilhan Omar Incident: A Zionist Witch Hunt?
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Facebook’s New Move Isn’t about Privacy. It’s about Domination
Siva Vaidhyanathan – The Guardian,
18 Mar 2019
7 Mar 2019 – Mark Zuckerberg announced on 6 Mar that Facebook would be ‘pivoting to privacy’. That’s an empty pledge.
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Elizabeth Warren Is Right – We Must Break Up Facebook, Google and Amazon
Robert Reich – The Guardian,
18 Mar 2019
10 Mar 2019 – The presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren announced on Friday [8 Mar] she wants to bust up giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon. The titans of the new Gilded Age must be busted and the idea has bipartisan support. It’s time big tech was brought to heel.
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Venezuela – Guaidó Planned to Use Arms – Frustration over Stalemate Sets In
Bernhardt Horstmann | Moon of Alabama – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Mar 2019
6 Mar 2019 – New reports about the U.S. coup attempt in Venezuela describe the current mood in Washington as ‘frustration’. They also shine new light on why of the opposition’s plans failed.
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Debunking the Myth That Anti-Zionism Is Antisemitic
Peter Beinart – The Guardian,
11 Mar 2019
7 Mar 2019 – It is a bewildering and alarming time to be a Jew, both because antisemitism is rising and because so many politicians are responding to it not by protecting Jews but by victimising Palestinians. Conflating anti-Zionism with Jew-hatred is a tragic mistake.
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Neoliberalism – The Ideology at the Root of All Our Problems
George Monbiot – The Guardian,
4 Mar 2019
15 Apr 2016 – Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you’ll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is? Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump – neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative?
→ read full articleWorrying about Huawei: Is China Winning the G5 Race?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Mar 2019
20 Feb 2019 – My responses to questions posed by Sputnik News Agency a few days ago. The effort to warn European countries not to use equipment from the Chinese telecom giant, Huawei, is part warning and part threat. It claims to be a matter of security, but seems like an effort to avoid the competitive challenge posed by the superior technology of Huawei by claiming a threat to the security of European countries because China will be able to engage in unauthorized data surveillance.
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Rohingya Crisis: UN Investigates Its ‘Dysfunctional’ Conduct in Myanmar
Emanuel Stoakes and Hannah Ellis-Petersen – The Guardian,
4 Mar 2019
27 Feb 2019 – The UN has launched an inquiry into its conduct in Myanmar over the past decade, where it has been accused of ignoring warning signs of escalating violence prior to an alleged genocide of the Rohingya minority.
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Trump Has Turned Foreign Aid into Shabby Political Theatre
Peter Beaumont - The Guardian,
4 Mar 2019
20 Feb 2019 – Stalled relief supplies for Venezuela at the Colombian border are a stark illustration of Trump’s crudely transactional approach to aid. The flights look something more shabby: a dangerous stunt utilising aid for other purposes, alluded to by UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric: “Humanitarian action needs to be independent of political, military or any other objectives.”
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(Français) José Martí et l’Anti-Impérialisme Etats-Unien: Une Analyse d’Actualité
Christine Gillard | Journal Notre Amérique – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Feb 2019
20 Fév 2019 – Depuis une dizaine d’années les États-Unis regardent à nouveau vers les pays d’Amérique du sud, attentifs à la remontée des oppositions des droites aux gouvernements progressistes. Cette attention vigilante se traduit par des stratégies d’aide plus ou moins directe aux opposants, ainsi que par le déploiement de forces armées sur les frontières sensibles en s’appuyant sur les pays amis comme la Colombie.
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The French Army Has Killed Hamadoun Kouffa, the Malian Robin Hood
Robin Edward Poulton – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Feb 2019
How might the Malian government find a way to negotiate with his successors, to avoid genocide or civil war?
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Training in Conflict Transformation, Morocco
The Cordoba Foundation of Geneva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Feb 2019
The Cordoba Foundation of Geneva’s work in Morocco has focused on building the capacity of university activists in conflict transformation with the aim of equipping them with the skills to alleviate violence between political groups in university campuses. When we asked these activists how their participation in our workshops changed their awareness about conflict and peace promotion, this is what they said.
→ read full articleCan We Imagine Peace for Palestine?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Feb 2019
In such a binational situation, the newly created single state could offer homelands to Jews and Palestinians, while finding a name for the new state that is congenial to both peoples. Maybe this will never happen, but it the most sustainable vision of a peaceful future that responds to decades of diplomatic failure, massive Palestinian suffering and abuse, and recognizes the moral authority and political potency of national resistance and global solidarity, a legislative victory by that unacknowledged Parliament of Humanity.
→ read full articleA Response to Heikki Patomaki: Is the Time Right for a World Political Party?
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Feb 2019
16 Feb 2019 – My commentary on an essay by Heikki Patomiki, a leading Finnish scholar, where he explores and cautiously advocates a civil society global effort to establish a world political party in a form appropriate to global conditions and with the overriding goal of the enhancement of the individual and collective wellbeing of humanity.
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Deflagging of Refugee Rescue Ship a ‘Dark Moment’ for Europe
Karen McVeigh – The Guardian,
18 Feb 2019
12 Feb 2019 – The deflagging of the Aquarius, the last migrant rescue ship in the Mediterranean, represents a “dark moment” in European history, setting a dangerous precedent for states to flout international humanitarian laws.
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Young Woman Dies in Fourth ‘Period Hut’ Tragedy This Year in Nepal
Rebecca Ratcliffe – The Guardian,
18 Feb 2019
6 Feb 2019 – A 21-year-old woman has been become the fourth person known to have died this year as a result of the illegal practice of chhaupadi, whereby menstruating women in Nepal are banished from their homes and forced to sleep in huts.
→ read full articleDenouncing Socialism, Practicing Fascism
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Feb 2019
8 Feb 2019 – With Trump the silences are usually as expressive of his intentions as the incoherent dogmas. Indeed, his Second State of the Union Address (delivered in Congress on February 5, 2019) gives a clear insight into the political mentality of tormentor in chief when it comes to the human condition.
→ read full articleEurope is in Danger! But Why?
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Feb 2019
8 Feb 2019 – Now a hue and cry has gone up that Europe is in danger. The continued existence of Europe’s core ideals –of its very essence– is said to be threatened. The occasion of today’s hue and cry is the possibility that the populist far right might sweep the elections of May 2019. I take this opportunity to question what I take to be the conventional wisdom of the official story.
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Revealed: FBI Investigated Civil Rights Group as ‘Terrorism’ Threat and Viewed KKK as Victims
Sam Levin – The Guardian,
11 Feb 2019
Bureau spied on California activists, citing potential ‘conspiracy’ against the ‘rights’ of neo-Nazis.
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Career War Criminal Elliott Abrams to Lead US on Venezuela
William Boardman - Reader Supported News,
11 Feb 2019
4 Feb 2019 – Some say history repeats itself. Mark Twain said history doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. The January 25 appointment of convicted perjurer Elliott Abrams as the new US Special Envoy on Venezuela is evidence that history just goes on and on and on with ironic cruelty and relentless injustice. That would be especially true if you happen to have the world’s largest proven oil reserve, as Venezuela does.
→ read full articleTrump vs. the Anti-Trumps: It’s the System That Needs Changing, Not just the Personnel
Richard E. Rubenstein – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Feb 2019
President Trump’s adversaries do not understand that in making attacks on his character their primary strategy, they are playing his game, in his stadium, according to his rules. By doing so, they reinforce the stereotypes that Trump has successfully marketed to his base. This sort of personalism excludes a discourse that is essential to solving the problems that gave Trump the presidency: the discourse of systems and system-change.
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The Mysterious Destiny of Each One
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Feb 2019
3 Feb 2019 – Each of us is as old as the universe, 13.7 billion years. We were all there in that tiny point, smaller than the head of a pin, but full of energy and matter. The big bang created the enormous red stars, containing all the physical-chemical elements that comprise the universe and all beings that were created from them. We are the sons and daughters of the stars and cosmic dust.
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(Português) Catástrofe de Brumadinho: O que sobra depois de não sobrar nada?
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Feb 2019
29 Jan 2019 – Muitos no Brasil vivemos uma situação de luto. O luto se impõe quando sofremos perdas: os muitos mortos e centenas de desaparecidos do rompimento da barragem da Vale que destruiu criminosamente a cidade de Brumadinho. A perda da pessoa amada, do emprego que garantia a família, a emigração forçada por causa de ameaças de morte. Maior é o luto quando atinge bens fundamentais de um país: a perda da democracia, dos direitos trabalhistas…
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US Nuclear Weapons: First Low-Yield Warheads Roll Off the Production Line
Julian Borger – The Guardian,
4 Feb 2019
28 Jan 2019 – The US has begun making a new, low-yield nuclear warhead for its Trident missiles that arms control advocates warn could lower the threshold for a nuclear confrontation. New type of weapon, ordered by Trump’s nuclear posture review, could make violent response to conflict more likely, say experts.
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The Future of Statehood: Israel & Palestine
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Feb 2019
3 Feb 2019 – Fatah, Hamas, the Future of Statehood and Peace Prospects – Interview from Brazilian journalist Rodrigo Craveiro for Correio Braziliense on current prospects of Palestinian national movement.
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