Articles by ICH
We found 2596 results.
Human Rights after the Failed Coup in Turkey
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Aug 2016
It is probably wise to separate human rights concerns from an appraisal of Turkish constitutional democracy. It is quite possible that present tendencies toward a more inclusive democracy will continue, and at the same time, denials of human rights are almost certain to persist, and justify scrutiny and vigilance.
→ read full articleBeyond Jewish Identity: Exceptionalism Revisited
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Aug 2016
20 Aug 2016 – The problem with Jewish identity is Jewish identity! By this I mean, the hegemonic forms of Jewish exceptionalism to which most Jews are enthralled, including a provocative insistence on willed disaffiliation in a few rate instances… Instead of Jewish exceptionalism (or American exceptionalism) the call of this bio-political moment is for species exceptionalism.
→ read full articleWill Russia Reject Neoliberalism?
Paul Craig Roberts and Michael Hudson – CounterPunch,
15 Aug 2016
Paul Craig Roberts and Michael Hudson explain why hooking Russia’s fate to Western neoliberalism would doom the country’s sovereignty.
→ read full article‘Dreaming of Freedom:’ Palestinian Child Prisoners Speak
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Aug 2016
8 Aug 2016 – This is a collection of reflections by child prisoners in their own words, edited by Norma Hisham. It is a successor to her earlier volume of Palestinian prison recollections. I post below some blurbs that convey the importance of Dreaming of Freedom and the text of my Foreword. As much as anything I have read, these texts convey the reality of the experience of all Palestinians living under occupation or as exiles or as a subjugated minority.
→ read full articleMusicians
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Aug 2016
Ben Zanders, the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, led an audience of 1000 at a conference…
→ read full article(Castellano) Intento de Golpe de Estado en Turquía, Nueva Constitución en Chile
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Aug 2016
¿Qué es lo que es la democracia? Según el realismo critico la palabra “democracia” –y cualquier otra palabra—es una herramienta de acción social. Hablar es actuar. Esgrimir la palabra “democracia” es una acción. Debe ser una acción responsable. Sucesos actuales en Turquía y en Chile subrayan la importancia práctica de esta perspectiva teórica.
→ read full articleAftermath of Political Ruptures: Iran, Egypt, Turkey
Richard Falk | Social Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Aug 2016
12 Aug 2016 – This post offers a commentary of recent dramatic developments within Turkey and the largely critical international media and diplomatic responses. It compares international reactions to political ruptures in Iran (1979) and Egypt (2011, 2013), and encourages greater public attention to the importance attached by the Turkish citizenry to the defeat of the coup attempt and more sympathy with the kind of political leadership provided by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan since the coup attempt of July 15th.
→ read full articleContext Matters: Turkey after the Failed Coup
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Aug 2016
Part of the prescribed contextualization, given Turkish realities, is to avoid premature international appraisals, admit underlying uncertainties, and allow enough imaginative space to enable a hopeful future for Turkey.
→ read full article
Beat It – Solo Guitar Arrangement (Music Video of the Week)
Michael Jackson | Miguel Rivera – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Aug 2016
I decided to start working on this arrangement because it was a great challenge. When you listen to the chorus of the original song, you can hear the main riff sounding together with the Michael’s vocal melody and, of course, drums, bass and other instruments. My objective was to play all of these parts together.
→ read full articleGrowing Justice: Transcending the Oppressive History of Our Food System
Michelle Stearn | The Next System Project – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Aug 2016
Transforming our system into one rooted in provision means more than just creating new organizations that aim to do well for the community; it will require that we rewrite the beliefs, exchanges, and rules of our own interactions.
→ read full articleClimate Change Activism: A Post-Mortem
John Michael Greer | The Archdruid Report – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Aug 2016
It’s not inappropriate to ask what happened to all the apparent political momentum the climate change movement had ten or fifteen years ago, and why a movement so apparently well organized, well funded, and backed by so large a scientific consensus failed so completely. In my experience, at least, if you raise this question among climate change activists, the answer you’ll get is that there was a well-funded campaign that deployed disinformation against them. So?
→ read full articleTrump vs. Clinton vs. Sanders: The Blind Leading the Blind Leading the Blind
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Aug 2016
My thesis is that the proposals put forward by Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders offer no solutions to the fiscal crisis of the state, and partly for this reason do not and cannot promise social integration. I am not complaining. I am just trying to do my part as a philosopher to help generate better ideas, ideas that will work.
→ read full articleNever Thought of That…
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Aug 2016
Gee!
→ read full articleIs Genocide a Controversial International Crime?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Aug 2016
Why ‘Genocide’ is still a Controversial Crime? In this strikingly original, strange, and brilliant book, Philippe Sands raises a haunting question among a tangle of other intriguing issues discussed throughout East-West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity (New York: Knopf, 2016).
→ read full articleHow the United States Government Obstructs Peace for Palestine/Israel
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Jul 2016
The United States Government has not only taken Israel’s side in diplomatic negotiation between Israel and Palestine, but has actively opposed all moves toward the establishment of an independent sovereign state for the Palestinian people (meaning that the American endorsement of the two-state mantra as the consensus formula for peace was a deliberate official lie).
→ read full articleNarrating Turkey at a Time of National Crisis
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Jul 2016
In times of tension, it is particularly important for the defense of what is good and identification of what would worsen the status quo, to strive for balanced assessments, always hoping for the best, while trying to identify and oppose any and all steps toward coercive authoritarianism. I have had the same reaction to conversations in the United States with friends who deem the country to have become ‘fascist.’
→ read full articleA Farmer and His Horse
Prof. Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Jul 2016
How a Seemingly Bad Luck Can Turn Out to Be a Good Luck
→ read full articleThe Nice Terror Attack: Mind at the End of Its Tether
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Jul 2016
Nice is an opportunity to work on learning what we should be trying to learn anyway: how to live in peace with one another. As Baruch Spinoza pointed out in 1677 –and it was already old news then—anybody can kill anybody. Nice dramatizes the fact that peace through law enforcement is not feasible. Anybody can kill people with a truck, and there is no way to deploy police everywhere to stop that from happening. Peace is a table with four legs: justice, justice, justice, and justice.
→ read full articleAn Unlikely AMEXIT: Pivoting Away from the Middle East
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Jul 2016
Unfortunately, for America and the peoples throughout the Middle East the US seems incapable of extricating itself from yet another geopolitical quagmire that is partly responsible for generating extra-regional terrorism of the sort that has afflicted Europe in the last two years.
→ read full articleHeaven and Hell
Prof. Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Jul 2016
St. Peter showed a visitor heaven and hell.
→ read full articleSmearing BDS Supporters
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Jul 2016
The misappropriation of anti-Semitism as a propaganda weapon to smear pro-Palestinian activists, especially those supportive of the BDS Campaign. Also the issues of representation by explaining the formal differences between the PLO and PA, which do not seem presently consequential in my understanding.
→ read full articleDeath in Black and White
Michael Eric Dyson – The New York Times,
11 Jul 2016
7 Jul 2016 – We, black America, are a nation of nearly 40 million souls inside a country of more than 320 million people. And I fear now that it is clearer than ever that you, white America, will always struggle to understand us. But there’s one thing most of us agree on: We don’t want cops to be executed at a peaceful protest. We also don’t want cops to kill us without fear that they will ever face a jury, much less go to jail, even as the world watches our death on a homemade video recording. This is a difficult point to make as a racial crisis flares around us.
→ read full articleWhy Arms Control Is the Enemy of Nuclear Disarmament
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Jul 2016
No First Use: Arms Control versus Disarmament Perspectives
→ read full article(Português) O que as castanhas do Brasil têm a ver com o Colesterol?
Michael Greger M.D. | Projecto Naturopatia – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Jul 2016
Um estudo avaliou o impacto que o consumo de uma única porção de castanhas do Brasil poderia ter nos níveis de colesterol em voluntários saudáveis.
→ read full articleAre We Heading Toward Global Autocracy, Ecological Collapse, Political Malaise?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Jul 2016
The failures of neoliberalism, the successes of digitization, the scourge of random violence, and more broadly, the dilemmas posed by late modernity are among the root causes of this global crisis of legitimate governance, which is deepened while being mishandled by unprecedented ecological challenges, extremely irresponsible geopolitical leadership, and a variety of ultra-nationalist backlashes against the encroachments of economic globalization.
→ read full articleTransCanada Files NAFTA Suit Demanding More Than $15 Billion for Keystone XL Rejection
Michael Brune | EcoWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jun 2016
On Jun 24 2016, foreign oil company TransCanada filed a lawsuit against the U.S. under NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, arguing that the U.S. rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline violated NAFTA’s broad rights for foreign investors by thwarting the company’s “expectations.” As compensation, TransCanada is demanding more than $15 billion from U.S. taxpayers.
→ read full articleReconciliation in Bosnia
Prof. Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jun 2016
In Travnik, there were two communities (Bosniaks and Croats). For one and a half year of weekly lectures, they did not mingle at all. All the Croats, who are Catholics, sat on the left side of the room, along with a nun, separated by a walkway from all the Bosniaks, who are Muslims, who sat on the right side, along with an Imam. During breaks, they went to separate rooms to drink tea.
→ read full article(Português) Touradas em Portugal
Cláudia Vantacich | RiseUp Portugal – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jun 2016
Reportagem espectacular sobre touradas. Todos os argumentos, todos os factos, todas as razões num brilhante trabalho.
→ read full article
(Português) As Touradas: Violência, Crueldade, Ignorância, Futilidade – A Vergonha de Portugal
Cláudia Vantacich – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jun 2016
“A etologia como ramo da zoologia, explica que o comportamento não é determinado pela genética, mas pelo ambiente e interacções do animal. Ou seja, independentemente das características genéticas, o seu comportamento será sempre condicionado, em última análise, pelo propósito e personalidade de quem os cria, tal como acontece com os cães.”
→ read full articleAung San Suu Kyi Is in Power. So Why Is She Ignoring Her Country’s Most Vulnerable People?
Richard Cockett – Foreign Policy,
20 Jun 2016
For the Rohingya, Burma’s new democratic government is little better than the old dictatorship.
→ read full articleAssembly Line & Automation Works
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 Jun 2016
Two people went along a road with pick and shovel.
→ read full articleA Weak UN Ensures a Weak Secretary General
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jun 2016
13 Jun 2016 – There are many angles of interpretation relevant to the startling admission by Ban Ki-moon that he succumbed to undisguised diplomatic pressure when removing Saudi Arabia from the ‘shame list’ of countries whose armies are found responsible the maiming and killing of children, earning them dishonorable mentioned in an annex to the annual UN report on violations of children’s rights.
→ read full articleLife Management
Prof. Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jun 2016
A professor was giving a lecture on time management.
→ read full articleNGOs Call on Thailand to Better Protect Rohingya Refugees, Victims of Trafficking
Nontarat Phaicharoen – Benar News,
13 Jun 2016
9 Jun 2016 – A group of NGOs has marked the anniversary of the 2015 Andaman Sea migration crisis by calling on Thailand to end “arbitrary and indefinite detention” of refugees from Myanmar who came ashore then, and do more to protect survivors and witnesses of human trafficking.
→ read full articleZionism, Anti-Semitism, BDS, and the United Nations
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jun 2016
The misuse of anti-Semitism by those defending Israel to deflect a rising tide of civil society activism and public criticism of Israeli policies and practices.
→ read full articleManagers
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Jun 2016
A man is flying in a hot-air balloon and realizes he is lost.
→ read full articleBy the Way
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jun 2016
Having email is like…
→ read full articleA Moral Revolution? Reflections on President Obama’s Visit to Hiroshima
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Jun 2016
5 Jun 2016 – There is doubt that President Barack Obama’s visit to Hiroshima this May crossed some thresholds hitherto taboo. Above all the visit was properly heralded as the first time a sitting American president has dared such a pilgrimage… The whole idea of impunity for the victors and capital punishment for the losers is morally regressive.
→ read full articleBDS Is Free Speech, Says Dutch Government
Michael Deas | The Electronic Intifada – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 May 2016
25 May 2016 – The Netherlands has affirmed that activism calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel is a form of free speech. Dutch foreign minister Bert Koenders said that “statements or meetings concerning BDS are protected by freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, as enshrined in the Dutch constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.”
→ read full articleThe Scope for Parallel Diplomacy Has Never Been Greater
David Richmond – Foreign Policy In Focus,
30 May 2016
One of the great diplomatic breakthroughs for which the Obama presidency will undoubtedly be remembered is the re-establishment of relations with Cuba. The role of the Vatican in this rapprochement serves as a reminder that even in the era of systematised diplomacy, significant benefit can be derived from an informal process that takes place away from the limelight.
→ read full articleDrunks
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 May 2016
Recently, a routine police patrol was parked outside a local neighborhood bar in Minnesota. Late in the evening, the officer noticed a man leaving the bar so intoxicated that he could barely walk.
→ read full articleOn (Not) Loving Henry Kissinger
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 May 2016
There is an irony that would be amusing if it was not depressing about news that Donald Trump has been courting the 92-year old foreign policy sorcerer Henry Kissinger. Of course, the irony is that earlier in the presidential campaign Hilary Clinton proudly claimed Kissinger as ‘a friend,’ and acknowledged that he “relied on his counsel” while she served as Obama’s Secretary of State.
→ read full articleGeneral Golan’s Holocaust Remembrance Day Speech
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 May 2016
Speaking at Tel Yitzak Kibbutz, where the Massuah Institute for Holocaust Studies is located, General Golan urged that this very special day of observance in Israel be treated as an occasion for soul-searching. He placed this call in an extraordinary context by suggesting that conditions in Israel were disturbing in ways relevant to the Holocaust, horror of horrors.
→ read full article(Français) Brésil: le coup d´Etat
Michael Löwy – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 May 2016
Michael Löwy é um brasileiro de ascendência austríaco- francesa, sociólogo da religião e analista político. Foi por muitos anos professor na Sorbonne mas nunca deixou dar sua contribuição ao Brasil com frequentes viagens e cursos dados a distintos grupos, inclusive a grupos de base. Da França nos oferece esta pertinente análise do golpe parlamentar sofrido contra a presidenta Dilma. É um olhar de fora cuja distância permite ver melhor o interor deste processo ilegítimo. Lboff
15 mai 2016 – Appellons un chat un chat. Ce qui vient de se passer au Brésil, avec la destitution de la présidente élue, Dilma Roussef, est un coup d’état.
Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Daniel Berrigan
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 May 2016
I was privileged to know Daniel Berrigan in the last stages of the Vietnam War, not well, but well enough to appreciate his quality of moral radiance and to admire the spiritual dedication that he exhibited in opposing the Vietnam War, and later nuclearism. I also knew Dan’s brother, Phil, who shared these remarkable qualities.
→ read full articleThe TTIPing Point: Protests Threaten Trans-Atlantic Trade Deal
Dinah Deckstein, Simone Salden and Michaela Schießl – Der Spiegel,
16 May 2016
An unprecedented protest movement of a scope not seen since the Iraq war in Germany has pushed negotiations over the TTIP trans-Atlantic free trade agreement to the brink of collapse. The demonstrations are characterized by a level of professionalism not previously seen.
→ read full articleDictionary Wisdom
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 May 2016
Ruth and Golda were walking along Hendon High Street. Ruth says,
→ read full articleMaking the Most of Obama’s Hiroshima Visit
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 May 2016
Message to President Barack Obama with Respect to Forthcoming Hiroshima Visit – 11 May 2016 | I sent the following message to the White House today, and encourage readers of this blog to do the same.
→ read full articleDreaming of the Next UN Secretary General
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 May 2016
The Charter is astonishingly silent about the qualifications that should guide the selection of a secretary general, but it is clear on the procedure: a recommendation must be made by the Security Council to the General Assembly for its approval. This means that any one of the P-5 can use their veto to block a candidate.
→ read full articleGood Deeds
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 May 2016
Scouts are supposed to do at least one good deed every day. A scout master asked three little scouts at camp in the evening, “What good deed did you do today?”
→ read full articleZupta Scandal Causes South African Government to Intervene to Save Indian Investor
Richard Smallteacher | CorpWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 May 2016
The South African government has intervened to support the Indian-born Gupta brothers, owners of a sprawling conglomerate with interests from mining to media, following a scandal that suggested that the brothers had accumulated so much power that they could dictate cabinet-level decisions in the country.
→ read full articleIf Obama Visits Hiroshima
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 May 2016
As the global approach to nuclear weapons, climate change, and neoliberal globalization should make clear, we are not likely to survive as a species very much longer if we continue to base world order on a blend of state-centric national interests and dominant actor geopolitics. Obama has this rare opportunity to choose the road not often traveled upon, and there is no better place to start such a voyage than at Hiroshima.
→ read full articleDebacle at Doha: The Collapse of the Old Oil Order
Michael T. Klare - TomDispatch,
2 May 2016
For a country that more than any other has rested its claim to wealth and power on the production and sale of petroleum, this is a revolutionary statement. If Saudi Arabia says it is ready to begin a move away from reliance on petroleum, we are indeed entering a new world in which, among other things, the titans of oil production will no longer hold sway over our lives as they have in the past.
→ read full articleRefugee Crisis: When Is a Tragedy a Massacre?
Richard Seymour – Al Jazeera,
2 May 2016
The EU is simply determined not to be a destination for refugees. With illegal pushbacks, brutal detainment, and harassment at sea, the options for refugees are increasingly severe.
→ read full articleEthnic Cleansing in Palestine: Home Demolitions on the Rise
Richard Hardigan - CounterPunch,
25 Apr 2016
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that during the years 2012-2015, an average of 50 homes were demolished in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem every month. So far this year, the army has destroyed 539 structures, a rate that is more than three times higher. In all of 2015, 453 buildings were demolished, so the sharp surge in this kind of activity is an extremely recent phenomenon.
→ read full articleAn Anecdote about Fascism
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Apr 2016
I tried to engage her in conversation about evolving Israeli attitudes toward the Palestinians and the related failed diplomacy, but she seemed rather uninformed and perhaps even disinterested as if the peace agenda was not really present in her active consciousness. Then all at once she said something that surprised me. “I am not looking forward to returning to Israel, it is becoming a fascist state.”
→ read full articleMinor Mistake
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Apr 2016
A new monk shows up at a monastery where the monks spend their time making copies of ancient books.
→ read full articleIf Obama Visits Hiroshima
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Apr 2016
Obama has this rare opportunity to choose the road not often traveled upon, and there is no better place to start such a voyage than at Hiroshima. We in civil society would then with conviction promote his nuclear legacy as ‘From Prague to Hiroshima,’ and feel comfortable that this president has finally earned the honor of the Nobel Peace Prize prematurely bestowed.
→ read full articleShould We Vote for Hillary Clinton? A Meditation
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Apr 2016
14 Apr 2016 – It seems now almost inevitable that Hillary Clinton will be the candidate for the Democratic Party in November. This inevitability came about by a combination of ‘a Southern strategy’ […] Should feelings of solidarity and revolutionary patience outweigh a principled refusal to go along with militarist opportunism?
→ read full articleOvarian Cancer Victims Win Talcum Powder Lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson
Richard Smallteacher, CorpWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Apr 2016
4 Apr 2016 – Johnson & Johnson has been sued by over 1,200 women who blame the company’s talcum powder products for their ovarian cancer. Not only are U.S. courts beginning to agree with them, juries have started to award victims millions of dollars in compensation.
→ read full articleRest in Power Toussaint L’Ouverture: Saluting Haiti’s Triumph against Colonialism
Richard Sudan – Russia Today,
11 Apr 2016
April 7th marks the passing of one of the greatest, most revered and most important figures of African and world history, Toussaint L’Ouverture one of the liberators of Haiti. By 1801 Haiti, an island made up of half a million slaves, two-thirds of whom had been born in Africa, declared independence from European colonialists.
→ read full articleReading Jeff Halper’s ‘War against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification’
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Apr 2016
I believe that Jeff Halper’s book deserves the widest possible reading. It explains clearly and convincingly one of the deepest and least understood roots of Israel’s diplomatic support throughout the world, which is its role as a niche arms supplier and influential tactical specialist in waging wars against peoples who dare offer resistance to state power as variously deployed against them.
→ read full articleSuccessful Skills
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Apr 2016
The radio announcer Daniel Shorr was considering working in television early in his career and asked someone what it would take to be successful there.
→ read full articleWriting a Blank Check on War for the President: How the United States Became a Prisoner of War and Congress Went MIA
Andrew J. Bacevich - TomDispatch,
11 Apr 2016
With the safety or survival of the nation said to be at risk, the Constitution, basic law of the land — otherwise considered sacrosanct — becomes nonbinding, subject to being waived at the whim of government authorities who are impatient, scared, panicky, or just plain pissed off.
→ read full article(Français) Un réfugié, ça vaut combien d’euros ?
Michel Collon, Investig’Action – TRANSCEND Media Service|,
4 Apr 2016
Ainsi, l’Union Européenne vient de signer avec la Turquie cet « Accord de la honte ». Qui en fait supprime le droit d’asile, un droit fondamental pourtant garanti par l’article 14 de la Déclaration universelle des Droits de l’Homme : « Devant la persécution, toute personne a le droit de chercher asile et de bénéficier de l’asile en d’autres pays. »
→ read full articleThree Unshakeable Pillars of American Foreign Policy
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Apr 2016
3 Apr 2016 – It deserves to be noticed that it is only the two anti-establishment candidates who have challenged the foreign policy consensus that has guided American politicians ever since the end of World War II: consistently express unconditional support for the Pentagon, Wall Street, and Israel.
→ read full articleTruly Religious
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Apr 2016
A convent was being renovated. The workers worked hard all day practically without any breaks.
→ read full articleThe Great Ponzi Scheme of the Global Economy
Michael Hudson and Chris Hedges – CounterPunch,
28 Mar 2016
We’re going to be discussing a great Ponzi scheme that defines not only the U.S. but the global economy, how we got there and where we’re going. With economist Michael Hudson, a professor of economics who worked for many years on Wall Street, where you don’t succeed if you don’t grasp Marx’s dictum that capitalism is about exploitation. And he is also, I should mention, the godson of Leon Trotsky.
→ read full articleReflections on the Brussels Attack
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Mar 2016
The themes addressed and the policies proposed are advanced in a tentative spirit. Debate and reflection are urgently needed with respect to the political violence that is being unleashed in various forms in the West and non-West.
→ read full article
Earth Song (MUSIC VIDEO OF THE WEEK)
Michael Jackson – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Mar 2016
A pungent, powerful, moving video performed by Michael Jackson showing side by side beauty and destruction, life and death. Much sadness, pain and suffering caused by humankind. What about the earth? What about the children? He asks. Are we really destined to kill the planet and every life in it? What about us? This video was forbidden in the USA when it was launched in 1995.
→ read full articleWives
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Mar 2016
“My wife is good; she made me a necktie out of an old pair of pants.”
→ read full articleHow Neoliberalism Really Works: A Small Anecdote
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Mar 2016
27 Feb 2016 – Along with several million, I suffer from the eye disease known as glaucoma. It can be managed, rather than cured, by taking eye drops several times a day.
→ read full articleThe Impossibility of Politics – And How to Make Politics Possible
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Mar 2016
The thesis that politics today is impossible (or stated a bit less briefly, that the goals that politics sets out to achieve are unattainable) is so far more a provocation than a hypothesis. To make it into a meaningful claim I have to assign meanings to the word “politics” and to the word “impossible.”
→ read full articleWhy Democratic Party Foreign Policy Fails and Will Continue to Fail
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Mar 2016
5 Mar 2016 – An earlier version of this essay appeared on March 2, 2016 in The Progressive Magazine. It tries to explain the entrapment of liberal Democrats in an iron cage of militarism when it comes to international security policy.
→ read full articleMajor American Jewish Leader Changes His Mind about Israel
Rabbi Michael Lerner - Tikkun,
29 Feb 2016
The Israel of today is very far from anything I dreamed of and worked for throughout my career. I can clearly remember the day in 1948 when the State of Israel was established. I was in the fourth grade at the Yeshivah of Flatbush in Brooklyn. The entire school was summoned to the schoolyard in celebration of the momentous occasion.
→ read full articleKeen Observation
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Feb 2016
A famous surgeon told his students,
→ read full articleHollywood’s Grotesque Animal Abuse
Michael Howard - CounterPunch,
22 Feb 2016
Exposing Hollywood’s sordid history of animal cruelty.
→ read full articleFormer U.N. Chief Boutros Boutros-Ghali Dead at 93
Michelle Nichols, Reuters – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Feb 2016
Former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a blunt-spoken Egyptian who led the world body through global turmoil as it defined its peacekeeping role and lost his job over disputes with Washington, died on Tuesday [16 Feb 2016]. He was 93.
→ read full articleA Polyamorist View of Monogamy
Michael McDonald – Together Magazine,
22 Feb 2016
We think of monogamy as natural, but it’s actually quite advanced—the trouble is we default to it out of fear instead of choosing it consciously.
→ read full articleChurch Announcements
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Feb 2016
Ladies don’t forget the rummage sale.
→ read full articleAn Open Letter to Ban Ki-moon
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Feb 2016
We need all to realize what else should not be tolerated: while the Palestinian flag flies outside UN Headquarters, the Palestinian people have lived for almost 70 years under the daily brutalities of occupation, refugee camps, Gazan captivity, and involuntary exile. Can you bring yourself to call this ordeal ‘intolerable’? Then at least you could leave your UN post with a feeling that when your career was no longer in jeopardy you spoke truth to power.
→ read full articleRestructuring Rather Than Dividing Syria
Ghassan Michel Rubeiz – The Arab Daily News,
15 Feb 2016
8 Feb 2016 – Syrians are no longer in charge of their future; outsiders seem to be. The threat to divide Syria, as a solution, is tempting but fatal. Syria ought to be restructured and “reinvented” to allow healing and gradual reunification.
→ read full articleMorgan Stanley to Pay $3.2 Billion over Contributors to ’08 Crisis
Michael Virtanen, Associated Press – Reader Supported News,
15 Feb 2016
Morgan Stanley will pay $3.2 billion in a settlement over bank practices that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis, including misrepresentations about the value of mortgage-backed securities, authorities announced Thursday [11 Feb 2016].
→ read full articleWaiting for Rainbows
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Feb 2016
Below is the cover of my recently published book of poems that can be obtained from Amazon. I have received some inquiries, and although I have been writing poems for the past 60 years, I have never gathered the courage to publish them in one place before.
→ read full articleThe Russell-Einstein Manifesto [on Nuclear Weapons]
Student Pugwash University of Michigan– TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Feb 2016
“In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the Governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.”
→ read full articleU.S. Joins the Chorus of Countries Taking Steps to Distinguish between Israel and Its Illegal Settlements
Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man - +972 Magazine,
8 Feb 2016
The end of normalcy for Israeli settlements? Stricter trade guidelines, harsher rhetoric and corporate responsibility campaigns all send a clear message: Israel’s closest allies are no longer willing to passively accept the occupation, and the only consensus on settlements is that they are illegal.
→ read full articleIsrael’s Security Establishment Makes Public Plea for a Two State Solution
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Feb 2016
7 Feb 2016 – Rarely, if ever, has a newspaper ad mobilized such influential backing for a position of prominent Israelis at odds with the elected leadership of the Israeli state. A full page add appeared in the New York Times on February 4, 2016. Its message was proclaimed in large bold type: “Israel’s Security Chiefs Agree: Separation into two States is in Israel’s vital security interest.”
→ read full articleThe Complex Problematics of Palestinian Representation
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Feb 2016
This post attempts to address the current quandary that arises from the collapse of Oslo diplomacy and the seeming continuing encroachment of Israel on the territories long believed to provide the Palestinian people with a sovereign state of their own.
→ read full articleSigning Polluter-Friendly TPP Trade Deal Is Gambling Away Our Future
Michael Brune, EcoWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Feb 2016
For years, the Sierra Club has reported on and campaigned against the TPP’s threats to our air, water, climate, families and communities. The U.S. Trade Representative is gambling away our jobs, our clean air and water, and our future by pushing the polluter-friendly Trans-Pacific Partnership, so it only makes sense that it was signed in a casino and convention center.
→ read full articleClimate Change: Post-Paris Challenges and Concerns
Hilal Elver and Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Feb 2016
It is time to move on from the aura of good feelings of accomplishment created by the Paris Climate Change Conference and begin asking some hard questions. Above all we need to assess whether an agreement that consists of voluntary pledges is workable and sufficient, and whether its contribution to slowing global warming should be celebrated or lamented at this stage.
→ read full articleMartin Luther King, Jr.’s Timeless Vision
Michael Nagler, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Jan 2016
He came out against the war. Against all advice. Just as Gandhi honed his nonviolence in South Africa and then felt that he was ready to carry the struggle into the heart of the empire, King here announced that he had enlarged his passion from those of his own race in one region of the country to the policies of that country itself.
→ read full articleAn Open Letter to the American People: Political Responsibility in the Nuclear Age
Richard Falk, David Krieger and Robert Laney – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Jan 2016
What is most notable about the Nuclear Age is that we humans, by our scientific and technological ingenuity, have created the means of our own demise. The world currently is confronted by many threats to human wellbeing, and even civilizational survival, but we focus here on the particular grave dangers posed by nuclear weapons and nuclear war.
→ read full article‘Voluntary’ International Law and the Paris Agreement
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Jan 2016
16 Jan 2016 – Now that the celebrations by the diplomats have ended, it is time to take a hard look at what was and was not accomplished by the Paris Agreement. What we need and should seek is a moral epistemology that reconnects knowledge with human values configured so as to achieve justice, sustainability, and the pleasures of ‘a good life.’
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Man in the Mirror (Music Video of the Week)
Michael Jackson - michaeljacksonVEVO,
25 Jan 2016
Music video by Michael Jackson performing Man in the Mirror. © 1987 MJJ Productions Inc.
44,401,244 Views on YouTube (Lyrics below video)
On Ghada Ageel’s Edited ‘Israeli Apartheid in Palestine’
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Jan 2016
Ghada Ageel’s expertly edited ‘Israeli Apartheid in Palestine: Hard Laws and Harder Experiences’ has just been published by the University of Albert Press. It is an important contribution to Palestinian studies with an especially welcome linking of activism, scholarly analysis, and experiential narrative, each a vital perspective represented by excellent chapter writers.
→ read full articleThe Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare
Nathaniel Richjan – The New York Times Magazine,
11 Jan 2016
The farmer said that his cows were dying left and right. He believed that the DuPont chemical company, which until recently operated a site in Parkersburg that is more than 35 times the size of the Pentagon, was responsible. Tennant had tried to seek help locally, he said, but DuPont just about owned the entire town.
→ read full article(Castellano) Como Entender la Política y Como Cambiarla
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Jan 2016
Lo que distingue el político de los demás oficios y profesiones no es en fin ninguna calidad moral distinta, sino el hecho que le corresponde cumplir una tarea que en la época que nos toca vivir es imposible. La tesis que hoy la política es imposible, o –dicho de una manera menos escueta– que los objetivos que la política se propone sean inalcanzables, es hasta aquí todavía más una provocación que una hipótesis.
→ read full articleWibisono’s Resignation as UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Jan 2016
I am surprised, but not shocked. Surprised because he should have known that he was faced with a dilemma between doing the job properly of reporting on Israel’s crimes and human rights abuses and gaining Israel’s cooperation. Not shocked, indeed grateful, as it illuminates the difficulty confronting anyone charged with truthful reporting on the Palestinian ordeal under occupation, and by his principled resignation Wibisono doesn’t allow Israel to get away with neutering the position of special rapporteur.
→ read full articleChildren
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Jan 2016
All parents want their children to be independent.
→ read full articleMyanmar’s Nobel Peace Prize Winner [Aung San Suu Kyi] and Crimes against Humanity
Nicholas Kristof – International New York Times,
11 Jan 2016
9 Jan 2015 – Soon the world will witness a remarkable sight: a beloved Nobel Peace Prize winner presiding over 21st-century concentration camps. [Pres. Barack Obama, another NPP recipient, sets the world on fire, killing by Drones indiscriminately around the globe.]
→ read full article