Articles by OWN

We found 299 results.


When War Becomes Major Business
Author Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Mar 2021

That Which Unites ‘the Good Guys’ under God and the Dollar

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Workers
Author Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Mar 2021

Working

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Correct?
Author Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Mar 2021

Or did you?

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United States Counterterrorism Operations, 2018-2020
Watson Institute/Brown University | Costs of War - TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Mar 2021

Feb 2021 – From 2018 to 2020, the United States government undertook what it labeled “counterterrorism” activities in 85 countries. The map illustrates countries in which the U.S. government conducted operations it explicitly described as counterterrorism, in an outgrowth of President George W. Bush’s “Global War on Terror.”

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Will 2021 Be Public Banking’s Watershed Moment?
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Mar 2021

4 Mar 2021 – Just over two months into the new year, 2021 has already seen a flurry of public banking activity. Sixteen new bills to form publicly-owned banks or facilitate their formation were introduced in eight U.S. states just in Jan and Feb. Faced with the dire Covid-19 crisis, some lawmakers are starting to see publicly-owned banks as the key to ensuring an equitable economic recovery.

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Gym talk
Author Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Mar 2021

No comment…

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The Gamers’ Uprising against Wall Street Has Deep Populist Roots
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Feb 2021

11 Feb 2021 – A short squeeze frenzy driven by a new generation of gamers captured financial headlines in recent weeks, centered on a struggling strip mall video game store called GameStop. Wall Street may own the country, but a new generation of “retail” stock market traders is fighting back.

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The Saga
Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Feb 2021

Following orders… Right!

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Upcoming Ruling in Assange Trial Threatens More Than Just Freedom of the Press
Steve Brown | CovertAction Magazine - TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Jan 2021

2 Jan 2021 – His two children could lose their father for the rest of their lives. Although important legal principles are at stake in the extradition trial of Julian Assange, for which a ruling will be handed down on January 4, it should not be forgotten that there are important human issues at stake as well. One such issue is Assange’s health.

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Fools’ Crusade: Why United States Provocations towards China Will Lead to Disaster
Jeff J. Brown and Jeremy Kuzmarov | The Transnational - TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Dec 2020

15 Dec 2020 – On July 21st, The New York Times ran a front-page article highlighting the revival of the Committee on the Present Danger, a Cold War organization that called for greater military spending to meet the Soviet threat, but whose focus is now on China. Joe Biden told Foreign Affairs that the U.S. needed to get tough with China calling Chinese leader Xi Jinping a “thug” who “doesn’t have a democratic bone in his body.” A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that 73 per cent of Americans had an unfavourable view of China.

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Tackling the Infrastructure and Unemployment Crises: The “American System” Solution
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 21 Dec 2020

18 Dec 2020 – A self-funding national infrastructure bank modeled on the “American System” of Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt would help solve not one but two of the country’s biggest problems.

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Why the Fed Needs Public Banks
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt - TRANSCEND Media Service, 7 Dec 2020

3 Dec 2020 – The Fed’s policy tools – interest rate manipulation, quantitative easing, and “Special Purpose Vehicles” – have all failed to revive local economies suffering from government-mandated shutdowns. The Fed must rely on private banks to inject credit into Main Street, and private banks are currently unable or unwilling to do it. The tools the Fed actually needs are public banks, which could and would do the job.

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(Français) Stefania Maurizi: « C’est un incroyable échec du journalisme »
Stefania Maurizi interviewée par Nadja Vancauwenberghe et John Brown | Le Grand Soir - TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Oct 2020

18 oct 2020 – La journaliste italienne Stefania Maurizi a travaillé pour certaines des plus grandes publications du pays, dont la Repubblica, l’Espresso et, maintenant, Il Fatto Quotidiano. En 2009, elle a commencé à travailler avec Julian Assange et WikiLeaks sur des dossiers secrets concernant la guerre en Afghanistan, les câbles de la diplomatie américaine et les détenus de Guantanamo.

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Fools’ Crusade: Why United States Provocations towards China Will Lead to Disaster
Jeff J. Brown and Jeremy Kuzmarov | Covert Action Magazine - TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Oct 2020

25 Oct 2020 – On July 4, 2020, the U.S. Navy dispatched an unprecedented two aircraft carriers and four other warships to the South China Sea for naval maneuvers in waters claimed by China. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo subsequently broke with the official U.S. policy of neutrality in territorial conflicts in the South China Sea and declared that China’s claims to most of the Sea were “completely unlawful,” though most of the disputed territories had been part of China prior to being taken over by Japan in the 1895 Sino-Japanese War.

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How We Can Fix This Pandemic in a Month
Damien Downing, MBBS, MRSB | Orthomolecular Medicine News Service - TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Oct 2020

6 Oct 2020 – The Orthomolecular Medicine News Service has been publicizing the importance of vitamins D and C, and the minerals zinc and magnesium, in this pandemic since January. I have been writing about vitamin D and sunlight for over 30 years, and it has never been more relevant.

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From Lockdown to Police State: The “Great Reset” Rolls Out
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Aug 2020

22 Aug 2020 – Questioning the unreliability of the tests in a Wired interview, even Bill Gates acknowledged that most US test results are “garbage.” The Polymerase Chain Reaction technology used in the nasal swab test for COVID-19 detection was regarded by its own inventor, Nobel prize winner Kary Mullis, as inappropriate to detect viral infection. “Excess mortality rates are caused by therapy and lockdown while death statistics include diseases redefined as COVID-19 only because of a “positive” test result whose value could not be more doubtful.”

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Formerly Incarcerated Women Launch Chicago Worker Cooperative
Karen Kahn | Employee Ownership News - TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Aug 2020

6 Jul 2020 – It’s not often that a business launches weeks before its planned opening. But in the case of ChiFresh Kitchen, a worker cooperative owned and operated by four formerly incarcerated women and one man, the COVID-19 pandemic turned out to be a blessing. ChiFresh Kitchen prepares meals to help address food insecurity during the pandemic.

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Déjà vu All Over Again?
Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jul 2020

Or still the same scene? Define progress…

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Computers
Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jul 2020

Did you hear about the monkeys who shared an Amazon account?

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The Sun
Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2020

Kim Jong-un announced in a news conference that North Korea would be sending a man to the sun within ten years!

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How We Can Fix This Pandemic in a Month
Damien Downing, MBBS, MRSB | Orthomolecular Medicine News Service - TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2020

22 Jun 2020 – If we act on the data showing that it is highly probable that vitamin D can save lives, we could fix this pandemic in a month, for perhaps $2 per person. There would be no significant adverse effects.

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Gross…
Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Jun 2020

An old grandma brings a bus driver a bag of peanuts every day.

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Meet BlackRock, the New Great Vampire Squid
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Jun 2020

22 Jun 2020 – BlackRock is a global financial giant with customers in 100 countries and its tentacles in major asset classes all over the world; and it now manages the spigots to trillions of bailout dollars from the Federal Reserve. The fate of a large portion of the country’s corporations has been put in the hands of a megalithic private entity with the private capitalist mandate to make as much money as possible for its owners and investors; and that is what it has proceeded to do.

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When Profits and Politics Drive Science: The Hazards of Rushing a Vaccine at “Warp Speed”
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Jun 2020

4 Jun 2020 – More than 100 companies are competing to be first in the race to get a COVID-19 vaccine to market. It’s a race against time, not because the death rate is climbing but because it is falling – to the point where there could soon be too few subjects to prove the effectiveness of the drug.

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Animal Rights Activists Uncover the Locations of Thousands of Factory Farms
Alleen Brown | The Intercept - TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jun 2020

31 May 2020 – Animal rights activists published an interactive map today revealing the locations of more than 27,500 farms and animal agriculture facilities, including 5,812 identified using satellite imagery, many of which do not appear in public records. Users will be able to pin new locations to the map and attach photos and videos documenting animal cruelty and health violations. The animal agriculture industry has spent decades fighting to avoid the disclosure of such information.

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Another Bank Bailout under Cover of a Virus
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 May 2020

18 May 2020 – Insolvent Wall Street banks have been quietly bailed out again. Banks made risk-free by the government should be public utilities.  

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Instant Feedback
Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 May 2020

One shop owner asks another,

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Feedback
Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 May 2020

My old aunts would come and tease me at weddings,

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Crushing the States, Saving the Banks: The Fed’s Generous New Rules
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 May 2020

2 May 2020 – The banks are making extremely well in this crisis. The Federal Reserve has dropped interest rates to 0.25%, eliminated reserve requirements, and relaxed capital requirements. Banks can now borrow effectively for free. Following the playbook of the 2008-09 bailout, they can make the funds available to their Wall Street cronies to buy up distressed Main Street assets at fire sale prices, while continuing to lend to credit cardholders at 21%.

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Are We Having Fun Yet?
Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 May 2020

Dog life…

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Time
Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Apr 2020

Doctor: “I’m sorry but you suffer from a terminal illness and have only 10 to live.”

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A Universal Basic Income Is Essential and Will Work
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Apr 2020

19 Apr 2020 – A central bank-financed UBI can fill the debt gap, providing a vital safety net while preventing cyclical recessions. Spain is slated to become the first country in Europe to introduce a universal basic income (UBI) on a long-term basis. Its Minister for Economic Affairs has announced plans to roll out a UBI “as soon as possible,” with the goal of providing a nationwide basic wage that supports citizens “forever.”

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Was the Fed Just Nationalized?
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Apr 2020

3 Apr 2020 – Did Congress just nationalize the Fed? No. But the door to that result has been cracked open.

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Socialism at Its Finest after Fed’s Bazooka Fails
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Mar 2020

21 Mar 2020 – In what is being called the worst financial crisis since 1929, the US stock market has lost a third of its value in the space of a month, wiping out all of its gains of the last three years. When the Federal Reserve tried to ride to the rescue, it only succeeded in making matters worse. The government then pulled out all the stops. To our staunchly capitalist leaders, socialism is suddenly looking good.  

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Rondo Alla Turca (Music Video of the Week)
The 5 Browns – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Mar 2020

The 5 Browns playing an arrangement and rift of Mozart’s Alla Turca by Greg Anderson. The video was made at the International Street Pianos Art Installment, “Play Me, I’m Yours.”

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The Fed’s Baffling Response to the Coronavirus Explained
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Mar 2020

11 Mar 2020 – The next time the country’s largest banks become insolvent, rather than bailing them out it should nationalize them. The banks could then be used to fund infrastructure and other government projects to stimulate the economy, following the model of China.

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Eating Meat: Links to Chronic Disease Might Be Related to Amino Acids–New Findings
Laura Brown and Kelly Rose – The Conversation, 9 Mar 2020

17 Feb 2020 – Eating plant-based proteins is linked with lower risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

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Eye Sight
Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Feb 2020

A man goes to his doctor and says, “Please help me, doctor. I think my eyesight is really worsening.”

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Mexico’s President AMLO Shows How It’s Done
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Feb 2020

8 Feb 2020 – While U.S. advocates and local politicians struggle to get their first public banks chartered, Mexico’s new president has begun construction on 2,700 branches of a government-owned bank to be completed in 2021, when it will be the largest bank in the country. At a press conference on Jan. 6, he said the neoliberal model had failed; private banks were not serving the poor and people outside the cities, so the government had to step in.

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The Fed Protects Gamblers at the Expense of the Economy
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jan 2020

10 Jan 2020 – This does not serve the real economy, in which products, services and jobs are created. However, the Fed is trapped into this speculative monetary expansion to avoid a cascade of defaults of the sort it was facing with the long-term capital management crisis in 1998 and the Lehman crisis in 2008. The repo market is a fragile house of cards waiting for a strong wind to blow it down, propped up by misguided monetary policies that have forced central banks to underwrite its highly risky ventures.

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Ring any Bells?
David G. Brown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jan 2020

Right!

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The Key to the Environmental Crisis Is Beneath Our Feet
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Dec 2019

28 Dec 2019 – The problem may be that a transition to 100% renewables is the wrong target. Reversing climate change need not mean emptying our pockets and tightening our belts. It is possible to sequester carbon and restore our collapsing ecosystem using the financial resources we already have, and it can be done while at the same time improving the quality of our food, water, air and general health.

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Oh Holy Night
HomeTown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Dec 2019

Our Rendition for the Christmas Season

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Paul Volcker’s Long Shadow
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Dec 2019

13 Dec 2019 – Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan called Paul Volcker “the most effective chairman in the history of the Federal Reserve.” But while Volcker, who passed away Dec. 8 at age 92, probably did have the greatest historical impact of any Fed chairman, his legacy is, at best, controversial.

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A Game-Changer in the Fight against Ebola
Sarah Baldwin | Watson Institute, Brown University – TRANSCEND Media Service, 16 Dec 2019

27 Nov 2019 -In modern medicine, physicians and health care practitioners tend to talk about treatments rather than cure. It’s a spectrum. For a disease that had 66 percent mortality that can now be decreased to as low as 10 or 15 percent if you get this treatment early, I have no problem calling that a cure.

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Turner Prize Awarded Four Ways after Artists’ Plea to Judges
Mark Brown – The Guardian, 9 Dec 2019

3 Dec 2019 – All four artists shortlisted for the 2019 Turner prize have been named winners after they came together and made a plea for judges to recognise the causes of “commonality, multiplicity and solidarity”.

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Public Banks: Good Solution or Dangerous Gamble?
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Dec 2019

5 Dec 2019 – What is a public bank and how does it differ from private banks? I just finished a run of 11 presentations and in-person interviews. Here’s a video from one, a debate with a county official sponsored by the League of Women Voters, and two power points from another, the Soil and Nutrition Conference.

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Is the Run on the Dollar Due to Panic or Greed?
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Nov 2019

7 Nov 2019 – Why are banks no longer lending to each other? Are they afraid that collapse is imminent somewhere in the system, as with the Lehman collapse in 2008? Perhaps, and if so the likely suspect is Deutsche Bank. But it looks to be just another case of Wall Street fattening itself at the public trough.

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Street Pianos – Rondo Alla Turca (Music Video of the Week)
the5brownsmusic's channel – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Nov 2019

The 5 Browns playing an arrangement and rift of Mozart’s Alla Turca by Greg Anderson. The video was filmed while playing the international street pianos art called “Play Me, I’m Yours.”

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Restoring the Korean Economic Miracle
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Oct 2019

This paper was written for the Economics of Happiness Conference co-sponsored by Local Futures, held in Jeonju, Korea, on October 16-17, where I was the keynote speaker — a wonderful city and great experience!

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Not Convinced on the Need for Urgent Climate Action? Here’s What Happens to Our Planet between 1.5°C and 2°C of Global Warming
Rachel Warren and Sally Brown – The Conversation, 30 Sep 2019

24 Sep 2019 – Nations are signed up to limit global heating to well below 2°C, and to aim for 1.5°C. Limiting warming to the latter matters – the future of humanity and the living world is at stake. Climate breakdown is already harming livelihoods, cities and ecosystems. From heatwaves and droughts to cyclones and floods, devastating extreme weather events are more frequent, more intense and more unpredictable than they would be in the absence of global heating.

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The Disaster of Negative Interest Rates
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Sep 2019

29 Sep 2019 – President Trump wants negative interest rates, but they would be disastrous for the U.S. economy; his objectives can be better achieved by other means.

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Desperate Central Bankers Grab for More Power
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Sep 2019

18 Sep 2019 – Conceding that their grip on the economy is slipping, central bankers are proposing a radical economic reset that would shift yet more power from government to themselves.

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The Key to a Sustainable Economy Is 5,000 Years Old
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 2 Sep 2019

30 Aug 2019 – We are again reaching the point known as “peak debt,” when debts have compounded to the point that their cumulative total cannot be paid. Student debt, credit card debt, auto loans, business debt and sovereign debt are all higher than they have ever been. As economist Michael Hudson writes, “Debts that can’t be paid won’t be paid.” The question, he says, is ‘how’ they won’t be paid.

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Perspective
Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Aug 2019

Drawing

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What Is Empathy?
Dr Brené Brown | RSA Short – TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Aug 2019

What is the best way to ease someone’s pain and suffering? We can only create a genuine empathic connection if we get in touch with our own fragility. Dr Brené Brown is a researcher, professor and author who has spent the past decade studying vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame.

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Neoliberalism Has Met Its Match in China
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Aug 2019

9 Aug 2019 – America’s chief competitor in the trade war is obviously China, which subsidizes not just worker costs but the costs of its businesses. The government owns 80% of the banks. Typically, if the businesses cannot repay the loans, neither the banks nor the businesses are put into bankruptcy. The non-performing loans are just carried on the books or written off. No private creditors are hurt, since the creditor is the government, and the loans were created on the banks’ books in the first place (following standard banking practice globally).

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Have a Nice Day!
Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 12 Aug 2019

Ipsis Literis

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Homo Roboticus?
Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Aug 2019

Remote Control

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Wouldn’t Get Fooled Again (Music Video of the Week)
Pete Townshend | The Who – TRANSCEND Media Service, 5 Aug 2019

A Classic from 1971 whose lyrics are even truer today.

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The Cheapest Way to Save the Planet Grows Like a Weed
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Jul 2019

25 Jul 2019 – Planting billions of trees across the world is by far the cheapest and most efficient way to tackle the climate crisis. For skeptics who reject the global warming thesis, reforestation also addresses the critical problems of mass species extinction and environmental pollution, which are well documented. Rather than engaging in endless debates over carbon taxes and Silicon Valley-style technological fixes, we need to be regenerating our soils, our forests and our oceans with nature’s own plant solutions.

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A Compliment
Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Jul 2019

Really!?

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Astronaut
Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Jul 2019

One of those…

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Dam!
Anonymous/Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Jul 2019

A boy is selling fish on a corner. To get his customers’ attention, he is yelling, “Dam fish for sale! Get your dam fish here!”

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Libra: Facebook’s Audacious Bid for Global Monetary Control
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 1 Jul 2019

On June 18, Facebook unveiled a white paper outlining ambitious plans to create a new global cryptocurrency called Libra, to be launched in 2020. It has high hopes that Libra will become the foundation for a new financial system free of control by Wall Street and central banks. But it will not be competing with Visa or Mastercard, which are among its 28 soon-to-be co-founding members, including Paypal, Stripe, Uber, Lyft and eBay.

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Costs of War
Watson Institute | Brown University – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Jun 2019

June 2019 – The Costs of War Project is a team of 35 scholars, legal experts, human rights practitioners, and physicians, which began its work in 2011. We use research and a public website to facilitate debate about the costs of the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the related violence in Pakistan and Syria. There are many hidden or unacknowledged costs of the United States’ decision to respond to the 9/11 attacks with military force. We aim to foster democratic discussion of these wars by providing the fullest possible account of their human, economic, and political costs, and to foster better informed public policies.

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The American Dream Is Alive and Well—in China
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Jun 2019

14 Jun 2019 – Unlike the U.S. government, the Chinese government supports its workers and its industries. Rather than penalizing China for that “unfair” trade practice, perhaps the U.S. government should try doing the same. China’s legacy is socialist, and after opening to international trade it has continued to serve the collective good, particularly of its workers. Meanwhile, the U.S. model has been regressing into feudalism, with workers driven into slave-like conditions through debt.

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The Bankers’ “Power Revolution”: How the Government Got Shackled by Debt
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jun 2019

31 May 2019 – The debt-growth model has reached its limits, as even the Bank for International Settlements, the “central bankers’ bank” in Switzerland, acknowledges. The BIS said that debt levels were too high, productivity growth was too low, and the room for policy maneuver was too narrow. “The global economy cannot afford to rely any longer on the debt-fueled growth model that has brought it to the current juncture,” the BIS warned. But the solutions it proposed would continue the austerity policies long imposed on countries that cannot pay their debts.

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Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 May 2019

25 May 2019 – Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age, by Ellen Brown, Democracy Collaborative (June 1, 2019). Today most of our money is created, not by governments, but by banks when they make loans. This book takes the reader step by step through the sausage factory of modern money creation, explores improvements made possible by advances in digital technology, and proposes upgrades that could transform our outmoded nineteenth century system into one that is democratic, sustainable, and serves the needs of the twenty-first century.

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Testing the Line: As Animal Rights Activists Push Legal Boundaries, Canada Considers What Makes a Terrorist
Alleen Brown – The Intercept, 20 May 2019

12 May 2019 – Industry representatives in Canada have pointed to special penalties in the U.S. for those who trespass or capture footage on animal agriculture properties.

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The Public Banking Revolution Is Upon Us
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 Apr 2019

18 Apr 2019 – As public banking gains momentum across the country, policymakers in California and Washington State are vying to form the nation’s second state-owned bank, following in the footsteps of the highly successful Bank of North Dakota, founded in 1919.

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Why Is the Fed Paying So Much Interest to Banks?
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Apr 2019

3 Apr 2019 – Combining postal banks with a network of local public banks having affordable access to the Fed’s deep pocket could provide a safe and efficient public banking option for individuals, businesses and local governments.

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Monetary Policy Takes Center Stage: MMT, QE or Public Banks?
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Mar 2019

21 Mar 2019 – As alarm bells sound over the advancing destruction of the environment, a variety of Green New Deal proposals have appeared in the U.S. and Europe, along with some interesting academic debates about how to fund them. Monetary policy, normally relegated to obscure academic tomes and bureaucratic meetings behind closed doors, has suddenly taken center stage.

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QE Forever: The Fed’s Dramatic About-face
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Feb 2019

21 Feb 2019 – Loans create deposits, and deposits make up the bulk of the money supply. Money today is created by banks as a debt on their balance sheets, and more is always owed back than was created, since the interest claimed by the banks is not created in the original loan. Debt thus grows faster than the money supply. When overextended borrowers quit taking out the new loans needed to repay old loans, the gap widens even further.

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The Venezuela Myth Keeping Us from Transforming Our Economy
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Feb 2019

9 Feb 2019 – Venezuela’s problems are not the result of the government issuing money and using it to hire people to build infrastructure, provide essential services and expand economic development. If it were, unemployment would not be at 33 percent and climbing. Venezuela has a problem the U.S. does not, and will never have: It owes massive debts in a currency it cannot print itself, namely, U.S. dollars. When oil (its principal resource) was booming, Venezuela was able to meet its repayment schedule.

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Recrafting International Relations through Relationality
Tamara Trownsell, Amaya Querejazu Escobari, et al. | E-IR – TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Feb 2019

How we relate to others should be a central concern of the field of International Relations. However, independent political communities—states—and their interrelations have historically been the ‘focus’ of the discipline of IR, thus limiting the forms of interaction that potentially constitute the ‘field.’ We would like to extend an invitation to bring relations back into IR. That is, besides knowing how to study and apply predetermined notions of what constitutes the “international”, it is also critical to know how to start from/with “relations.”

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Why Germany Leads in Renewables: It Has Its Own Green Bank
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 28 Jan 2019

26 Jan 2019 – The leader in renewable energy is Germany, called “the world’s first major renewable energy economy.” Germany has a public sector development bank called KfW (Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau or “Reconstruction Credit Institute”), which is even larger than the World Bank. Unlike private commercial banks, KfW does not have to focus on maximizing short-term profits for its shareholders while turning a blind eye to external costs, including those imposed on the environment.

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Universal Basic Income Is Easier Than It Looks
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 31 Dec 2018

28 Dec 2018 – The pros and cons of a UBI are hotly debated and have been discussed elsewhere. The point here is to show that it could actually be funded year after year without driving up taxes or prices. New money is continually being added to the money supply, but it is added as debt created privately by banks.

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This Radical Plan to Fund the ‘Green New Deal’ Just Might Work
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 24 Dec 2018

17 Dec 2018 – With what Naomi Klein calls “galloping momentum,” the “Green New Deal” promoted by newly-elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) appears to be forging a political pathway for solving all of the ills of society and the planet in one fell swoop.

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Costs of Post-9/11 U.S. Wars to 2019: $5.9 Trillion
Neta C. Crawford | Watson Institute, Brown University - TRANSCEND Media Service, 19 Nov 2018

14 Nov 2018 -The United States has appropriated and is obligated to spend an estimated $5.9 trillion on the war on terror through Fiscal Year 2019, including direct war and war-related spending and obligations for future spending on post-9/11 war veterans.

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A Nobel Prize-Winning Cancer Therapy Will Be Unaffordable for Most. Public Pharmaceuticals Can Help Change That.
Dana Brown | The Next System Project – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Oct 2018

9 Oct 2018 – Cuba has, perhaps, the most developed public pharmaceutical sector in the world and is actually known for its achievements in biologics. It nationalized the pharmaceutical sector in 1960 and consolidated a number of pharmaceutical manufacturing companies under the auspices of the Ministry of Health. By 2013, the Cuban biotechnology industry held around 1,200 international patents and was marketing pharmaceutical products and vaccines in more than 50 countries.

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The Suffocation of Democracy
Christopher R. Browning | The New York Review of Books – TRANSCEND Media Service, 8 Oct 2018

25 Oct 2018 – As a historian specializing in the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, and Europe in the era of the world wars, I have been repeatedly asked about the degree to which the current situation in the United States resembles the interwar period and the rise of fascism in Europe. I would note several troubling similarities and one important but equally troubling difference.

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Central Banks Have Gone Rogue, Putting Us All at Risk
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Sep 2018

14 Sep 2018 – Central bankers are now aggressively playing the stock market. To say they are buying up the planet may be an exaggeration, but they could. They can create money at will, and they have declared their “independence” from government. They have become rogue players in a game of their own.

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Jupiter from “The Planets” -for 5 pianos (Music Video of the Week)
The 5 Browns – TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 Sep 2018

Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity, from “The Planets” by Gustav Holst and Greg Anderson. At the Palladium.

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How China’s Mobile Ecosystems Are Making Banks Obsolete
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Aug 2018

23 Aug 2018 – Giant Chinese tech companies have bypassed credit cards and banks to create their own low-cost digital payment systems.

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(Français) Le traité de paix entre l’Erythrée et l’Ethiopie met fin à des décennies de conflit frontalier
Arun Kumar | The Down News – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Jul 2018

17 Juil 2018 – Les habitants ont célébré dans les rues d’Asmara, la capitale de l’Erythrée, la normalisation des relations diplomatiques et le rétablissement des voies de communication.

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Building a Greater America
Unknown Author - TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Jul 2018

A true visionary…

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The Bayer-Monsanto Merger: Empowering a Life-Destroying Cartel
Dr. Vandana Shiva, Ellen Brown, Nick Meyer and Michael Welch– Global Research, 28 May 2018

20 May 2018 – This merger has implications not only for what goes on our dinner plate. There are questions of economic and political control that need to be addressed. Critics argue that the power of these economic giants is such that they have ‘captured’ regulatory agencies. Limitless financial resources permit these and similar companies to buy off academics, media and politicians.

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Fox in the Hen House: Why Interest Rates Are Rising
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Apr 2018

22 Apr 2018 – The Federal Reserve calls itself “independent,” but it is independent only of government. It marches to the drums of the banks that are its private owners. Congress needs to nationalize the Fed and turn it into a public utility, one that is responsive to the needs of the public and the economy, not of the banks.

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The Bayer-Monsanto Merger Is Bad News for the Planet
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Apr 2018

4 Apr 2018 – Bayer and Monsanto have a long history of collusion to poison the ecosystem for profit. The Trump administration should veto their merger not just to protect competitors but to ensure human and planetary survival.

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Funding Infrastructure: Why China Is Running Circles around America
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 26 Mar 2018

“One Belt, One Road,” China’s $1 trillion infrastructure initiative, is a massive undertaking of highways, pipelines, transmission lines, ports, power stations, fiber optics, and railroads connecting China to Central Asia, Europe and Africa. “It is the largest infrastructure project initiated by one nation in the history of the world and is designed to enable China to become the dominant economic power in the world.”

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How Uncle Sam Launders Marijuana Money
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 29 Jan 2018

23 Jan 2018 – In a blatant example of “do as I say, not as I do,” the US government is profiting handsomely by accepting marijuana cash in the payment of taxes while imposing huge penalties on banks for accepting it as deposits.

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Student Debt Slavery: Bankrolling Financiers on the Backs of the Young (Part 1)
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Jan 2018

26 Dec 2017 – Higher education has been financialized, transformed from a public service into a lucrative cash cow for private investors.

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Student Debt Slavery: Time to Level the Playing Field (Part 2)
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Jan 2018

5 Jan 2018 – The lending business is heavily stacked against student borrowers. Bigger players can borrow for almost nothing, and if their investments don’t work out, they can put their corporate shells through bankruptcy and walk away. Not so with students.

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Rondo Alla Turca (Music Video of the Week)
The 5 Browns – TRANSCEND Media Service, 4 Dec 2017

The 5 Browns playing an arrangement and rift of Mozart’s Alla Turca by Greg Anderson. The video was filmed while playing the international street pianos art “Play Me, I’m Yours.”

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Employee Ownership and the Next System
Joseph Blasi, Thomas Hanna and Dana Brown | The Next System Project – TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Sep 2017

29 Aug 2017 – What role should employee ownership and profit-sharing play in the next system? Are they part of that system itself or part of the strategy to help create the transition to it? Can they be both?

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The Other 9/11: Unremembered and Unatoned
Steve Brown - CounterPunch, 18 Sep 2017

Not that such memorials aren’t appropriate. They are simply insufficient. They fail to commemorate another 9/11 tragedy, one that took place 28 years earlier, in 1973 — not in America, but in Chile — and which caused the death – not of thousands, but of tens of thousands — while torturing and exiling 200,000 more. I refer to the brutal coup d’état that overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, and replaced it with nearly two decades of murderous dictatorship under Generalissimo Augusto Pinochet.

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Don’t Believe the Dangerous Myths of ‘Drone Warrior’
Alex Edney-Browne and Lisa Ling – Los Angeles Times, 24 Jul 2017

16 Jul 2017 – Drone pilots have been quitting the U.S. Air Force in record numbers in recent years — faster than new recruits can be selected and trained. They cite a combination of low-class status in the military, overwork and psychological trauma. But a widely publicized new memoir about America’s covert drone war fails to mention the “outflow increases,” as one internal Air Force memo calls it.

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Lessons from Hitler’s Rise
Christopher R. Browning | The New York Review of Books – TRANSCEND Media Service, 10 Apr 2017

A major new biography—an extraordinary, penetrating study of the man who has become the personification of evil. “Ullrich reveals Hitler to have been an eminently practical politician—and frighteningly so. Timely… One of the best works on Hitler and the origins of the Third Reich to appear in recent years.” —Kirkus Reviews. “An outstanding study… All the huge and terrible moments of the early Nazi era are dissected…but the real strength of this book is in disentangling the personal story of man and monster.” —The Guardian (U.K.)

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(Français) Israël. Des colonies et des armes pour le Myanmar
John Brown | A l’encontre – TRANSCEND Media Service, 30 Jan 2017

26 janvier 2017- Les dirigeants de l’armée du Myanmar se sont livrés à une frénésie d’achats auprès des industries israéliennes d’armement. Ils ont même rencontré le président et le chef d’Etat-major israéliens. Malgré les crimes de guerre qui sont commis par ce pays du Sud-Est asiatique, Israël continue à maintenir d’importants liens avec lui dans le domaine dit de la «sécurité».

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