Articles by ICH
We found 2516 results.
Resolving the Syrian Chemical Weapons Crisis: Sunlight and Shadows
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Sep 2013
Not only did Vladimir Putin exhibit a new constructive role for Russia in 21st statecraft, spare Syria and the Middle East from another cycle of escalating violence, but he articulated this Kremlin initiative in the form of a direct appeal to the American people. For Putin to be so forthcoming, without being belligerent, was particularly impressive.
→ read full articleFairness
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Sep 2013
Two colleagues went to a restaurant and ordered fish. The waiter brought a plate with a bigger and a smaller fish.
→ read full articleSyria: Obama’s Surprising (and Confusing) Latest Moves
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Sep 2013
President Obama’s August 31[2013] remarks from the White House Rose Garden will long be remembered for their strangeness, but the final interpretation of their significance will have to await months if not years. There are three dimensions, at least, that are worth pondering.
→ read full articleThe Spreading Wings of Islamophobia in Egypt
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Sep 2013
The Orwellian features of the military takeover in Egypt have received attention, although the use of language to evade unwanted truth continues because incentives to do so persist. What, we might ask, is the el-Sisi concept of inclusiveness? At present, the only plausible answer is ‘my way or the highway.’
→ read full articleGlobalizing Homeland Security
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Aug 2013
It is not just one thing that should worry us about the authoritarian tendencies of the Obama presidency, but one thing after another. The cumulative effect of it all. The latest sign of the times was the August 19th detention of David Miranda, Glenn Greenwald’s partner, at Heathrow Airport under the British anti-terrorist law for nine hours.
→ read full articleOn Bradley Manning & America
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Aug 2013
I am posting on this blog two important texts that deserve the widest public attention and deep reflection in the United States and elsewhere. I would stress the following:
→ read full articleEgypt: Extreme Polarization and Genocidal Politics
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Aug 2013
In these morbid days, there are some home truths that are worth reflecting upon. What Happened After Tahrir Square?
→ read full articleHorror of North Korean Prison Camps Exposed at U.N. Panel Hearing
Ju-min Park and Michelle Kim, Reuters – Townhall,
26 Aug 2013
Public executions and torture are daily occurrences in North Korea’s prisons, according to dramatic testimony from former inmates at a U.N. Commission of Inquiry that opened in South Korea’s capital on Tuesday [20 Aug 2013].
→ read full articleSnowden’s Post-Asylum Relevance
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Aug 2013
The Snowden issues remain important, and it is too soon to turn aside as if the only question was whether the U.S. Government would in the end, through guile and muscle, gain control of Snowden.
→ read full articleWhat If a Russian Snowden?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 Aug 2013
‘Political Crimes’ Are Non-Extraditable and Snowden’s Transfer to the United States for Prosecution Would Have Been a Setback for Human Rights and International Law
→ read full articleWhen Polarization Becomes Worse than Authoritarianism Defer Democracy
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Aug 2013
We may be living at a historical moment when democracy as the government of choice gives rise to horrifying spectacles of violence and abuse. These difficulties with the practice of democracy are indirectly, and with a heavy dose of irony, legitimizing moderate forms of authoritarian government.
→ read full articleReviving the Israel-Palestine Negotiations: The Indyk Appointment
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Aug 2013
Appointing Martin Indyk as Special Envoy to the upcoming peace talks was to be expected. It was signaled in advance. And yet it is revealing and distressing.
→ read full articleHalliburton Admits Guilt in Gulf of Mexico Cover-Up
Richard Smallteacher - CorpWatch,
29 Jul 2013
Halliburton has admitted that it destroyed evidence after the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. The company has agreed to pay a $200,000 fine, make a donation of $55 million to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and accept three years of probation.
→ read full article
What Hiroshima & the Iraq War Have in Common
Prof. Michio Kaku – Russia Today,
29 Jul 2013
Oksana Boyko is joined by Dr Michio Kaku, a world-renowned theoretical physicist, author, thinker and visionary. The technological revolution of the 20th century has brought the world unprecedented prosperity as well as unimaginable horrors. Will science liberate humanity or shackle it like never before?
→ read full articleGeopolitical Winds Blow in China’s Direction
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Jul 2013
Among those who comment influentially from the sidelines of power, there are new trends visible in thinking about American foreign policy.
→ read full article(Português) Por Que a Indústria Farmacêutica Evita Curar
Richard J. Roberts, Nobel da Medicina – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jul 2013
“As farmacêuticas bloqueiam medicamentos que curam, porque não são rentáveis”. O Prémio Nobel da Medicina Richard J. Roberts denuncia a forma como funcionam as grandes farmacêuticas dentro do sistema capitalista, preferindo os benefícios económicos à saúde, e detendo o progresso científico na cura de doenças, porque a cura não é tão rentável quanto a cronicidade.
→ read full articleGlobal Big Brother and the Snowden Hollywood Chase
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jul 2013
We will miss the most crucial point of Snowden’s ‘crimes’ if we do not devote our attention to these fundamental political challenges directed at human security, democratic ways of life, and a pluralist world order. To be distracted by the circus of the Snowden chase any longer is to play along with a shameless geopolitical caper!
→ read full articleSyrians Fleeing War at Rate Not Seen Since Rwandan Genocide: U.N.
Michelle Nichols, Reuters – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jul 2013
The number of people fleeing the conflict in Syria has escalated to an average of 6,000 a day during 2013 – a rate not seen since the genocide in Rwanda nearly two decades ago, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday [16 Jul 2013].
→ read full article‘Football for All’: Dutch Stand Up for Gay Players’ Rights
Jörg Kramer and Michael Wulzinger – Der Spiegel,
15 Jul 2013
Next month, the Dutch national football team’s coach plans to take a stand for the rights of gay players at the Amsterdam Gay Pride parade. Activitists in Germany, where no professional players are out, hope their football officials will follow his lead.
→ read full articleMisreading the Snowden Affair
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jul 2013
So far in the Snowden Affair it is small Latin American countries, including Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, that have risked the ire of the United States by pursuing independent policies with respect to Snowden, and acting correctly from the perspective of law and morality.
→ read full articleWhen Privacy Jumped the Shark
Frank Rich – New York Magazine,
8 Jul 2013
Note to Edward Snowden and his worrywarts in the press: Spying is only spying when the subject doesn’t want to be watched. R.I.P. the contemplative America of Thoreau and of Melville; this is the America [world?] that puts a prize on networking, exhibitionism, fame, shopping, hooking up, seeking instant entertainment and information, and finding the fastest car route—not to mention being liked (or at least “liked”) and followed by as many friends (or “friends”) and strangers as possible, whether online or on basic cable.
→ read full articleProtecting Snowden
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jul 2013
What seems most dismaying about the Snowden affair is the prosecutorial zeal of the Obama presidency, supposedly liberal in its outlook on matters of personal freedom and the values of constitutional government. What Snowden has done is so clearly ‘a political crime,’ if it is a crime at all, and in recognition of this there has existed since the French Revolution been seen as inconsistent with the generally desirable policy of inter-governmental cooperation in the apprehension of suspected criminals.
→ read full articleBig Brother, Not Snowden and Greenwald, Is the Story
Sheldon Richman – The Future of Freedom Foundation,
1 Jul 2013
“Instead of being adversaries to government power … [the media of Washington, D.C., are] … servants to it and mouthpieces for it.” Snowden and Greenwald have not “aided the enemy” — unless the American people are the government’s enemy. What they have done is embarrass the Obama administration by exposing criminal activity.
→ read full articlePolitical Infernos: United States, Turkey, Egypt
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Jul 2013
A New Political Inferno: Polarization of Immature Democracies – Most importantly, some forces of opposition despair of ever succeeding by democratic procedures, while others pin their hopes on the next election, or the one after that.
→ read full articleOccupy Movements Around the World: How Is Brazil’s Different?
Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Michael D. Kennedy - HuffPost,
1 Jul 2013
Spain’s Indignados. Egypt’s Tahrir Square. The U.S.’ Occupy Wall Street. Now, Turkey’s Occupy Gezi and Brazil’s own distinctive movement. “Horizontalist” movements like these, which emphasize direct democracy and collective decision making over specific parties, transcend the political spectrum.
→ read full articleSyria: The “Western Faces” Behind the Terror
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich – Global Research,
1 Jul 2013
Perpetuating Adversaries to Kill Each Other Is a Time-Tested Tactic – As former Israeli Intelligence Chief Amos Yaldin told the Israel Policy Forum in February 2013: “And this military [Syrian], which is a huge threat to Israel, is now also weakening, disintegrating. We still have a risk of [Syria] becoming an Al-Qaida country, a Somalia-type country — but from military point of view this is less dangerous than the Syrian regular army.”
→ read full articleThe Whistleblower’s Guide to the Orwellian Galaxy: How to Leak to the Press
Nicholas Weaver, Wired – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Jun 2013
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article ran in Wired Opinion last month (“Hear Ye, Future Deep Throats: This Is How to Leak to the Press”). It has been updated given recent events and reflects the author’s new findings about government recording of mail.
→ read full articleEdward Snowden and Whistleblowers: ‘The Truth Sets You Free’
Interviews by Leo Benedictus, Leo Hickman and Richard Norton-Taylor – The Guardian,
17 Jun 2013
Edward Snowden’s leaks about the NSA’s electronic surveillance make him one of the most damaging whistleblowers in history. But what drives loyal employees to reveal the truth? And how do they live with the backlash?
→ read full articleGaza: 7th Year of Unlawful Blockade (UN HRC SR Press Release)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Jun 2013
I am posting a press release of yesterday, 14 June 2013, to take note of the start of the seventh year of the Israeli blockade. After the Mavi Marmara incident, 31 May 2010 and the more recent November ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Gaza government there was an undertaking to ease the blockade with respect to the flow back and forth of people and goods, but the situation remains desperate for the civilian population of Gaza.
→ read full articleSpecial Rapporteur’s Report on Occupied Palestine, 10 June 2013
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Jun 2013
What follows below is the text of the report presented on 10 June 2013 to the Human Rights Council. It offers an overview of the situation from the perspective of human rights and international humanitarian law in occupied Palestine. Both Israel and the United States boycotted the session, presumably to express their displeasure with the report and my role as Special Rapporteur.
→ read full articleWhose ‘Two State’ Solution? End Game or Intermission?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jun 2013
In pondering this dismal landscape of peace talk without peace, one wonders what became of ‘the roadmap’ and ‘the Quartet.’ It may be a small blessing that their irrelevance is being tacitly acknowledged. These creations never seemed more than a thin and deceitful veil thrown over a one sided American control over Israel/Palestine diplomacy.
→ read full articleNew World Order Secrecy: Who Will Be Attending the Bilderberg Meeting? What Will Be Discussed Behind Closed Doors?
Prof Michel Chossudovsky – Global Reseach,
10 Jun 2013
It is An Anglo-Western European-North American Venue with participants from 21 Western countries (i.e Western Europe, US and Canada). With the exception of British born Polish Minister of Finance, Jacek Rostowski, there are no participants from Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East (with the exception of Turkey). There are 14 women out of 140 participants.
→ read full articleAncient Gay History
Frank Rich – New York Magazine,
10 Jun 2013
… is really just yesterday. My surrogate parent Clayton Coots was one of countless closeted men who didn’t live long enough to see this moment.
→ read full articleHere’s How We Built a Movie Theater for the People – And Why the MPAA Says It’s #1 in the World
Michael Moore – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Jun 2013
Listed as #1 is the historic State Theatre of Traverse City, Michigan, an incredible movie palace which I restored and now run as a nonprofit theater – along with a few hundred great volunteers!
→ read full articleFormer Drone Operator Says He’s Haunted by His Part in More Than 1,600 Deaths
Richard Engel - NBC News,
10 Jun 2013
Former drone operator Brandon Bryant says he felt like he became a “heartless” “sociopath” under the drone program. He remembers watching one of the first victims bleed to death and coming to work, seeing pictures of targeted individuals on the wall and musing, “Which one of these f_____s is going to die today?”
→ read full articleHow Democratic Is Turkey?
Steven A. Cook, Michael Koplow – Foreign Policy,
10 Jun 2013
Not as Democratic as Washington Thinks It Is – The ferocity of the protests and police response in Istanbul’s Gezi Park is no doubt a surprise to many in Washington. Turkey, that “excellent model” or “model partner,” repeated ad nauseum, misrepresents the complex and often contradictory political processes underway in Turkey.
→ read full articleResponding to the Syrian Challenge
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2013
My essential argument is that until the parties engaged in hostilities on both sides recognize their inability to achieve a political victory by way of the battlefield, and external actors acquiesce in this recognition, there can only take place an unproductive and wrongheaded coercive diplomacy of partisanship, supporting the claims of the anti-Assad side.
→ read full articleNoam Chomsky — ‘Everyday Anarchist’
Michael S. Wilson, Modern Success – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2013
The Modern Success Interview – If workers are more insecure, they won’t do things, like asking for better wages and better benefits. And that’s healthy for the economy from a certain point of view, a point of view that says workers ought to be oppressed and controlled, and that wealth ought to be concentrated in a very few pockets.
→ read full articleEnding Perpetual War? Endorsing Drone Warfare?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Jun 2013
That President Obama chose on 23 May [2013] to unveil his second term cautionary approach to counter-terrorism at the National Defense University epitomized the ambiguity of the occasion. The choice of venue was itself a virtual guarantee that nothing would be said or done on that occasion that challenges in any fundamental way the global projection of American military power.
→ read full articleAmerica is Losing its Covert Syria War: US Sponsored Al Nusra Rebels Defeated by Syrian Armed Forces
Prof Michel Chossudovsky – Global Research,
27 May 2013
Recent reports from the ground suggest that America and its allies are losing their covert war in support of the Al Nusra front. In recent weeks, the US sponsored Al Qaeda affiliated rebels have been decimated by the Syrian Armed Forces. A nationwide offensive has been launched with the support of Russia and Iran. The weapons supply routes of the rebels have been disrupted.
→ read full article“The Salvador Option for Syria”: US-NATO Sponsored Death Squads Integrate “Opposition Forces”
Prof Michel Chossudovsky – Global Research,
27 May 2013
Modelled on US covert ops in Central America, the Pentagon’s “Salvador Option for Iraq” initiated in 2004 was carried out under the helm of the US Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte (2004-2005) together with Robert Stephen Ford, who was appointed US Ambassador to Syria in January 2011, less than two months before the beginning of the armed insurgency directed against the government of Bashar Al Assad.
→ read full articlePentagon Contractors Have Trained the Terrorists in the Use of Chemical Weapons in Syria
Prof Michel Chossudovsky – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 May 2013
8 May 2013 – CNN just a couple of months ago confirmed that contractors hired by the Pentagon were in fact training the terrorists in the use of chemical weapons. And now we have a statement by a UN Independent Commission, which has confirmed unequivocally – and it was revealed on the same day – that the terrorists who are backed by the United States and its allies, they are in possession of deadly sarin nerve gas, which they are using against the civilian population.”
→ read full articleGlobal Capital and the Nation State
Robert Reich – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 May 2013
As global capital becomes ever more powerful, giant corporations are holding governments and citizens up for ransom — eliciting subsidies and tax breaks from countries concerned about their nation’s “competitiveness” — while sheltering their profits in the lowest-tax jurisdictions they can find. Meanwhile, at a time when you’d expect nations to band together to gain bargaining power against global capital, the opposite is occurring: Xenophobia is breaking out all over.
→ read full articleOn Political Preconditions
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2013
The Netanyahu led government is clearly committed to achieving the political embodiment of Greater Israel, and would not settle for anything less. It is seeking as much legitimation as possible for this expansionist objective, hopeful that adroit diplomacy with American help can yield such a result.
→ read full articlePraying for Peace in Damascus while Surrounded by War
Michael Jansen – Irish Times,
20 May 2013
Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire visiting Syria with other peace activists.
→ read full articleRethinking ‘Red Lines’
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2013
What is strange in all this is that Obama talks the talk, but seems unwilling to walk the walk. Such a disjunction invites cynicism about law and morality, and induces despair on the part of those of us who believe the world we inhabit badly needs red lines, but the right red lines.
→ read full articleCentral Banking with “Other People’s Gold”: A Multi-billion Treasure Trove in Lower Manhattan
Prof Michel Chossudovsky – Global Research,
13 May 2013
Germany is repatriating its gold reserves from the New York Federal Reserve, what has created a frenzy in the gold market. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. According to the NY Fed, there are 530,000 gold bars, with a combined weight of circa 6,700 metric tonnes stashed in the Fed’s Lower Manhattan vaults. But according to them, “We do not own the gold. We are mere custodians.”
→ read full articleAn Ongoing Liability: The CIA’s Dirty Wars
Michael Brenner - CounterPunch,
13 May 2013
The errant actions of the C.I.A. are by now so evident that they are a staple of Washington conversion. Like the weather, though, it is the topic everybody talks about, but does nothing about.
→ read full articleClarifying Boston Marathon Post
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
29 Apr 2013
I want to offer a brief clarification and an explanation.
→ read full articleBabies as Young as Six Months Victims of Rape in War – U.N. Envoy
Michelle Nichols, Reuters - TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Apr 2013
In her first seven months as U.N. envoy on sexual violence in conflict, Zainab Hawa Bangura has visited a Congolese district where rebels raped babies, and Somalia where a woman was paid $150 (98.4 pounds) restitution for the rape of her 4-year-old daughter.
→ read full articleA Commentary on the Marathon Murders
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Apr 2013
Aside from the tensions of the moment, self-scrutiny and mid-course reflections on America’s global role is long overdue. Such a process is crucial both for the sake of the country’s own future security and also in consideration of the wellbeing of others. Such adjustments will eventually come about either as a result of a voluntary process of self-reflection or through the force of unpleasant events.
→ read full articleDivestment in the University of California at Santa Barbara
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Apr 2013
Moving Toward Divestment from Corporations Profiting from Israeli Militarism, Occupation, and Settlements.
→ read full articleSeeing in the Dark – with Victoria Brittain
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2013
As with the best of journalists, Victoria Brittain has spent a lifetime enabling us to see in the dark! Or more accurately, she has shined a bright light on those whose suffering has been hidden by being deliberately situated in one or another shadow land of governmental and societal abuse, whether local, national, or geopolitical in its animus.
→ read full articleConference Highlights Fukushima Consequences
Richard Wilcox, Ph.D., Activist Post – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Apr 2013
The Caldicott conference is a first step toward opening the dungeon door to the dark and unspeakably evil secrets of the nuclear industry, and putting the stake in the heart of the radioactive vampire that is sucking life out of the planet.
→ read full articleChiquita Sues to Block Release of Files on Colombia Terrorist Payments
Michael Evans – The National Security Archive,
15 Apr 2013
Two years ago, the Archive published “The Chiquita Papers,” a declassified collection of more than 5,000 pages of internal Chiquita documents turned over to the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of a criminal investigation of more than $1.7 million in payments to the AUC over six years, and for nearly three years after the group was formally designated as a terrorist organization. That case resulted in a 2007 sentencing agreement in which Chiquita admitted to more than ten years of payments to a variety of Colombian guerrilla and paramilitary groups.
→ read full articleTaping of Farm Cruelty Is Becoming the Crime
Richard A. Oppel Jr. – The New York Times,
15 Apr 2013
Several states have placed restrictions on undercover investigations into cruelty. On one covert video, farm workers illegally burn the ankles of Tennessee walking horses with chemicals. Another captures workers in Wyoming punching and kicking pigs and flinging piglets into the air. Now “The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act” prohibits filming or taking pictures on livestock farms to “defame the facility or its owner.” Violators would be placed on a “terrorist registry.”
→ read full article
We Are the World – USA for Africa (Music Video of the Week)
Michael Jackson – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Apr 2013
An unbelievable constellation of 47 legendary superstars—singers we love– singing together in a historic music video with a message of love from Michael to the world. Recorded in 1985. Michael died on Jun 25, 2009. A few of these artists passed away as well. RIP. (All their names are scrolled down at the end).
→ read full articleMystery Malady Kills More Bees, Heightening Worry on Farms
Michael Wines – The New York Times,
1 Apr 2013
A mysterious malady that has been killing honeybees en masse for several years appears to have expanded drastically in the last year, wiping out 40 percent or even 50 percent of the hives needed to pollinate many of US fruits and vegetables. A conclusive explanation so far has escaped scientists studying the ailment, colony collapse disorder, since it first surfaced around 2005.
→ read full articleReading Palestinian Prison Diaries
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Apr 2013
The Prisoners’ Diaries: Palestinian Voices from the Israeli Gulag, Gaza, 2013. What is most compelling is how much the material expresses the shared concerns of these prisoners. A few keywords dominate the texts: pain, God or Allah, love, dream, homeland, steadfastness, tears, freedom, dream, prayer. Survival with as much dignity as possible in a dank and poorly lit circumstances of isolation, humiliation, acute hostility on the part of the prison staff, including abusive neglect by the medical personnel.
→ read full article(Português) Paredes de Vidro: Fotógrafo Capta Reação das Pessoas ao Testemunharem Sofrimento dos Animais em Matadouro
Michelle Kretzer (PETA) - ANDA Agência de Notícias de Direitos Animais,
1 Apr 2013
“Eu já arrastei vacas até que seus ossos começassem a quebrar, enquanto elas ainda estavam vivas. Quando as estou trazendo até o canto e elas ficam presas na porta de entrada, puxo até que sua pele seja rasgada, até que o sangue escorra no concreto e ferro. Quebro suas pernas…. E a vaca chora com sua língua pendurada. Eles puxam os animais até que seus pescoços quebrem”.
→ read full articleChina Replaces Britain in World’s Top Five Arms Exporters – Report
Michael Martina, Reuters – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Mar 2013
China has become the world’s fifth-largest arms exporter, a respected Sweden-based think-tank said on Monday [18 Mar 2013], its highest ranking since the Cold War, with Pakistan the main recipient.
→ read full articleWhat Was Wrong with Obama’s Speech in Jerusalem
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Mar 2013
In retrospect, worse than speech was the visit itself. Obama should never have undertaken such the visit without an accompanying willingness to treat the Palestinian reality with at least equal dignity to that of the Israeli reality and without some indication of how to imagine a just peace based on two states for two peoples given the severe continuing Israeli encroachments on occupied Palestinian territory that give every indication of permanence.
→ read full articleWhat Isn’t Being Said: Soldier Suicides
Alyssa Rohricht - CounterPunch,
25 Mar 2013
Suicides in the U.S. military have been climbing, reaching a record high in 2012 when 349 soldiers took their own lives, about one every 25 hours. By comparison, 301 U.S. soldiers died in active combat in 2012, marking the third time in four years that the number of military suicides has surpassed the number of deaths in combat of U.S. soldiers.
→ read full articleThe Iraq War: 10 Years Later
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Mar 2013
After a decade of combat, casualties, massive displacement, persisting violence, enhanced sectarian tension and violence between Shi’ias and Sunnis, periodic suicide bombings, and autocratic governance, a negative assessment of the Iraq War as a strategic move by the United States, United Kingdom, and a few of their secondary allies, including Japan, seems near universal.
→ read full articleNorth Korea or the United States: Who is a Threat to Global Security?
Prof Michel Chossudovsky – Global Research,
11 Mar 2013
North Korea lost thirty percent of its population as a result of US-led bombings in the 1950s. Most people in America consider North Korea as an inherently aggressive nation and a threat to global security. Media disinformation sustains North Korea as a “rogue state”. The history of the Korean War and its devastating consequences are rarely mentioned. America is portrayed as the victim rather than the aggressor.
→ read full articleEnvisioning a World without Nuclear Weapons
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Mar 2013
Book Review – Zero: The Case for Nuclear Weapons Abolition, by David Krieger, 2013, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. I have known David Krieger for the past twenty-five years, and he has never wavered, even for a day, from his lifelong journey dedicated to ridding the world of nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear war.
→ read full articleInvestigate the Death of Arafat Jaradat
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Mar 2013
What follows is a news report prompted by my press release on the shocking treatment of Arafat Jaradat who died while being held in an Israel prison. 27 February 2013 – A United Nations human rights expert today called for an international investigation into the death of Palestinian prisoner Arafat Jaradat, who died in Israeli custody just a few days after his arrest.
→ read full articleLords of Disorder: Billions for Wall Street, Sacrifice for Everyone Else
Richard Eskow, Campaign for America’s Future – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Mar 2013
We’re collecting nothing from the big banks in return for our generosity. Instead we’re demanding sacrifice from the elderly, the disabled, the poor, the young, the middle class – pretty much everybody, in fact, who isn’t “too big to fail.”
→ read full article(Português) McDonald´s É Alvo de Inquérito da Polícia Federal Brasileira
Michelle Amaral – Brasil de Fato,
25 Feb 2013
15 Fev 2013 – O McDonald´s está sendo investigado pela Polícia Federal por suspeita de submissão de seus funcionários a condições análogas à escravidão. A PF instaurou o inquérito policial após denúncia de não pagamento de salários a uma funcionária durante os oito meses em que ela trabalhou em um dos restaurantes da rede de fast food.
→ read full articleReflections on Teju Cole’s OPEN CITY
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Feb 2013
Anyone interested in the world, or for that matter, an affection for the greatest of modern cities—New York—will find Teju Cole’s Open City, a feast for both mind and heart.
→ read full articleAbyss of Uncertainty: Germany’s Homemade Nuclear Waste Disaster
Michael Fröhlingsdorf, Udo Ludwig and Alfred Weinzierl – Der Spiegel,
25 Feb 2013
Some 126,000 barrels of nuclear waste have been dumped in the Asse II salt mine over the last 50 years. German politicians are pushing for a law promising their removal. But the safety, technical and financial hurdles are enormous, and experts warn that removal is more dangerous than leaving them put.
→ read full articleBeyond the Haunted Imagination
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Feb 2013
Ever since atomic bombs were exploded over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the closing days of World War II end of the world forebodings have been present in Western cultural consciousness. In the background of such thinking is the religious anticipation of a day of judgment when life in earth will be replaced by the consignment of everyone then living to either the hell of damnation or the heaven of salvation.
→ read full articleUrgent UN Press Statement: Release Palestinian Hunger Strikers Now
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Feb 2013
The following press statement was issued 13 February 2013 under the auspices of the UN Human Rights Council in my capacity as Special Rapporteur for Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967. This nonviolent resistance to unlawful and abusive detention practices by Israel is a human rights outrage that should be the occasion of media attention and a worldwide outcry. I encourage all who can to exert pressure on Israel before these individuals die in captivity. They are currently reported to be in grave condition. Please use all social networking tools to alert contacts.
→ read full articleA Key Question: How Do We Make the Economy Work for the Poor?
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Feb 2013
We want to make a case for the claim that “unbounded organization” is a useful concept, indeed a key concept. A key opens doors. We use the word “key” to suggest that the concept of unbounded organization can be said to “open doors.” It helps to answer questions and to resolve problems regarding not just one but several theoretical problems in the social sciences. Similarly the practical question posed in the title of this chapter, “How do we make the economy work for the poor?” can be regarded as a question whose satisfactory answer would “open” answers to other crucial practical questions such as, “How can violent conflicts be transformed into peaceful cooperation?”
→ read full articleThe Military’s Pandora’s Box: The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program-HAARP
Dr. Nick Begich and Jeane Manning – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Feb 2013
This article was prepared to provide a summary of the contents of a book written in 1995 which describes an entirely new class of weapons. The individuals who are demanding answers about the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program-HAARP are scattered around the planet. As well as bush dwellers in Alaska, they include: a physician in Finland; a scientist in Holland; an anti-nuclear protester in Australia; independent physicists in the United States; a grandmother in Canada, and countless others.
→ read full articleThe Hubris of the Drones
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Feb 2013
Our blind faith in technology combined with a false sense of infallible righteousness continues unabated. Such hubris brought us to grief in Vietnam and Iraq and may do so again with President Obama’s cold-blooded use of drones and his indifference to so-called “collateral damage,” grossly referred to by some in the military as “bug splat,” and otherwise known as innocent bystanders.
→ read full articleForget ‘Normal’ Politics
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Feb 2013
Political life is filled with policy choices that are made mainly on the basis of calculations of advantage, as well as reflecting priorities and values of those with the power of decision. In a constitutional framework of governance the rule of law sets outer limits as to permissible outcomes.
→ read full articleTargeted Killing and Drone Warfare
Michael Walzer – Dissent,
11 Feb 2013
It is always a hard question whether new technologies require the revision of old arguments. Targeted killing isn’t new, and I am going to repeat an old argument about it. But targeted killing with drones? Here the old arguments, though they still make sense, leave me uneasy. Imagine a world, which we will soon be living in, where everybody has drones.
→ read full articleAn Indispensable Book on Palestine/Israel
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Feb 2013
I realize that without knowing it, I have long waited for this book, although I could not have imagined its lyric magic in advance of reading. It is a triumph of what I would call ‘intelligent innocence,’ the great benefits of a clear mind, an open and warm heart, and a trustworthy moral compass that draws sharp lines between good and evil while remaining ever sensitive to the contradictory vagaries of lives and geographic destinies.
→ read full articleWho’s Faking It? Pentagon “Cyber-Warriors” Planting “False Information on Facebook”
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich – Global Research,
28 Jan 2013
The Los Angeles Times published an alarming piece entitled “Cyber Corps program trains spies for the digital age”. The “cyber-warriors” who are headed for organizations such as the CIA, NSC, FBI, the Pentagon and so on, are trained [among other illegalities] to stalk, sneak tracking devices on cars and plant false information on Facebook. They also are taught to write computer viruses, hack digital networks, crack passwords, plant listening devices and mine data from broken cellphones and flash drives.
→ read full articlePalestine-Israel: Enslavement of the False Self
Yago Abeledo interviewing Richard Forer – Redress Information and Analysis,
28 Jan 2013
The real conflict is the inability to integrate the hard-to-believe but inescapable awareness of Israel’s treatment of non-Jews with unquestioned loyalty to the Jewish state. …it is only when the Palestinian people are healed that the Jewish people themselves will be healed.
→ read full articleThe Second Anniversary of Tahrir Square Rising
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Jan 2013
What inspired the world was the spontaneous spirit of unity, a movement guided by exhilarating visions of democracy and freedom and hope, generating a new kind of populism that dispensed with ideology and leaders, a sense that the people of Egypt had acted creatively and bravely to recover their country from the clutches of neoliberal predators and their domestic collaborators.
→ read full articleOn Syria: What to Do in 2013
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Jan 2013
19 Jan 2013 – I took part last week in an illuminating conference on Syria sponsored by the new Center of Middle East Studies that is part of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. This Center has been recently established, and operates under the excellent leadership of Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel, who previously together edited the best collection of readings on the Green Revolution in Iran published under the title THE PEOPLE RELOADED.
→ read full articleMakers of Violent Video Games Marshal Support to Fend Off Regulation
Eric Lichtblau – The New York Times,
14 Jan 2013
With the Newtown, Conn., massacre spurring concern over violent video games, makers of popular games like Call of Duty and Mortal Kombat are rallying Congressional support to try to fend off their biggest regulatory threat in two decades.
→ read full articleSeeing Light: The Blogger’s Delight
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Jan 2013
While reflecting on my prior blog lamenting the challenges of sustaining civility amid tumult and controversy, I came to appreciate my own partial captivity in realms of darkness. The negativities I tried to discuss are the shadow land of my blog experience, which is more essentially lived in the sunshine of new and renewed friendship, solidarity, mutuality, and the new emotional and spiritual resonances of our era, what I would call, in the absence of greater precision, the emergence of ‘digital love.’
→ read full articleLosing Control: A Blogger’s Nightmare
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Jan 2013
When I started this blog a couple of years ago, the thought never entered my mind that I would need to defend the terrain. Although I knew my views were controversial on some issues, I assumed that those who disagreed strongly would stay away, losing interest, or express their disagreements in a spirit of civility. To a large extent this has been true, with the glaring exception of Israel/Palestine.
→ read full articleLatvia’s Economic Disaster as a Neoliberal Success Story – A Model for Europe and the US?
Jeffrey Sommers and Michael Hudson – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Jan 2013
Today’s most highly celebrated anti-labor success story is Latvia, where labor did not fight back, but simply emigrated politely and quietly. Latvia has a two-part tax on wages and social benefits that are near the highest in the world, while real estate taxes are well below US and EU averages. Meanwhile, capital gains are lightly taxed, and the country has become successful as a capital flight and tax avoidance haven for Russians and other post-Soviet kleptocrats that has permitted Latvia to “afford” de-industrialization, depopulation and de-socialization.
→ read full articleAn Open Letter of Response to CRIF (Counsèil Représentif des Institutions juives de France)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Dec 2012
I am shocked and saddened that your organization would label me as an anti-Semite and self-hating Jew. It is utterly defamatory, and such allegations are entirely based on distortions of what I believe and what I have done. To confuse my criticisms of Israel with self-hatred of myself as a Jew or with hatred of Jews is a calumny.
→ read full articleIn Further Memory of Edward Said
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Dec 2012
Always, always
That voice
remains
is gone
needed…
Neville Alexander, Unbounded Organisation, and the Future of Socialism
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Dec 2012
In the late 1980s, as apartheid neared its end, Neville Alexander called on educators to “…shape consciousness in ways that are looking forward, in ways that are preparing people for a liberated, non-racial, democratic, and socialist South Africa.” Is Neville Alexander’s life’s work a contribution to a revolution that is still happening?
→ read full articleResponding to the Unspeakable Killings at Newtown, Connecticut
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Dec 2012
The template of response has become a national liturgy in light of the dismal pattern of public response: media sensationalism of a totalizing kind, at once enveloping, sentimental, and tasteless (endless interviewing of surviving children and teachers, and even family members of victims), but dutifully avoiding deeper questions relating to guns, violence, and cultural stimulants and conditioning.
→ read full articleEgypt: Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Dec 2012
10 Dec 2012 – I have had the opportunity to be in Cairo three times for brief visits in the last 20 months, the first a few weeks after the departure of Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011, the second in February of 2012 when the revolutionary process was treading water, and this third one over the course of the previous ten days. What is striking is how drastically the prevailing mood and expectations have changed from visit to visit, how fears, hopes, and perceptions have altered over time, and why they are likely to continue to do so.
→ read full articleHamas, Khaled Mashaal and Prospects for a Sustainable Israel/Palestine Peace
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Dec 2012
The most important element of context that needs to be taken into account is the seeming inconsistency between the fiery language used by Mashaal in Gaza and his far more moderate tone in the course of several interviews with Western journalists in recent weeks. In those interviews Mashaal had clearly indicated a readiness for a long-term hudna or truce, provided that Israel ended its occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and agreed to uphold Palestinian rights under international law.
→ read full articleEncyclopedia of World Problems Has a Big One of Its Own
Daniel Michaels- The Wall Street Journal,
17 Dec 2012
[TRANSCEND member] Anthony Judge’s career has been peppered with problems, from Aarskog Syndrome to Zoonotic bacterial diseases, dandruff, ignorance, kidney disorders and sabotage. He spent more than two decades editing the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential, a 3,000-page tome with almost 20,000 entries. It was Mr. Judge’s brainchild when he helped run the Union of International Associations, a century-old grouping of groups that began in an effort to categorize all human knowledge.
→ read full articleVisit to Gaza: UN Press Release
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Dec 2012
The Special Rapporteur [Falk] noted that his visit to the region consisted of meetings in Cairo and the Gaza Strip, with Governmental, inter-governmental and civil society representatives, as well as victims and witnesses. He received helpful briefings from UNRWA and other United Nations agencies, which provided an in-depth picture of the magnitude of the challenges in Gaza and the difficulties of addressing such challenges in a situation of occupation and blockade.
→ read full articleObserving the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People in Cairo
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Dec 2012
Text of my remarks delivered in Cairo at joint UN/Arab League ceremony marking the observance of the 2012 International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, 29 Nov 2012, some 10 hours prior to the historic vote in the UN General Assembly.
→ read full articleThe Gaza Ceasefire: An Early Assessment
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
26 Nov 2012
The Gaza Ceasefire, unlike a similar ceasefire achieved after Operation Cast Lead four years ago, is an event that has a likely significance far beyond ending the violence after eight days of murderous attacks. It is just possible that it will be looked back upon as a turning point in the long struggle between Israel and Palestine.
→ read full articleModernity’s Other and the Transformation of the University – II
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Nov 2012
Short Answers to Simple Questions
→ read full articleWhy BP Isn’t a Criminal
Robert Reich – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Nov 2012
BP plead guilty to 14 criminal counts, including manslaughter, and agreed to pay $4 billion over the next five years. But it defies logic to make BP itself the criminal. Corporations aren’t people. They can’t know right from wrong. They’re incapable of criminal intent. They have no brains. They’re legal fictions — pieces of paper filed away in a vault in some bank.
→ read full articleThe Latest Gaza Catastrophe: Will They Ever Learn?
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Nov 2012
Obama was quoted as saying, “There is no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside of its borders. We are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself.” Much is missing from such a sentiment, most glaringly, the absence of any balancing statement along the following line: “and no country would tolerate the periodic assassination of its leaders by missiles fired by a neighboring country, especially during a lull achieved by a mutually agreed truce. It is time for both sides to end the violence, and establish an immediate ceasefire.”
→ read full article