Articles by RD
We found 3631 results.
Us Defies Myanmar Government Request to Stop Using Term Rohingya
The Guardian – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 May 2016
Ambassador Scot Marciel says Washington will continue to call persecuted Muslim minority by name objected to by Aung San Suu Kyi’s administration.
→ read full articleBuilding a Cooperative Solidarity Commonwealth
Jessica Gordon Nembhard |The Next System Project – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 May 2016
The next system that we need, and that hopefully we are moving toward, is a cooperative commonwealth within interlocking local solidarity economies. Such a system is created from the bottom up, building upon multiple grassroots cooperative enterprises, and democratic community-based economic practices. These networks collaborate and federate from the local to municipal, regional, national, and international levels.
→ read full articleCelebrating 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 articleWashington’s Military Addiction – And the Ruins Still to Come
Tom Engelhardt - TomDispatch,
16 May 2016
But don’t bother to blame the politicians and national security nabobs in Washington for this [their solution — more of the same –militarism]. They’re addicts. They can’t help themselves. What they need is rehab. Instead, they continue to run our world. Be suitably scared for the ruins still to come.
→ read full article[Nobel Peace Laureate] Aung San Suu Kyi’s Cowardly Stance on the Rohingya
Editorial Board – The New York Times,
16 May 2016
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi — Myanmar’s leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate — does not want to call them Rohingya, the name they use, because nationalist Buddhists want to perpetuate the myth that they are “Bengalis” who don’t belong in Myanmar. She has also asked the United States ambassador not to use the term.
→ 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 articleWhistleblowing Is Not Just Leaking — It’s an Act of Political Resistance
Edward Snowden – The Intercept,
9 May 2016
One of the challenges of being a whistleblower is living with the knowledge that people continue to sit, just as you did, at those desks, in that unit, throughout the agency, who see what you saw and comply in silence, without resistance or complaint. They learn to live not just with untruths but with unnecessary untruths, dangerous untruths, corrosive untruths.
→ read full articleLeaked TTIP Documents Cast Doubt on EU-US Trade Deal
Arthur Neslen – The Guardian,
9 May 2016
1 May 2016 – Talks for a free trade deal between Europe and the US face a serious impasse with “irreconcilable” differences in some areas, according to leaked negotiating texts. The two sides are also at odds over US demands that would require the EU to break promises it has made on environmental protection.
→ 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 articleAnarchism’s Mid-Century Turn
Kristian Williams | Toward Freedom - TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 May 2016
Review & Response: Unruly Equality: U.S. Anarchism in the Twentieth Century, By Andrew Cornell, University of California Press, 2016, 300 pages. No matter how one feels about it, the current state of anarchism has represented something of a mystery: What was once a mass movement based mainly in working class immigrant communities is now an archipelago of subcultural scenes inhabited largely by disaffected young people from the white middle class.
→ read full articleWhy the US Will Not Sign the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea
Ken Meyercord – Dissident Voice,
9 May 2016
Symptomatic of our hypocrisy, we protest Chinese “aggressive” actions in the area by sailing the Seventh Fleet through atolls turned into landing-strips to demonstrate our commitment to freedom of navigation. Yet we refuse to sign the UN’s Convention on the Law of the Sea to formalize the rules of navigation that has been around since 1982 and ratified by over 160 UN members, including China, but not by the U.S. of A.
→ read full article(Deutsch) Die Krise Brasiliens und die Weltgeopolitik
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 May 2016
Die Spionage der USA, wie von Snowden ans Licht der Öffentlichkeit gebracht, erreichte die Petrobras und die Reserven von Pré-Sal und hat auch Präsidentin Dilma Roussef nicht ausgelassen. Dies ist Teil der Strategie des Pentagon, um alle Gebiete unter dem Slogan „Eine Welt, ein Reich“ zu vereinen. Im Folgenden einige Punkte, die uns zum Nachdenken bringen.
→ 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 articleOnshore Tax Havens: American Elites Don’t Have to Go to Panama to Hide Their Money — They Can Go to Delaware
Josh Hoxie | Other Words – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 May 2016
Who needs offshore tax havens in Panama? Nearly 300,000 corporations — including some owned by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton — are incorporated at a single Delaware address.
→ read full articleThe Chernobyl Secret Protocols: Lies in the Aftermath of Disaster
Alla Yaroshinskaya | The Right Livelihood Award Foundation - TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 May 2016
In my journalistic archives there are mountains of classified Chernobyl documents from the USSR Communist Party and Soviet government. The price paid for these archives is tens of thousands of dead emergency responders and other victims of the fallout, as well as nine million people who lost their health and quality of life and are still surviving in the affected areas.
→ read full articleDefying the Spies: Free Thought as Resistance in the Age of Surveillance
Benjamin Dangl – Toward Freedom,
9 May 2016
A brand new study from Oxford provides empirical evidence to prove that the very fact that the surveillance state exists spreads conformity and subservience. The study examines how, following whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 about US government spying, there was “a 20 percent decline in page views on Wikipedia articles related to terrorism, including those that mentioned ‘al Qaeda,’ ‘car bomb’ or ‘Taliban.’”
→ read full articleThe Possibilities of Anti-Austerity Politics: A Spanish Drama
Immanuel Wallerstein – Toward Freedom,
9 May 2016
Is there any way that any government is able to maintain an anti-austerity policy in the middle run, amidst the pressures that reduced government real revenues are imposing on states throughout the world? As this drama plays out in Spain, the world will be watching, reacting, and drawing lessons.
→ read full articleSolitary Confinement Is ‘No Touch’ Torture, And It Must Be Abolished
Chelsea E Manning – The Guardian,
9 May 2016
For 17 hours a day, I sat directly in front of at least two Marine Corps guards seated behind a one-way mirror. I was not allowed to lay down. I was not allowed to lean my back against the cell wall. I was not allowed to exercise. Sometimes, to keep from going crazy, I would stand up, walk around, or dance, as “dancing” was not considered exercise by the Marine Corps.
→ read full articleNothing Is Real: “It’s All Being Played to Keep People Believing the System Is Working”
Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 May 2016
The entire system is built upon a fraud. The losses have been hidden and papered over with trillion dollar cash infusions by governments and central banks around the world. Every single asset now… I don’t care what asset… you want to look at currency, debt, housing, metals, the stock market… pick an asset… there’s no price discovery mechanism behind it whatsoever… it’s all fake… it’s all being distorted. It’s time to prepare for a collapse of a magnitude never before witnessed.
→ read full article(Português) Prêmio Nobel da Paz Adolfo Pérez Esquivel traz apoio do Papa a Dilma
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 May 2016
29 de Abril de 2016 – O vencedor do prêmio Nobel da Paz em 1980, o argentino Adolfo Pérez Esquivel revelou, em entrevista ao jornalista Darío Pignotti, do jornal Página 12, que levou à presidente Dilma Rousseff o apoio do Papa Francisco. O pontífice é também argentino e mantém estreita ligação com movimentos de defesa dos direitos humanos na América Latina.
→ 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 article2016 World Press Freedom Index: Leaders Paranoid about Journalists
Reporters Without Borders – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 May 2016
20 Apr 2016 – Most of the movement in the World Press Freedom Index unveiled today by Reporters Without Borders is indicative of a climate of fear and tension combined with increasing control over newsrooms by governments and private-sector interests. 180 Countries Ranked According to Freedom Allowed to Journalists
→ 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 articleThe Evolution of Union Co-ops and the Historical Development of Workplace Democracy
James Anderson, Toward Freedom – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 May 2016
“Every worker has an equal, democratic vote at weekly meetings that decide all matters of the organization. And we are all members of the Industrial Workers of the World to protect that process so that it can’t be hijacked.”
→ 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 articleCan Lemon Water Detox Your Body?
Dr. Edward Group, Global Healing Center – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Apr 2016
Adding a little lemon to your water is a great way to add flavor and experience the benefits offered by lemons. It’ll also help cleanse your body of toxins and waste. The American Cancer Society recommends hot lemon water for alleviating constipation and clearing the bowels. [4] Let’s look at four more benefits of lemon water.
→ 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 article300+ Arrests as Pro-Democracy Forces Converge for Final Day of Spring Revolt
Deirdre Fulton, Popular Resistance – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Apr 2016
Sunday saw thousands rally in Washington, D.C., while hundreds risked arrest during mass sit-in on Monday [18 Apr]. Capitol Police say 1,240 people have been arrested in the last seven days. Civil Disobedience may be more important than voting.
→ 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 articleHillary Clinton and Haiti
Ricardo Seitenfus – CounterPunch,
18 Apr 2016
The Clintons’ high-profile interest in Haiti dates back to their wedding in 1975. Shortly after their honeymoon in Acapulco, Bill and Hillary Clinton received an invitation from David Edwards — a friend and Citibank executive — to accompany him to Haiti. Edwards’s motivation was neither cultural nor humanitarian. The reason was Citibank’s long-standing financial interests in the country, which now go back over a century.
→ 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 article(Português) Dez lições da múltipla crise brasileira
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Apr 2016
10 abril 2016 – Toda crise acrisola, purifica e faz madurar. Que lições podemos tirar dela? Elenco algumas.
→ 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 articleLeftist Multi-Issue Activism: Possible Ideas for Going Forward
Various Authors ,Toward Freedom – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Apr 2016
We the signers of “Some Possible Ideas for Going Forward” think one high priority for progress is activists developing, discussing, and settling on priorities around which to organize multi issue activism in coming months and years. We hope this document can help inspire more conversations within groups and movements that, over time, come to a synthesis.
→ 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 articleDefenders of Freedom: Why Anarchism Is Misunderstood
Greg Guma – Toward Freedom,
11 Apr 2016
Anarchists have been tarred for a century as subversives, bomb-throwers, terrorists; deluded utopians at best. But no “ism” is more misunderstood, purposely distorted or entwined with America’s traditions of self-government and free speech.
→ 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 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 articleRevealed: How Associated Press Cooperated with the Nazis
Philip Oltermann – The Guardian,
4 Apr 2016
German historian shows how news agency retained access in 1930s by promising not to undermine strength of Hitler regime.
→ read full articleCIA Photographed Detainees Naked Before Sending Them to Be Tortured
Spencer Ackerman – The Guardian,
4 Apr 2016
28 Mar 2016 – The CIA took naked photographs of people it sent to its foreign partners for torture, the Guardian can reveal. A former US official who had seen some of the photographs described them as “very gruesome”. The CIA declined to comment for this story.
→ 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 articleUS-Saudi Terror in Yemen Dwarfs ISIS Attacks in Europe
William Boardman - Reader Supported News,
28 Mar 2016
25 Mar 2016 – Why are two of the richest countries in the World, the United States and Saudi Arabia, engaged in unrelenting, aggressive war against one of the poorest countries in the world, Yemen?
→ read full articleMyanmar’s Moment of Truth
Nick Davies – The Guardian,
21 Mar 2016
The country’s military rulers claim to have embraced democracy – and will soon transfer formal power to the party led by Aung San Suu Kyi. But an unsolved double murder may suggest the Burmese army is not yet ready to surrender control.
→ read full articleWorld Bank: Humanitarian Aid or Raid?
Claire Provost and Matt Kennard – Mother Jones,
21 Mar 2016
Is the International Finance Corporation’s primary role to alleviate poverty? I think you could question that. They’re pretending to be an investment bank. Serving as both adviser and investor can create perverse incentives. The tension between the IFC’s mandate to help end global poverty and turn a profit has only grown. The bank’s private investment arm is increasingly chasing profits at the expense of its anti-poverty mission.
→ read full articleMyanmar’s New President Might Not Be Aung San Suu Kyi, but He Does Represent Progress
Maung Zarni – The Guardian,
21 Mar 2016
For the first time in decades, the Burmese people have a civilian president. Now they must weather the clash of military and opposition proxies to come.
→ 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 Benefits of Aloe Vera for Your Heart
Dr. Edward Group, Global Healing Center – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Mar 2016
Aloe vera is great for flushing out toxins and waste from the digestive tract [3], which in turn helps the body to absorb nutrients more effectively. This also supports circulation and gets more oxygen-rich blood to cells throughout the body. Today, we’ll look at how aloe vera supports heart health.
→ 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 articleNo Standards in Mediation
Daniel Erdmann – World Mediation Organization,
7 Mar 2016
Before starting a reflection on this content, we might have to understand that mediation itself is not a newly developed healing procedure for society, but it forms part of human civilization from the very beginning of our existence.
→ read full articleHollywood’s Grotesque Animal Abuse
Michael Howard - CounterPunch,
22 Feb 2016
Exposing Hollywood’s sordid history of animal cruelty.
→ read full articleGravitational Waves Detected, Confirming Einstein’s Theory
Dennis Overbye, Jonathan Corum and Jason Drakeford – International New York Times,
22 Feb 2016
A team of scientists announced on Thursday [11 Feb 2016] that they had heard and recorded the sound of two black holes colliding a billion light-years away, a fleeting chirp that fulfilled the last prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
→ read full article(Português) Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a vida do espírito e a ética da Terra
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Feb 2016
Sabemos cuidar da vida do corpo, hoje um verdadeiro culto celebrado em tantas academias de ginástica. Os psicanalistas de várias tendências nos ajudam a cuidar da vida da psique. Mas na nossa cultura, praticamente, esquecemos de cultivar a vida do espírit. A vida do espírito se alimenta de bens não tangíveis como é o amor, a amizade, a compaixão, o cuidado e a abertura ao infinito. Sem a vida do espírito divagamos por aí, desenraizados e sem um sentido que nos oriente e que torna a vida apeticida.
→ 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 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 articleWall Street Worldview: Why Are People Upset?
William Boardman - Reader Supported News,
8 Feb 2016
Multi-billionaire Stephen A. Schwarzman says he’s puzzled by the discontent felt by other Americans these days. He is a bland-looking, somewhat paunchy, not unattractive, balding man of benign demeanor. He’s worth $12 billion, give or take a few hundred million, and a poster boy for Wall Street success and self-esteem and cluelessness.
→ read full articleBad Blood: The First International and the Origins of the Anarchist Movement – A Book Review
Kristian Williams – Toward Freedom,
8 Feb 2016
Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the canonical authority of Marxism has been much less certain. Yet anarchists have not stepped forward to fill the organizational and philosophical vacuum left behind. The reasons for that failing are numerous, but among them must certainly be counted the fact that we have become accustomed to our own marginalization and have largely ceased to think in terms of mass movements and international revolution.
→ 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 articleEnding the Horror of Myanmar’s Abuse of Muslims
Editorial Board – International New York Times,
1 Feb 2016
By the hundreds of thousands, Muslims in Myanmar have been stripped of their citizenship, sent to concentration camps where they are deprived of basic medical care, jobs and even food, and held prisoners in villages they are not allowed to leave. Thousands more have fled the camps by risking their lives at the hands of criminal syndicates that traffic them to Malaysia and Bangladesh or force them into servitude on fishing boats.
→ 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 articleTime for Justice in Sri Lanka
Editorial Board – International New York Times,
1 Feb 2016
The wounds of war cannot be healed until a transitional justice process demanded by the UN in a resolution last October moves forward. On that score, President Maithripala Sirisena says his government will not act “in haste.” This is unacceptable.
→ read full articleThe Radical New Face of the Jewish Settler Movement
Naomi Zeveloff, Forward – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Jan 2016
“There is no doubt that the hilltop youth today are outside the boundaries of normal life. That is the way it is perceived in Israel,” said Tzvi Sukkot, a former member. “Some people feel threatened by their lifestyle. They say that these people live on the fringe of society or that they were thrown out of their homes.” The so-called hilltop youth, a loosely affiliated group of Jewish settlers in their teens and 20s live away from their parents on the hilltops surrounding established settlements.
→ read full article(Português) Podem as religiões ajudar a superar a crise ecológica?
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Jan 2016
Agora o que se pede, é ver de que forma, a partir de seu capital religioso positivo, estas religiões podem chegar a convergências para além das diferenças e ajudar a enfrentar a nova era do antropoceno (o ser humano como o meteoro rasante ameaçador) e a sexta extinção em massa que está já há muito tempo em curso e se acelera cada vez mais.
→ read full articleCollapse of a Peace Presidency: Obama’s Speech Highlights Foreign Policy Failures
Spencer Ackerman – The Guardian,
25 Jan 2016
The expectations for Obama were so high he received a Nobel Peace Prize within months. Never a pacifist, he accepted the award with a speech defending the use of military force. He will leave office as Bush did: passing on two wars – one the longest in American history, the other a reboot of the conflict he promised to end.
→ 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.’
→ read full articleOn 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 articleSaudi Arabia a Force for Stability? Dream On!
William Boardman - Reader Supported News,
11 Jan 2016
The Saudi mass beheadings on January 2 proved nothing new to a world that well knows Saudi Arabia is still a tribal police state with a moral code of medieval barbarity. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni-Muslim country that executes people for witchcraft, adultery, apostasy, and homosexuality (among other things).
→ 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 articleNuclear Expert Siegfried Hecker Assesses North Korean Hydrogen Bomb Claims
Steve Fyffe, Stanford Center for Int’l Security and Cooperation – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
11 Jan 2016
7 Jan 2015 – One of the world’s top experts on the North Korean nuclear program, former Los Alamos National Laboratory director Siegfried Hecker has visited North Korea seven times since 2004; he is one of the few Western scientists to have set foot inside the Yongbyon nuclear facility.
→ read full articleThe Man Who Exposed the Lie of the War on Drugs
Ed Vulliamy – The Guardian,
4 Jan 2016
“The City of London is a far more important centre for laundering criminal money than the Cayman Islands.” Roberto Saviano already lives under armed guard after writing about the Neapolitan mafia. Now he is determined to uncover capitalism’s complicity with the narco-lords of South America.
→ read full articleDon’t Eat That Shrimp
Roberto A. Ferdman – The Washington Post,
4 Jan 2016
Indentured and Enslaved Workers Fuel the Thai Shrimp Industry – Burmese men, women and children are being sold to factories in Thailand and forced to peel shrimp that ends up in global supply chains.
→ read full articleDespair and Hope for the New Year
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Jan 2016
Most needed in these dark times is to hold tight to what we believe with an unruly embrace of faith, patience, and urgency. This is my most fervent New Year’s wish for 2016.
→ read full articleThe Death of Universities
Terry Eagleton – The Guardian,
28 Dec 2015
“What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as centres of critique. The role of academia has been to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice, tradition, imagination, human welfare, the free play of the mind or alternative visions of the future.”
→ read full articleLarge Pod of Bottlenose Dolphins Endures Brutal Capture and Slaughter in Taiji’s Infamous Cove
Sea Shepherd News – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Dec 2015
A large pod of approximately 85-90 bottlenose dolphins driven into Taiji, Japan’s infamous cove on Sunday, Dec. 20 was forced to endure brutal captive selection and slaughter that claimed the freedom of 30 dolphins and the lives of 28-30 others.
→ read full articleSlouching toward Global Disaster: Chaos and Intervention in the Middle East
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Dec 2015
Even the more thoughtful Democrats limit their proposals to enhanced militarism, hoping to induce the Arab countries to put ‘the boots on the ground’ with nary a worry about either igniting a regional war or the imaginative collapse that can only contemplate war as the recipe for peace, again recalling the degree to which Orwellian satiric irony is relied upon to shape foreign policy prescriptions by ambitious politicians.
→ read full articleA Christmas Message in Dark Times
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Dec 2015
Christmas has an ecumenical resonance that calls for bright lights, ornamented trees, celebration, and wishes for peace on earth and good will toward all, bringing together those of diverse faith or no faith at all. The legions of ‘the politically correct’ determined to avoid offending those, especially Jews, who are not Christians, will carefully express their good wishes with such phrases as ‘happy holidays!’
→ read full articleList of Palestinians [and Israelis] Killed between Oct. 1 and Dec. 18, 2015
Celine Hagbard – International Middle East Media Center,
28 Dec 2015
19 Dec 2015 – The Following is a list of names of all Palestinians shot and killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, including one in the Negev, in the period between Thursday October 1st and the end of December 18th, as confirmed by the Palestinian Health Ministry.
→ read full articleRaw Pecans: Discover 7 Health Benefits of Pecans
Dr. Edward Group, Global Healing Center – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Dec 2015
From 277 different nuts and foods, USDA researchers say pecans are the most antioxidant-rich nut; with more oleic acid than olive oil, they contain 90% unsaturated (heart-healthy) fats, are low sodium, cholesterol free, contain essential vitamins and minerals, and have alpha and gamma-tocopherol forms of vitamin E.
→ read full articleA New World Order? ISIS and the Sykes-Picot Backlash
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Dec 2015
The shaping of world order remains mainly the work of the heavyweight states that act on the basis of geopolitical calculations with respect for international law and morality displayed only as convenient. Yet the political monoculture of territorial states remains formally the exclusive foundation of world order, but its political reality is being challenged in various settings and nowhere more so than in the Middle East.
→ read full articleEndless War Crimes in Yemen Slowed by Ceasefire
William Boardman - Reader Supported News,
21 Dec 2015
Saudi Arabia’s Yemen Has a Fascist Whiff of Franco’s Spain Circa 1936 – The first lie about Yemen’s dirty war in the world of official journalism is that the fighting there has been a “nine-month conflict” and that “the conflict started in March,” as the New York Times put it on December 17. This is simply not true in any meaningful sense.
→ read full articleSaudi Arabia’s Execution Spree
Editorial Board – The International New York Times,
21 Dec 2015
Saudi Arabia’s justice system has gone into murderous overdrive. More than 150 people have been executed this year, the most since 1995. More than 50 people are reported to be scheduled for imminent execution on terrorist charges, though some are citizens whose only crime was protesting against the government. This wave of killing has prompted some to compare Saudi Arabia to the Islamic State: both follow Shariah law.
→ read full articleFrom Taiji to Tanks: The Barren Life of Captive Dolphins
Sea Shepherd News – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Dec 2015
16 Dec 2015 – The slaughter of dolphins and small whales that takes place in Taiji, Japan’s infamous cove is a horrific and inhumane massacre of highly intelligent and socially complex cetaceans. It is sad to say, though, that as they are taken from their ocean home to be sold for captivity, an even worse fate is soon to come, because their suffering is just beginning.
→ read full article100 Years On, Is This Einstein’s Greatest Gift to Human Understanding?
Paul Davies – The Guardian,
14 Dec 2015
The detection of gravitational waves will open up a new spectrum of the universe – finally demonstrating a theory presented a century ago.
→ read full articleCorporations Will Never Solve Climate Change
Naomi Oreskes and Auden Schendler – Harvard Business Review,
14 Dec 2015
The facts about VW — combined with recent revelations about Exxon-Mobil’s long history of misrepresenting what they understood about climate change, as well as BP’s failure to get “Beyond Petroleum” — spell the end of the old notion of green business, the idea that a big piece of the environmental fix might come voluntarily from the corporate world.
→ read full articleGerry Spence on America Menaced by Impending Police State
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Dec 2015
The book pertains to the situation here in America, but as recent events in Paris, San Bernardino, and Colorado Springs confirm, we are in danger of moving without realizing it toward some kind of ‘global police state,’ all in the name of security, trampling on the rights and self-esteem of billions of people and extinguishing the freedom of all. Such a devastating scenario cannot be separated from the predatory features of global capitalism in its present neoliberal phase.
→ read full articleObama, like Bush, Just Makes It All Worse
William Boardman - Reader Supported News,
14 Dec 2015
Fear, doubt, uncertainty, confusion, and secrecy all conspire to defeat confidence, calm, proportionality, and reason. Leadership and populace alike embrace a zeitgeist of agitation and over-simplification, lashing out in one-dimensional military responses to misperceived threats that are not even fundamentally military. Anti-terrorism, as practiced by the US, is an oxymoron.
→ read full articleResponding to Megaterrorism after Paris
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Dec 2015
6 Dec 2015 – The post below is based on an opinion piece published by Middle East Eye on December 1, 2015 under the title “A Different Response to ISIS after Paris.” My modified text places its focus on the originality of megaterrorism and its distinctive challenges, suggesting that the choice of response needs to be extended beyond the iron cage of militarism and vengeance.
→ read full article(Português) Testes em animais: como as novas tecnologias podem evitar?
Carlos Eduardo Matos - ANDA Agência de Notícias de Direitos Animais,
7 Dec 2015
3 dez 2015 – Há cerca de dois anos uma notícia repercutiu em toda a imprensa nacional e tomou conta das postagens e comentários em diversas redes sociais: a invasão de ativistas dos direitos animais ao Instituto Royal, na cidade de São Roque, em São Paulo. O grupo resgatou no local animais que eram utilizados como cobaias para testes de medicamentos, incluindo cerca de 200 cachorros da raça Beagle.
→ read full articleMore Pilot Whales Slaughtered on the Shores of the Faroe Islands
Sea Shepherd – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Dec 2015
1 Dec 2015 – Yesterday, a pod of 11 pilot whales was slaughtered at the killing beach of Fuglafirði in the Faroe Islands. It is the sixth grindadráp in the archipelago this year, and brings the total number of pilot whales slaughtered in the 2015 drive hunts to 501.
→ read full articleConfessions of a Terrorist Sympathiser
Richard Jackson – TRANSCEND Media Service,
7 Dec 2015
Recovering sympathy for the terrorist, recognising their humanity, their politics, their suffering, their aspirations, their sense of self in this particular historical epoch, is essential for understanding the roots of their violent actions. It is also essential for reconstituting our own shattered sense of collective morality, and for recognising and acknowledging our own role in the constitutive violence of the current system.
→ read full articleIt Will Take 100 Years for the World’s Poorest People to Earn $1.25 a Day
Jason Hickel – The Guardian,
30 Nov 2015
The sustainable development goals will aim to eradicate poverty by 2030 but our current economic model, built on GDP, could never be inclusive or sustainable.
→ read full articleEnough of Aid – Let’s Talk Reparations
Jason Hickel – The Guardian,
30 Nov 2015
Debate around reparations is threatening because it upends the usual narrative of development. The impact of colonialism cannot be ignored. Europe didn’t develop the colonies. The colonies developed Europe.
→ read full articleForget ‘Fighting Demons’. We Must Learn How to Talk Properly about Alcoholism
Liam Byrne – The Guardian,
30 Nov 2015
My dad was an alcoholic – and what every child of someone with this disease learns is that we can’t change things for our parents. But we can for our children.
→ read full articleI Know Isis Fighters. Western Bombs Falling on Raqqa Will Fill Them with Joy
Jürgen Todenhöfer – The Guardian,
30 Nov 2015
Is it really so hard to see that the attempt to defeat terrorism with wars has failed? That we have to rethink the war on terror? That we have to finally start treating the Muslim world as true partners, and not as a cheap petrol station we can raid when we feel like it? Bombing civilians will recruit new terrorists. Again and again.
→ read full articleSaudi Court Sentences Poet to Death for Renouncing Islam
David Batty – The Guardian,
30 Nov 2015
Friends of Palestinian Ashraf Fayadh believe he is being punished for posting video showing religious police lashing a man in public.
→ read full article(Português) O Capitalismo Será Derrotado pela Terra
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Nov 2015
Depois que a sociedade passou a ser de mercado e tudo virou oportunidade de ganho, até as coisas mais sagradas como órgãos humanos, água e a capacidade de polinização das flores, os chefes de Estados, em sua grande parte, são forçados a gerir a macroeconomia globalmente integrada e menos atender ao bem comum de seu povo.
→ read full articleMeet the Man Who Funds ISIS: Bilal Erdogan, the Son of Turkey’s President
Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Nov 2015
Bilal Erdogan owns several maritime companies. He has allegedly signed contracts with European operating companies to carry Iraqi stolen oil to different Asian countries. The Turkish government buys Iraqi plundered oil which is being produced from the Iraqi seized oil wells.
→ read full article