Articles by M

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Greed Is Driving Us towards Disaster
John Scales Avery – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

Greed, in particular the greed of corporations and billionaire oligarchs, is driving human civilization and the biosphere towards disaster. The greed of giant fossil fuel corporations is driving us towards a tipping point after which human efforts to control climate change will be futile because feedback loops will have taken over. The greed of the military industrial complex is driving us towards a Third World War that might develop into a catastrophic thermonuclear war. The greed of our financial institutions is driving us towards economic collapse, as we see in the case of Greece.

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Why Greece Should Leave the Euro Zone
Michael R. Strain – The Washington Post, 20 Jul 2015

Sure, there would be short-term pain. But in the long term, the euro is an economic mistake. And leave today Greece should, beginning the painful work of rebuilding an economy and crafting public policies over which it has primary control, hopefully achieving more success than it has in the past.

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Carl G. Jung (26 Jul 1875 – 6 Jun 1961): The Integration of Opposites
René Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

As Jung noted, Taoist thought would play an increasingly powerful role in the transition between the Piscean Period and the Age of Aquarius. “The spirit of the East is really at our gates. Therefore it seems to me that the search for Tao, for a meaning in life, has already become a collective phenomenon among us, and to a far greater extent than is generally realized.”

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The End of Capitalism Has Begun
Paul Mason – The Guardian, 20 Jul 2015

Without us noticing, we are entering the postcapitalist era. At the heart of further change to come is information technology, new ways of working and the sharing economy. It’s time to be utopian. Marx imagined something close to our information economy. He wrote its existence would blow capitalism sky high.

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What Are Foreign Military Bases For?
World Beyond War – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

Have you ever wondered and investigated how many US military bases exist in the world, where exactly, and at what cost, to what purpose, and in terms of what relationship with the host nations? A wonderfully researched new book, six years in the works, answers these questions in a manner you’ll find engaging whether you’ve ever asked them or not. It’s called ‘Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Harm America and the World’ by David Vine.

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The Terms of Greece’s Surrender
Yanis Varoufakis – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

The Euro Summit statement (or Terms of Greece’s Surrender – as it will go down in history) follows, annotated by yours truly. The original text is untouched with my notes confined to square brackets. Read and weep…

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Pluto and Earth
Patrick Martin, WSWS – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

The flyby of Pluto by the spacecraft New Horizons—a scientific achievement of the first order—stands in contrast to the seemingly intractable social crises on our own planet.

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The Right-Left Crossfire and the Post Neo-Liberal Left
Prof. James Petras – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

The post neo-liberal regimes which flourished in five Latin American countries in the first decade of the 21st century were a product of three inter-related historical processes.

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Malaysia Just Passed a New, Stricter Welfare Act for Animals
Amanda Froelich, True Activist – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

On Tuesday [14 Jul 2015], the Malaysian government passed into law a new animal welfare act that imposes harsher penalties for those torturing or neglecting animals in order to reduce the number of crimes against animals in the country.

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Soulless Economics
Robert C. Koehler – TRANSCEND Media Service~, 20 Jul 2015

Austerity, the tool of neoliberal capitalism, stands up to Greek democracy and stares it down. Oh well. We’re remarkably comfortable with soulless economics and have yielded to this economic model in thought, word and deed.

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3 Great Supplements for Gut Health
Dr. Edward F. Group, Global Healing Center – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

There are so many easy ways that you can support and maintain your gut health. Whether it’s eating healthy, taking probiotics, or even meditation. Cutting out gluten and sugar are helpful steps you can take to support the health of your gut, and consuming more raw, living foods are also great measures.

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70 Years After the Bombs Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Canada’s Gift to Japan
Theresa Wolfwood – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

The Canada Pension Plan, mandatory for all working Canadians, invests our contributions in the five largest weapons makers in the world, which make nuclear as well as non-nuclear weapons that are sold and used in many countries against civilian populations.

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This Week in History
Satoshi Ashikaga – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

July 20-26 – QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” – George Bernard Shaw

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Japan’s Abe Pushes Security Bills through Lower House, Despite Protests
Linda Sieg, Reuters – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday [16 Jul 2015] pushed through parliament’s lower house legislation that could see troops sent to fight abroad for the first time since World War Two, despite protests and a risk of further damage to his sagging ratings.

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Yanis Varoufakis Full Transcript: Our Battle to Save Greece
Harry Lambert – New Statesman, 20 Jul 2015

To have ‘the powers that be’ speak to you directly and the complete lack of any democratic scruples from the supposed defenders of Europe’s democracy. The quite clear understanding on the other side that we are on the same page analytically and yet to have very powerful figures look at you in the eye and say “You’re right in what you’re saying, but we’re going to crunch you anyway.”

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“Sowing the Wind” at Los Alamos and “Reaping the Whirlwind” at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima
Gary G. Kohls, MD – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

70 years ago this week (July 16, 1945), an assortment of foreign scientists, the original group of which was mostly refugees fleeing European fascism, succeeded in exploding the first experimental atomic bomb.

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Obama to Out Bomb Bush!
James Albertini, Malu 'Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

This is only the latest campaign in a 15-year global air war, largely ignored by U.S. media, in which the United States and its allies have conducted at least 118,000 air strikes against other countries since 2000.

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An Active Peace Policy
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

In the nuclear age, we can no longer afford to wait until war breaks out and then react with military force. We must pursue an active peace policy that seeks to avoid or resolve conflicts long before they lead to war.

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Grexit or Jubilee? How Greek Debt Can Be Annulled
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

Greece’s creditors have finally brought the country to its knees, forcing President Alexis Tsipras to agree to austerity and privatization measures more severe than those overwhelmingly rejected by popular vote a week earlier. For Greece, leaving the EU may be perilous; but it opens provocative possibilities. The government could nationalize its insolvent banks along with its central bank, and start generating the credit the country desperately needs to get back on its feet.

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Thinking Globally
Mazin Qumsiyeh – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

One thing about empires that people have to know: they do not last. They get the hubris to think they can last and that they can manage affairs of other people in perpetuity but this is an illusion.

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Agency to Enslave Greeks Is Established
Eric Zuesse – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

On July 16 2015 ‘German Economic News’ headlined “Greece: Debt Restructuring Through the Back Door,” and reported that, “The majority of Greece’s national debt is to be moved in the next three years gradually to the European Stability Mechanism. The super-secretive ESM was set up in 2012, in order to handle Greece’s anticipated virtual receivership, which it now will do.

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Baltimore’s Unrest and Social Injustice Hits the Back Page
Daniel Horgan – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

The year 1968 had also seen the assignation of MLK and it touched off racial unrest in over 100 cities in the country. Baltimore did not escape this unfortunate fate. Nor did it escape that fate in this year when yet another case of American police brutality hit on its doorstep. From MLK to Freddie Gray, we have to wonder what has changed in America (and Baltimore)?

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Dr Schäuble’s Plan for Europe: Do Europeans Approve? – English Version of My Article in Die Zeit
Yanis Varoufakis – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

On 15 July 2015 Die Zeit published this piece. Here is the original English language version.

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James Cousins (22 Jul 1873 – 20 Feb 1956): An Effort of Synthesis
Rene Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

His ‘A Study in Synthesis’ is a rich and complex study of the ways in which intuition, emotion, cognition and action structure human life. He places great importance on the power of intuition as the way the individual feels the push and pressure of the Cosmos.

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Collective Mea Culpa? You Must Be Joking! Them Is to Blame, Not Us!
Anthony Judge – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

Published on the occasion of allegedly major mistakes regarding the European bailout of Greece and the agreement concerning the nuclear programme of Iran. Is the United Nations as such capable of confessing to error? How about the World Bank or IMF? The European Commission, the OECD, the Organization of American States, NATO, etc? And what of that mysterious entity the “international community”?

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(Português) “Eles Crucificaram Tsipras Lá Dentro”- Nos Bastidores da Cimeira
Rádio Renascença – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

“Nada poderia ser pior que a humilhação da Grécia, que não procurou caridade, mas sim solidariedade da zona euro”, afirmou Hollande. “Eles crucificaram Tsipras lá dentro”, disse ao Financial Times um responsável da Zona Euro que assistiu à cimeira. “Crucificaram-no.”

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Pope Francis Tells World Youth to Rise Up Against Global Capitalism
Lauren McCauley – Common Dreams, 20 Jul 2015

‘Make a mess, but then also help to tidy it up,’ Argentinian pontiff said in address to Paraguay youth.

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Aesthetics as One Road to Peace?
Johan Galtung, 20 Jul 2015 - TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

The focus is on one Sultan, Ibrahim Adil Shah II, of the central Indian kingdom of Bijapur, between Mumbai and Goa; we are talking about early 17th century. The Sultan is described as “an erudite scholar, a lute player, poet, singer, calligrapher, chess master and aesthete”. How different from Western rulers with military-political skills; how similar to many Chinese rulers, emperors, mandarins with poetry, calligraphy and more as indelible part of their legitimacy.

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On Life
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Jul 2015

A minister, a priest and a rabbi were discussing when life begins.

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Schooled in Britain, Deported to Danger: UK Sends 600 Former Child Asylum Seekers Back to Afghanistan
Maeve McClenaghan- The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 20 Jul 2015

16 Jul 2015 – Hundreds of Westernised young men who grew up in Britain after fleeing war-torn Afghanistan as children have been forcibly returned to their home country due to what experts believe is an inhumane shortcoming in the UK asylum system.

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“Guerrilla Warfare against a Hegemonic Power”: The Challenge and Promise of Greece
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

9 Jul 2015 – Banks create money when they make loans. Greece could restore the liquidity desperately needed by its banks and its economy by nationalizing the banks and issuing digital loans backed by government guarantees to its ailing businesses. Greece could provide an inspiring model of sustainable prosperity for the world. But it is being strangled by a hegemonic power in a financial war that is being waged against us all.

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(Português) Crueldade Animal: A Venda de Líquido Biliar de Urso
ANDA Agência de Notícias de Direitos Animais – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

11 de julho de 2015 – Subsiste na China antiga prática “medicinal” de se utilizar líquido produzido pela bile de ursos negros (Ursus thibetanus) para tratamento de doenças relacionadas aos olhos e ao fígado de seres humanos, assim como para fabricação de pomadas e xampus.

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CNN to Broadcast Corporate Propaganda as News?
C. Robert Gibson – Al Jazeera America, 13 Jul 2015

Companies paying media outlets to produce news-like content is a new low for network TV. Once a news outlet as recognizable as CNN starts airing branded content, it has the potential to create a huge conflict of interest in editorial decisions.

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(Italiano) OXI o NAI?
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

OXI, No, ce l’ha fatta, come ci si aspettava, con il 61%. Un gran giorno per la Democrazia, per la Grecia, per l’Europa, per il mondo.

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Samsung Unveils an Incredible See-through Safety Truck
Posted by Antonio C. S. Rosa, editor - TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

The incredible Safety Truck has a camera fitted to its front, which sends real time footage to a screen on the back of the vehicle- helping car drivers overtake in safety. Samsung claimed its technology would help cut down on road deaths.

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The Twentieth Anniversary of the Srebrenica Genocide
Satoshi Ashikaga – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

If the slogan twenty years ago was “To save one Serb’s life, kill one hundred Bosianiks”, the slogan from now on should be like this: “To save one Serb’s life, one hundred Bosniaks cooperate. To save one Bosniak’s life, one hundred Serbs cooperate.” The current trending seems to be against this new slogan. But wait. Time will tell.

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The U.S. Must Save Greece
Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel Economics Laureate – Time Magazine, 13 Jul 2015

July 9, 2015 – As the Greek saga continues, many have marveled at Germany’s chutzpah. It received, in real terms, one of the largest bailout and debt reduction in history and unconditional aid from the U.S. in the Marshall Plan. And yet it refuses even to discuss debt relief.

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The Collateral Damage of Austerity
Robert C. Koehler – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

A bogus moral authority seems to accompany the accumulation of wealth — a sense that one deserves it, while those without wealth deserve servitude and hopelessness. Beyond this moral authority lies the desperate need not to recognize the common humanity of those who are struggling to survive.

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Debt Slavery
John Scales Avery – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

Usury, the charging of interest on loans, has a history of being forbidden by several major religions, including not only the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but also the ancient Vedic Scriptures of India.

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Greece Says “NO MORE” to Austerity and Their Global Loan Shark Predators Are Pouting about It
Gary G. Kohls, MD – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

Predatory lenders “work to bankrupt the countries that received those loans so that they would be forever beholden to their creditors, and so they would be easy targets when we needed favors, including military bases, UN votes, or access to oil and other natural resources.” – John Perkins, author of “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”

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Call for Sanity on 60th Anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto
Emanuel Pastreich – Foreign Policy In Focus, 13 Jul 2015

July 9, 2015 – Sixty years after Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell issued their manifesto about the growing threat of world war, the globe continues to face the prospect of nuclear annihilation — coupled with the looming threat of climate change.

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Ufa, Russia at the Center of the World
Mark Sleboda - The BRICS Post, 13 Jul 2015

US press love to refer to the West as “the international community”, but in Ufa we see a truer representation of the world. Russia, with host and presidency duties of both BRICS and the SCO, is holding both summits in concert with the newly formed EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union) summit. What is most telling and definitive is not even who is present in Ufa this week – but who is not. The West is not.

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Who Is to Blame for Greek Crisis? Goldman Sachs Takes Heat
Sputinik News – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

Goldman Sachs Banker, who got $12 million for getting Greece into the Eurozone by falsely extolling its financial capacity, could now see a lawsuit.

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Yemeni Genocide Proceeds Apace, Enjoying World’s Silence
William Boardman - Reader Supported News, 13 Jul 2015

If any of the umpteen candidates for president of the United States has said anything humane, useful, or even dimly relevant about Yemen, it is hard to find (and I have found nothing). And nowhere have I found any call to establish the appropriate International War Crimes Tribunal to judge the illegality of the multiple, heinous predations of the United States, Saudi Arabia, and their sundry allies, all members in good standing of the world peacekeeping authority.

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Ghost Students, Ghost Teachers, Ghost Schools: The Failure of US-Funded Schools in Afghanistan
Azmat Khan, BuzzFeed News - TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

9 Jul 2015 – The United States trumpets education as one of its shining successes of the war in Afghanistan. But a BuzzFeed News investigation reveals U.S. claims were often outright lies, as the government peddled numbers it knew to be false and touted schools that have never seen a single student.

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Peace Lessons
David Swanson – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

I just read what may be the best introduction to peace studies I’ve ever seen. It’s called ‘Peace Lessons,’ and is a new book by Timothy Braatz. It’s not too fast or too slow, neither obscure nor boring. It does not drive the reader away from activism toward meditation and “inner peace.”

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Thomas Piketty: “Germany Has Never Repaid its Debts. It Has No Standing to Lecture Greece or Other Nations”
Thomas Piketty, Die Zeit – The Wire, 13 Jul 2015

8 Jul 2015 – “… Germany is really the single best example of a country that, throughout its history, has never repaid its external debt. Neither after the First nor the Second World War. However, it has frequently made other nations pay up, such as after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when it demanded massive reparations from France and indeed received them. The French state suffered for decades under this debt. The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.”

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Some Thoughts on Banning of Cow Slaughter in India
Ravi P Bhatia – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

The Maharashtra government banned the slaughter of cows and bulls and selling and eating of beef. The ban also covers the transportation of these animals outside the state for slaughter. Why is a cow so useful and why is there so much controversy about this decision?

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2015 International Women Walk for Peace and Reunification of Korea
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

Delegation Visits North/South Korea May 19–25, 2015 – On 24 May 2015, International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament, thirty women peacemakers from 15 countries, made a historic crossing of the two mile wide de-militarized zone DMZ from North to South Korea.

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Global Governance Reforms: Ufa, Russia Hosts the BRICS, EEU and SCO Summits Simultaneously
Bongani Mbindwane - The BRICS Post, 13 Jul 2015

Among all the groundbreaking decisions made at UFA this year, BRICS nations are moving to discard the dollar and euro on their $500-billion intra-trade. Further, the summits in Ufa, highlighted the geopolitical cross-pollination between BRICS and the SCO, which cannot make decisions that are disadvantageous to each other.

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Cybersecurity, Encryption and the Golden Age of Surveillance
Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan – Democracy NOW!, 13 Jul 2015

The ability of regular people to access encryption tools has prompted the governments of both the United States and the United Kingdom to propose special access to all communications. They want a master key to everyone’s digital life.

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London Is Now the Global Money-Laundering Centre for the Drug Trade, Says Crime Expert
James Hanning and David Connett – The Independent, 13 Jul 2015

Interviewed by The Independent on Sunday [5 Jul 2015], Mr Saviano said of the international drugs trade that “Mexico is its heart and London is its head”. He said the cheapness and the ease of laundering dirty money through UK-based banks gave London a key role in drugs trade.

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One Lesson from Srebrenica
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

12 Jul 2015 – World is busy commemorating yet another anniversary of a genocide. One major lesson from Srebrenica is that there is no lesson learned or incorporated into today’s responses to Myanmar’s genocide. The world of power and influence is in the final instance a world of shameful deeds, dishonest policies and business-as-usual inhumanity. Sad, unconscionable and outrageous – but painfully true.

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To Be Greek
Uri Avnery – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

Everybody has already voiced his (or her) opinion on the Greek crisis, whether he (or she) has an opinion or not. So I feel obliged to do the same. Every commentator, from Nobel prize-winning economists to my taxi driver in Tel Aviv, has a solution. Unfortunately, no one listens to them.

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Most Attitudes and Beliefs are Outcomes of Fear
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph. D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

I routinely come across efforts to change an individual’s attitude, belief and/or value by using education to teach the ‘right’ one. I would like to explain why education cannot achieve such a change, except in the most superficial of circumstances, as the evidence clearly demonstrates.

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UN Human Rights Council Reaffirms the Safeguards for Civilians in Times of War
René Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

“Accountability for breaches of international humanitarian law and for human rights violations, as well as respect for human rights, are not obstacles to peace, but rather the preconditions on which trust and, ultimately, a durable peace can be built.”

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Slavoj Žižek on Greece: This Is a Chance for Europe to Awaken
Slavoj Žižek – New Statesman, 13 Jul 2015

The Greeks are correct: Brussels’ denial that this is an ideological question is ideology at its purest – and symptomatic of our whole political process.

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Watching the News
Doonesbury – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

Comic Satirical Strip

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The New President of the UN General Assembly
John Scales Avery – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

The election of Mogens Lykketoft as the new President of the United Nations General Assembly has opened the door to the solution of several of world’s most pressing problems. For example, it may now be possible to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention by a direct majority vote.

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Women Preventing War
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

In 1905, Norway declared its independence from Sweden. Norwegian and Swedish troops faced each other along the border, ready to fight.

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In Memoriam: Donald Neff, Journalist (1930-2015)
Alison Weir, If Americans New – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

One of the top journalists to report on Palestine-Israel has died May 10. Many activists in the growing Palestine solidarity movement are unaware that he exposed critical facts about Palestine with unparalleled precision and elegance. Much of the information he uncovered is still significant today.

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Killing by Committee in the Global Wild West: The Perpetrators Become the Victims of Drone Warfare
Pratap Chatterjee - TomDispatch, 13 Jul 2015

There’s nothing “lone” about drone warfare. Think of the structure for carrying out Washington’s drone killing program as a multidimensional pyramid populated with hundreds of personnel and so complex that just about no one involved really grasps the full picture.

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This Week in History
Satoshi Ashikaga – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

July 13 -19 – QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” – Helen Keller

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Angela Merkel Has a Red and a Yellow Button. One Ends the Crisis. Which Does She Push?
Yanis Varoufakis – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

The Global Minotaur of neoliberal capitalism centred on Wall Street held the world to ransom from 1971 to 2008. Now Europe’s surplus countries are trying to prop up its corpse. Bankruptocracy is as much a European predicament as it is an American “invention”.

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Ending Greece’s Bleeding
Paul Krugman, Nobel Economics Laureate – The New York Times, 13 Jul 2015

The campaign of bullying — the attempt to terrify Greeks by cutting off bank financing and threatening general chaos, all with the almost open goal of pushing the current leftist government out of office — was a shameful moment in a Europe that claims to believe in democratic principles.

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If the ‘Product’ Is Wrong, a Rebrand Won’t Help Israel
Jonathan Cook – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

Benjamin Netanyahu warns that Israel must “rebrand” itself to avoid pariah status from the growing movement calling for an international boycott. Ordinary Israelis are therefore being conscripted into an army of spin doctors in a campaign termed “hasbara” – Hebrew for “public diplomacy” or, most literally, propaganda.

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TPP-TTIP-Tisa: A Tipping Edge from Democracy
Johan Galtung, 13 Jul 2015 - TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

This editorial sees the three agreements as a tipping edge from democracy; but, to what? Away from democracy as a process ‘of and by’ the people, and away from democracy as a society ‘for’ the people, except in the sense of lower prices. Goodbye Lincoln.

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Teenage Students Invent Condom That Detects STDs
True Activist – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

While some American authorities scratch their heads and blame social media for a sharp uptick in syphilis, British school children have invented a condom to help reduce the proliferation of sexually transmitted infections.

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Europe: Disinventing Democracy
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

8 Jul 2015 – The assault on Greece is just the latest episode in a long history of shutting down choice on behalf of the financial elite. Greece might be financially bankrupt; the troika is politically bankrupt. Those who persecute this nation wield illegitimate, undemocratic powers: powers of the kind now afflicting us all.

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Hawaii Just Banned Plastic Bags at Grocery Checkouts
Amanda Froelich, True Activist – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

Hawaii is the first US state to ban plastic bags from being distributed at grocery store checkouts.

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Three Prisons
Udaya R. Tennakoon – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

I was caught, gone and detained
In the prison state human made

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New Study Concludes Fruit Helps Your Body Burn Stored Fat
Amanda Froelich, True Activist – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

2-4 fresh servings of fruit per day can help your body convert ‘bad’ fat into ‘good’ fat.

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Pentagon Concludes America Not Safe unless It Conquers the World
Paul Craig Roberts – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

The Pentagon report is sufficiently audacious in its hypocrisy to declare that Washington “supports the established institutions and processes dedicated to preventing conflict, respecting sovereignty, and furthering human rights.” This from the military of a government that has invaded, bombed, and overthrown 11 governments since the Clinton regime and is currently working to overthrow governments in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, and Argentina.

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BRICS: A New Way of Global Partnership
Dr Alexander Yakovenko, LEAP/GEAB – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of solidarity of BRICS voices calling for major cooperation on the peaceful settlement of conflicts based on the UN Charter. The world is at a turning point.

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Requisite Meta-reflection on Engagement in Systemic Change?
Anthony Judge – TRANSCEND Media Service, 13 Jul 2015

Fiat, Fatwa and World-Making in a Period of Existential Radicalisation – Such differences are characteristic of the increasingly sterile debate regarding the need to be “positive” versus the preoccupation of critics readily deprecated as “negative” — otherwise to be termed as “hope-mongering” versus “doom-mongering”.

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XKEYSCORE (Part I) – NSA’s Google for the World’s Private Communications
Morgan Marquis-Boire, Glenn Greenwald, and Micah Lee – The Intercept, 6 Jul 2015

1 Jul 2015 – One of the National Security Agency’s most powerful tools of mass surveillance makes tracking someone’s Internet usage as easy as entering an email address, and provides no built-in technology to prevent abuse. Today, The Intercept is publishing 48 top-secret and other classified documents about XKEYSCORE.

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XKEYSCORE (Part II) – Behind the Curtain: A Look at the Inner Workings of NSA
Micah Lee, Glenn Greenwald, and Morgan Marquis-Boire – The Intercept, 6 Jul 2015

Around the world, when a person gets online to do anything — write an email, post to a social network, browse the web or play a video game — there’s a decent chance that the Internet traffic her device sends and receives is getting collected and processed by one of XKEYSCORE’s hundreds of servers scattered across the globe.

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UN Gaza Report Part I: War Crimes during Israel’s 51-Day Assault on Gaza
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

Exactly a year ago, for 51 days between July 7 and August 26 Israel carried out its third major military assault on Gaza in the past six years. This last one, code named Operation Protective Edge, was the most vicious, killing 2,251 Palestinians, of which 1,462 were civilians, and included 299 women and 551 children, as well as injuring 11,231, a number that includes 3,436 children, 10% of whom have permanent disabilities, and another 1,500 have been orphaned.

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UN Gaza Report Part II: Israel’s Counterinsuurgency Apologist, Colonel Richard Kemp
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

On June 25, 2015 the New York Times published an opinion piece by Kemp assessing the UN Report. What I find scandalous and perverse on the part of this self-claiming authoritative media source, is to publish such a harsh and partisan dismissal of a prudent and overly balanced report without any kind of offsetting piece.

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July: This Month in Nuclear Threat History
Jeffrey W. Mason – Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 6 Jul 2015

July 1, 1968 – The U.S., U.K., the Soviet Union, and 58 other nations signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The Preamble of the agreement, which today includes 191 state parties, referred explicitly to the need for a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which has not yet been realized due mostly to the U.S. Senate’s unwillingness to ratify it.

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The Emergence of Orwellian Newspeak and the Death of Free Speech
John W. Whitehead, The Rutherford Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

From this point on, we have only two options: go down fighting, or capitulate and betray our loved ones, our friends and our selves by insisting that, as a brainwashed Winston Smith does at the end of Orwell’s 1984, yes, 2+2 does equal 5.

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America’s Got War – Poverty, Drugs, Afghanistan, Iraq, Terror, or How to Make War on Everything
William J. Astore - TomDispatch, 6 Jul 2015

The biggest mistake in American policy, foreign and domestic, is looking at everything as war. When a war mentality takes over, it chooses the weapons and tactics for you. It limits the terms of debate before you even begin. It answers questions before they’re even asked.

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BRICS a Prototype of the Future World Order
Gevorg Mirzayan and Nikolay Surkov – Russia & India Report, 6 Jul 2015

As Russia prepares to hold the BRICS summit in Ufa, among other issues up for discussion will be the future course of the organization. Russian analysts speak to RIR about what lies ahead for BRICS and why this “interest group” has begun to play such a major role in Moscow’s foreign policy.

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NSA’s Top Brazilian Political and Financial Targets Revealed by New WikiLeaks Disclosure
Glenn Greenwald and David Miranda – The Intercept, 6 Jul 2015

4 Jul 2015 – President Rousseff just yesterday returned to Brazil after a trip to the U.S. that included a meeting with President Obama, a visit she had delayed for almost two years in anger over prior revelations of NSA spying on Brazil.

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Reading Claudia Rankine on Race
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

What Claudia Rankine shares and teaches is that every African American citizen must live with the existential concreteness of racism while even the most liberal of American white citizens live with only an abstract awareness of their own unconscious racism or, at best, their rather detached empathy with the historical victimization of our African American co-citizens.

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The Change Is the Time
Udaya R. Tennakoon – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

If you are my world
A start is needed
For changing

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End U.S. Addiction to War
James Albertini, Malu 'Aina Center for Non-violent Education & Action – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

War on drugs. War on poverty. War in Afghanistan. War in Iraq. War on terror. When you define something as war, violence becomes the only means.

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Will the Real Issues Be Discussed in 2016 US Presidential Election?
John Scales Avery – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

Most thoughtful people agree that the two most important issues facing humanity today are the threat of catastrophic and uncontrollable climate change, and the threat of nuclear war. Each of these threatened disasters has the potential to destroy human civilization and much of the biosphere.

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An Experiment in Love: Martin Luther King, Jr. on the Six Pillars of Nonviolent Resistance and the Ancient Greek Notion of ‘Agape’
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

Although Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. used Christian social ethics and the New Testament concept of “love” heavily in his writings and speeches, he was as influenced by Eastern spiritual traditions, Gandhi’s political writings, Buddhism’s notion of the interconnectedness of all beings, and Ancient Greek philosophy.

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3 Artificial Sweeteners to Avoid
Dr. Edward F. Group, Global Healing Center – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

I always suggest that everyone, including healthy individuals, remove added sugars from their diet, including artificial sweeteners. Organic coconut sugar or, better yet, raw organic honey are much better alternatives to satisfy sweet cravings within the confines of a healthy diet.

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United Church of Christ Votes [80%] to Boycott & Divest from Companies Profiting from Israel’s Occupation
United Church of Christ Palestine-Israel Network – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

June 30, 2015 – UCC PIN hopes that this modest initiative will help encourage the Israeli government to end the occupation.

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The 51-Day Genocide
David Swanson – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

6 July 2015 – Max Blumenthal’s latest book, ‘The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza,’ tells a powerful story powerfully well. I can think of a few other terms that accurately characterize the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza in addition to “war,” among them: occupation, murder-spree, and genocide. Each serves a different valuable purpose. Each is correct.

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Pilot Whales Brutally Slaughtered in Yet another Horrific Faroe Islands Grind
Paul Watson, EcoWatch – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

The bodies were hoisted onto the dock by a crane as each animal was disemboweled, unborn fetuses ripped from their mothers’ wombs. The bodies were decapitated one by one. One supporter of the slaughter sent me a message saying, “We could show ISIS a thing or two about decapitation, you whale-loving bastards.”

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Greece: Only the “No” Can Save Europe
James K. Galbraith – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

The irony of the case is that the true hope – the only hope – for Europe lies in a “No” vote on Sunday, followed by renewed negotiations and a better deal. “Yes” is a vote for fear, against dignity and independence. Fear is powerful – but dignity and independence have a way of coming back.

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Not Just Apologies but Repentance
Nassrine Azimi – Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 6 Jul 2015

Few countries have been as mired in as much warfare within as brief a period of history as the United States. Since WWII, the number of revolutions, coups d’état, invasions and wars it has directly or indirectly instigated has been staggering. The United States has yet to apologize for unleashing nuclear terror on civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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Spy Drones Expose Smithfield Foods Factory Farms
SpeciesismTheMovie – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

Since 2012, “Speciesism: The Movie” director Mark Devries has been secretly using spy drones to investigate and expose the environmental devastation caused by factory farms. In this video, the drones capture shocking aerial footage of several massive facilities that supply pigs for Smithfield Foods.

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(Castellano) Colombia: La Cátedra de la Paz
Ernesto Amézquita en Cronica del Quindio – Culture of Peace News Network, 6 Jul 2015

28 jun 2015 – En desarrollo de la ley 1732 del 2014, el gobierno nacional acaba de dictar el decreto “por el cual se reglamente la cátedra de la Paz en todas las Instituciones educativas del País. Para responder al mandato constitucional consagrado en los arts. 22 y 41 de la Constitución Nacional, el carácter de la cátedra de la Paz, será obligatorio”.

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The Care and Feeding of a Financial Black Hole
Dmitry Orlov – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

Anyone who knows mathematics can see that the United States is on the verge of collapse because its debt has gone exponential. These aren’t words that an American or a European politician can utter in public, and perhaps not even whisper to their significant other while lying in bed, because the American eavesdroppers might overhear them, and then the politician in question would get the Dominique Strauss-Kahn treatment.

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U.S. Chamber of Commerce Works Globally to Fight Antismoking Measures
Danny Hakim – The New York Times, 6 Jul 2015

From Ukraine to Uruguay, Moldova to the Philippines, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its foreign affiliates have become the hammer for the tobacco industry, engaging in a worldwide effort to fight antismoking laws of all kinds, according to interviews with government ministers, lobbyists, lawmakers and public health groups in Asia, Europe, Latin America and the United States.

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Commitments the American Psychological Association Should Make Today
Roy Eidelson Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service, 6 Jul 2015

An investigation of APA collusion with the CIA is nearing completion.

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