Articles by OWN
We found 300 results.
(Français) Israël. Des colonies et des armes pour le Myanmar
John Brown | A l’encontre – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Jan 2017
26 janvier 2017- Les dirigeants de l’armée du Myanmar se sont livrés à une frénésie d’achats auprès des industries israéliennes d’armement. Ils ont même rencontré le président et le chef d’Etat-major israéliens. Malgré les crimes de guerre qui sont commis par ce pays du Sud-Est asiatique, Israël continue à maintenir d’importants liens avec lui dans le domaine dit de la «sécurité».
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The Power of Gratitude – Oprah Winfrey
OWN – TRANSCEND Media Service,
24 Oct 2016
If you can’t find what to be thankful for, you should start by just being grateful for your breath. Focus on the good you have, not the lack of it, because whatever gets your attention will increase the energy of gratitude. That’s how joy rises.
→ read full articleCentral Bank Digital Currencies: A Revolution in Banking?
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Sep 2016
Skeptical commentators suspect that their primary goal is to eliminate cash, setting us up for negative interest rates (we pay the bank to hold our deposits rather than the reverse).
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Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini (Music Video of the Week)
The 5 Browns – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Jul 2016
The 5 Browns performing –in 5 pianos– the 18th Variation from Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. Composition: Sergei Rachmaninoff
→ read full articleThe War on Weed Part II: Monsanto, Bayer, and the Push for Corporate Cannabis
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Jul 2016
California’s “Adult Use of Marijuana Act” is a voter initiative characterized as legalizing marijuana use. But critics warn that it will actually make access more difficult and expensive, squeeze home growers and small farmers out of the market, heighten criminal sanctions for violations, and open the door to patented, genetically modified versions that must be purchased year after year.
→ read full articleBrexit and the Derivatives Time Bomb
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 Jul 2016
Brexit could trigger a $500 trillion derivatives meltdown, by forcing the EU to allow insolvent member governments and banks to write down debt. Italy is in financial crisis and is already petitioning for that concession. How to avoid collapse of the massive derivatives house of cards? Alternatives are considered.
→ read full articleThe War on Weed Is Winding Down – But Will Monsanto Be the Winner?
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Jun 2016
The war on cannabis that began in the 1930s seems to be coming to an end. Research shows that this natural plant, rather than posing a deadly danger to health, has a wide range of therapeutic benefits. But skeptics question the sudden push for legalization, which is largely funded by wealthy investors linked to Big Ag and Big Pharma.
→ read full articleEconomic Costs of US Wars
Brown University Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 May 2016
The USA has spent or obligated 4.4 trillion dollars on the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq paid almost entirely by borrowing, which has raised the US budget deficit, increased the national debt, and had other macroeconomic effects, such as raising consumer interest rates. We estimate that interest payments over war borrowings could total over $7 trillion by 2053.
→ read full articleShips to Nowhere: The Brutal Trafficking of Rohingya Refugees
Mili Mitra | Brown Political Review-Brown University – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 May 2016
Thus far, the global response has been limited and misguided. While the plight of the Rohingya has come into the media spotlight recently, there has been little coordinated effort to mitigate the crisis. Unless there is greater security and support for Rohingya in Myanmar and increased rehabilitation of these refugees across Southeast Asia, the Rohingya refugee crisis will continue to be one of the greatest and most overlooked humanitarian disasters of our time.
→ read full articleA Civic Economy of Provisions
Marvin T. Brown | The Next System Project – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 May 2016
Marvin Brown presents a model for the next system in which economic activity is based not solely on property ownership or the free market but on civic membership in a “global civil society.” He advocates a new approach to system change that would re-frame our social structures around civic relations. Oriented around families, communities, attachments, and mutual identities, this civic economy of provisions would ensure that all people have access to food, housing, health care, and education.
→ read full articleThe War on Savings: The Panama Papers, Bail-Ins, and the Push to Go Cashless
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Apr 2016
In an April 3 article titled “Corporate Media Gatekeepers Protect Western 1% From Panama Leak,” UK blogger Craig Murray writes that the whistleblower no doubt had good intentions; but he made the mistake of leaking his 11.5 million documents to the corporate-controlled Western media, which released only those few documents incriminating opponents of Western financial interests.
→ read full articleU.S. Military Spending Millions to Make Cyborgs a Reality
Ryan Browne, CNN,
14 Mar 2016
The implantable device aims to convert neurons in the brain into electronic signals and provide unprecedented “data-transfer bandwidth between the human brain and the digital world,” according to a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency statement announcing the new project.
→ read full articlePharaoh
Author Unknown - TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Feb 2016
Pharaonic attraction.
→ read full articleThe TPP: A Corporate Bill of Rights
Larry Brown - TeleSur,
8 Feb 2016
These so-called trade deals are really not very much about trade at all. They are international corporate constitutions, aimed at limiting the ability of our governments to control transnational corporate behavior. These deals weaken democracy, increase income inequality, endanger our public services, give corporations more rights than the citizenry, further endanger our already stressed environment, and kill jobs.
→ read full articleReinventing Banking: From Russia to Iceland to Ecuador
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Dec 2015
11 Dec 2015 – Global developments in finance and geopolitics are prompting a rethinking of the structure of banking and of the nature of money itself. Among other interesting news items:
→ read full articleWhile Left Governments in South America Face Setbacks, Gains of Progressive Period Likely to Endure
Benjamin Dangl, Upside Down World – TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Dec 2015
The gains of South America’s progressive period, won in the halls of power and in the streets, won’t likely be swept aside anytime soon.
→ read full articleThe Government Explains Why It Took My Email
Barrett Brown - The Intercept,
7 Dec 2015
I’ll get around to describing life in a gang-dominated medium security federal prison by and by, but right now it’s time for another update on this exciting game I’ve been playing with the BOP whereby I try to get them to restore the public email access they took from me back in March.
→ read full articleHang Onto Your Wallets: Negative Interest, the War on Cash, and the $10 Trillion Bail-in
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Nov 2015
The War on Cash is advancing on all fronts. One region that has hogged the headlines with its war against physical currency is Scandinavia. Sweden became the first country to enlist its own citizens as largely willing guinea pigs in a dystopian economic experiment: negative interest rates in a cashless society. As Credit Suisse reports, no matter where you go or what you want to purchase, you will find a small ubiquitous sign saying “Vi hanterar ej kontanter” (“We don’t accept cash”) . . . .
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Rondo Alla Turca (MUSIC VIDEO OF THE WEEK)
The 5 Browns – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Nov 2015
The 5 Browns playing an arrangement and rift of Mozart’s Alla Turca by Greg Anderson. The video was filmed while playing the international street pianos art installment called “Play Me, I’m Yours.”
→ read full articleSanta Muerte, Full of Grace: The Barrett Brown Review of Arts and Letters and Prison
Barrett Brown – The Intercept,
31 Aug 2015
Getting put back in Disciplinary Segregation was actually in some ways fortuitous, as I’m now able to make a long-overdue inspection tour of this institution’s Special Housing Unit. (I’m very much the Eleanor Roosevelt of the federal prison system.) The timing is grand, too, as the nation’s tendency to keep prisoners in these sorts of 23-hour-a-day lockdown settings for no good reason has come under a rare spate of scrutiny in recent months.
→ read full articleThe Greek Coup: Liquidity as a Weapon of Coercion
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Aug 2015
‘Let’s have an independent commission look into how on earth it is possible that a cabal of unelected movers and shakers gets full control over the entire financial structure of a democratically elected eurozone member government.’ As Canadian PM William L. M. King warned in 1935: “Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the nation’s laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation.”
→ read full articleGrexit 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.
→ read full article“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.
→ read full article“Sentence First, Verdict Afterwards”: The Alice in Wonderland World of Fast-tracked Secret Trade Agreements
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Jun 2015
21 Jun 2015 – The terms of the TPP and the TiSA are so secret that drafts of the negotiations are to remain classified for four years or five years, respectively, after the deals have been passed into law. How can laws be enforced against people and governments who are not allowed to know what was negotiated?
→ read full articleFast-tracking TiSA: Stealth Block to Monetary Reform
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Jun 2015
Money is just an IOU, and the banks are rolling in it. So wrote David Graeber referring to a paper called “Money Creation in the Modern Economy.” The paper stated outright that most common assumptions of how banking works are simply wrong. The result was to throw the entire theoretical basis for austerity out of the window.
→ read full article(Français) Partenariat Trans-Pacifique et mort de la République
Ellen Brown, Investig’Action – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 May 2015
La juge Ellen Brown relève comment cet accord ferait passer le droit des multinationales avant celui des citoyens. Un problème qui se pose aussi à travers le TTIP.
→ read full articleLatin American Organizations Campaign to Ban Monsanto
Kimberley Brown – TeleSur,
4 May 2015
Doctors, scientists and environmentalists across Latin America are demanding a ban on Monsanto products. Over 30,000 doctors and health professionals in Argentina are the latest to add their voice to the fight.
→ read full articleI Can’t Believe It’s Not Lobbying: The National Petroleum Council
Alleen Brown – The Intercept,
4 May 2015
The NPC looks, walks and quacks like lobbyists. But legally it’s a “federal advisory committee,” a little-known type of organization that in appearance and often in reality provides yet another way for corporations to get what they want out of the government.
→ read full articleBolivia: 15 Years after the Cochabamba Water Revolt, Echoes in New Cases of Corporate Abuse
Philippa de Boissière, Upside Down World – TRANSCEND Media Service,
4 May 2015
27 Apr 2015 – Fifteen years ago this month the people of Cochabamba, Bolivia were victorious in their now-famous showdown with one of the most powerful multinational corporations in the world, in what has come to be known as the Cochabamba Water Revolt. Fast forward to South America 2015.
→ read full articleThe Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Death of the Republic
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
27 Apr 2015
On April 22, 2015, the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill to fast-track the TPP, a massive trade agreement that would override our republican form of government and hand judicial and legislative authority to a foreign three-person panel of corporate lawyers. The TPP would elevate the rights of investors – also called the rights of “capital” – above the rights of the citizens.
→ read full articleBrazil: The Dictatorship’s Perfect Crime
Marcelo Pellegrini, Upside Down World – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Mar 2015
11 Mar 2015 – Discovered in 1990, the clandestine grave contained 1,049 remains, all unidentified. Among the unidentified skeletons are disappeared political activists, victims of the Esquadrão da Morte—the infamous Death Squad of rogue police active in the 1960s and 1970s—, and children who died from an outbreak of meningitis in the early 1970s, suppressed by the dictatorship.
→ read full articleThe ECB’s Noose around Greece: How Central Banks Harness Governments
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Mar 2015
Remember when the infamous Goldman Sachs delivered a threat to the Greek Parliament in December, warning them to elect a pro-austerity prime minister or have central bank liquidity cut off to their banks? The European Central Bank (headed by Mario Draghi, former managing director of Goldman Sachs) has now made good on the threat. ECB goons are demonstrating once again that toxic central banking is a mortal enemy of democracy.
→ read full articleBarrett Brown: Locked Up – My Post Cyberpunk Indentured Servitude
Barrett Brown, The Daily Beast – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Feb 2015
31 Jan 20215 – Not long ago I was a mild-mannered freelance journalist, activist, and satirist, contributing to outlets like the Guardian and Vanity Fair. But last Thursday I was sentenced to 63 months [5+ years] in federal prison. As inconvenient as this is for me, the upside is that for the first time in the two and a half years since I was arrested, I am at last able to speak freely about what has been happening to me.
→ read full articleEl Salvador: Pardon Granted for One of 17 Women Jailed for Miscarriage, Accused of Homicide
Danica Jorden – Upside Down World,
26 Jan 2015
Cinthia, who gave birth alone to an infant she says had its cord wrapped around its neck, was denied pardon, ostensibly because she smoked and drank beer on a daily basis. She was 18 when she miscarried was found guilty of aggravated homicide and has been serving a 30-year sentence.
→ read full articlePlagiarism Is the New Pornography
Curtis Brown – Al Jazeera,
5 Jan 2015
“I feel delighted that he has borrowed heavily from my work,” says the scholar Fawaz Gerges, from whom Zakaria lifted three paragraphs virtually verbatim and without attribution. If anything, the wind is in Zakaria’s sails, for God helps those who help themselves, and this fellow helps himself to a lot. And even if the going gets rough and God begins to balk, CNN will hold fast.
→ read full articleTorture Reports: Brazil and the United States Release Reports Documenting Systematic Human Rights Abuses
Kara Rochelle Martinez, Upside Down World – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Jan 2015
2 Jan 2015 – One day after the U.S. Senate released its Executive Summary of the CIA’s policy of torture, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff unveiled her country’s investigatory National Truth Commission Report, identifying human rights atrocities committed in Brazil during the military dictatorship, 1964-1988. [She was tortured too.]
→ read full articleFukushima and the Institutional Invisibility of Nuclear Disaster
John Downer – The Ecologist,
29 Dec 2014
20 Dec 2014 – The nuclear industry and its supporters have contrived a variety of narratives to justify and explain away nuclear catastrophes. None of them actually hold water, yet they serve their purpose – to command political and media heights, and reassure public sentiment on ‘safety’. But if it’s so safe, why the low limits on nuclear liabilities?
→ read full articleRussian Roulette: Taxpayers Could Be on the Hook for Trillions in Oil Derivatives
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Dec 2014
19 Dec 2014 – The sudden dramatic collapse in the price of oil appears to be an act of geopolitical warfare against Russia. The result could be trillions of dollars in oil derivative losses; and the FDIC could be liable, following repeal of key portions of the Dodd-Frank Act last weekend.
→ read full articleAn Open Letter to Ecuadorian President Correa on Evicting the CONAIE Indigenous Movement
Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Upside Down World – TRANSCEND Media Service,
22 Dec 2014
The government of Ecuador called for the CONAIE indigenous movement to leave its Quito headquarters, which they have occupied since 1991. Translation of a letter from Univ. of Coimbra’s sociology professor and analyst of Latin American social movements, Boaventura de Sousa Santos to President Rafael Correa.
→ read full articleThe Global Bankers’ Coup: Bail-In and the Shadowy Financial Stability Board
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
15 Dec 2014
For three centuries, private international banking interests have brought governments in line by blocking them from issuing their own currencies and requiring them to borrow banker-issued “banknotes” instead. Under the new FSB guidelines, nations could still be held in feudalistic subservience to foreign masters.
→ read full articleAt Global Climate Conferences, Spying Is Just Part of the Woodwork
Alleen Brown – The Intercept,
8 Dec 2014
According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, a spy from Britain’s GCHQ went disguised as a UK delegate to the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, and another was deployed to the UN’s Cancun climate talks in 2010. This followed news last winter that the NSA also spied on the Copenhagen negotiations.
→ read full articleNew G20 Rules: Cyprus-style Bail-ins to Hit Depositors AND Pensioners
Ellen Brown - TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Dec 2014
Warren Buffett called derivatives “weapons of financial mass destruction;” they are a time bomb waiting to explode. When that happens, our deposits, our pensions, and our public investment funds will all be subject to confiscation in a “bail in.” Perhaps it is time to pull our money out of Wall Street and set up our own banks – banks that will serve the people because they are owned by the people.
→ read full articleWhy Do Banks Want Our Deposits? Hint: It’s Not to Make Loans
Ellen Brown – TRANSCEND Media Service,
3 Nov 2014
The reality of how money is created today differs from some economics textbooks: Rather than banks receiving deposits when households save and then lending them out, bank lending creates deposits. While banks do not need [real] deposits to create loans, they do need to balance their books; and attracting customer deposits is usually the cheapest way to do it.
→ read full articleColonization by Bankruptcy: The High-stakes Chess Match for Argentina
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
1 Sep 2014
Argentina is playing hardball with the vulture funds, which have been trying to force it into an involuntary bankruptcy. The vultures are demanding what amounts to a 600% return on bonds bought for pennies on the dollar.
→ read full articleIs Burma’s Anti-Muslim Violence Led by “Buddhist Neo-Nazis”?
Ray Downs, Vice –TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Aug 2014
According to Dr. Muang Zarni, a Burmese human rights activist and research fellow at the London School of Economics, much of the blame for the current situation in Burma can be laid at the feet of the 969 group, which he describes as an neo-Nazi organization of hatemongers who are using Hitlerian tactics to “purify” the country by getting rid of the Muslims—it’s also, he says, one of the fastest-growing movements in the country.
→ read full articleStreet Pianos – Rondo Alla Turca (MUSIC VIDEO OF THE WEEK)
the5brownsmusic's channel – TRANSCEND Media Service,
25 Aug 2014
The 5 Browns playing an arrangement and rift of Mozart’s Alla Turca by Greg Anderson.
→ read full articleCry for Argentina: Fiscal Mismanagement, Odious Debt or Pillage?
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Aug 2014
Argentina has now taken the US to The Hague for blocking the country’s 2005 settlement with the bulk of its creditors. The issue underscores the need for an international mechanism for nations to go bankrupt. Better yet would be a sustainable global monetary scheme that avoids the need for sovereign bankruptcy.
→ read full articleStorage of Radioactive Spent Fuel Rods Still Haunts Nuclear Industry
Paul Brown – Climate News Network,
21 Jul 2014
Nuclear power is seen as one of the possible solutions to climate change, but the recent closure of five US power stations is forcing the industry to face up at last to the damaging legacy of how to deal with radioactive waste.
→ read full articleBeing a Vegetarian
Brown University Health Education – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Jun 2014
Vegetarian foods are a major source of nutrition for most people in the world.
Vegetarians have lower rates of heart disease and some forms of cancer than non-vegetarians.
Vegetarian diets can be simple and easy to prepare.
Brazil’s World Cup 2014: Private Security “Made in USA”
Santiago Navarro F. and Renata Bessi – Upside Down World,
2 Jun 2014
As the World Cup nears, the Brazilian press has reported that the American company Academi, formerly Blackwater, carried out training of Brazilian military personnel and federal police in April [2014].
→ read full articleWall Street Greed: Not Too Big for a California Jury
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
28 Apr 2014
Sixteen of the world’s largest banks have been caught colluding to rig global interest rates. Why are we doing business with a corrupt global banking cartel?
→ read full articleBanking Union Time Bomb: Eurocrats Authorize Bailouts AND Bail-Ins
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Mar 2014
“As things stand, the banks are the permanent government of the country, whichever party is in power.”
→ read full articleUsurious Returns on Phantom Money: The Credit Card Gravy Train
Ellen Brown – TRANSCEND Media Service,
17 Feb 2014
The credit card business is now the banking industry’s biggest cash cow, and it’s largely due to lucrative hidden fees.
→ read full articleWho Owns the Federal Reserve?
Ellen Brown - Global Research,
10 Feb 2014
“Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders.”
– The Honorable Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1930s
Monsanto, the TPP, and Global Food Dominance
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Dec 2013
Global food control has nearly been achieved, by reducing seed diversity with GMO (genetically modified) seeds that are distributed by only a few transnational corporations. But this agenda has been implemented at grave cost to our health; and if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) passes, control over not just our food but our health, our environment and our financial system will be in the hands of transnational corporations.
→ read full articlePublic Banking in Costa Rica: A Remarkable Little-known Model
Ellen Brown – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Nov 2013
In Costa Rica, publicly-owned banks have been available for so long and work so well that people take for granted that any country that knows how to run an economy has a public banking option.
→ read full articlePublic Banking in Costa Rica: A Remarkable Little-known Model
Ellen Brown – TRANSCEND Media Service,
18 Nov 2013
In Costa Rica, publicly-owned banks have been available for so long and work so well that people take for granted that any country that knows how to run an economy has a public banking option.
→ read full articleThe Bank Guarantee That Bankrupted Ireland
Ellen Brown – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Nov 2013
The Irish have a long history of being tyrannized, exploited, and oppressed. Today, Ireland is under a different sort of tyranny, one imposed by the banks and the troika—the EU, ECB and IMF. The oppressors have demanded austerity and more austerity, forcing the public to pick up the tab for bills incurred by profligate private bankers.
→ read full article
Rhapsody in Blue (Music Video of the Week)
The 5 Browns – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Nov 2013
5 Pianos – The 5 Browns play Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin.
→ read full articleU.S. Approves Military Aid for Countries with Child Soldiers
Hayes Brown – Think Progress,
7 Oct 2013
The White House on Monday [30 Sep 2013] issued blanket waivers to Yemen, Chad, and South Sudan allowing them to receive military aid despite their ongoing use of child soldiers. Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo received partial waivers as well; this means that they’ll be granted lethal aid only.
→ read full articleThe Armageddon Looting Machine: The Looming Mass Destruction from Derivatives
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Sep 2013
Five years after the financial collapse precipitated by the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, the risk of another full-blown financial panic is still looming large, despite the Dodd Frank legislation designed to contain it. As noted in a recent Reuters article, the risk has just moved into the shadows.
→ read full articleMaking the World Safe for Banksters: Syria in the Cross-hairs
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
10 Sep 2013
Iraq and Libya have been taken out, and Iran has been heavily boycotted. Syria is now in the cross-hairs. Why? Here is one overlooked scenario. “The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.”
→ 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 articleGreen Light for City-Owned San Francisco Bank
Ellen Brown, Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service,
5 Aug 2013
Last year, Bank of America and other major banks were caught rigging debt service auctions, for which they had to pay $673 million in restitution. The question is: do taxpayers want to have their public monies in a bank that has been proven to be defrauding them? Compounding the risk is the reason Cyprus “bail in” shocker, in which depositor funds were confiscated to recapitalize two bankrupt Cypriot banks.
→ read full articleThe Six Types of Atheist
Andrew Brown – The Guardian,
22 Jul 2013
A new study in the US seeks to break down atheists into distinct categories. Which one do you fall into?
→ read full articleThink Your Money Is Safe in an Insured Bank Account? Think Again.
Ellen Brown – Global Research,
15 Jul 2013
A trend to shift responsibility for bank losses onto blameless depositors lets banks gamble away your money.
→ read full articleDepositors Beware: Bail-In Is Now Official E.U. Policy
Ellen Brown, Occupy – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Jul 2013
Shifting the burden of a major bank collapse from the blameless taxpayer to the blameless depositor is another case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, while the real perpetrators carry on with their risky, speculative banking schemes.
→ read full articleBail-out Is Out, Bail-in Is In: Time for Some Publicly-Owned Banks
Ellen Brown – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 May 2013
The crossing of the Rubicon into the confiscation of depositor funds was not a one-off emergency measure limited to Cyprus. Similar “bail-in” policies are now appearing in multiple countries. What triggered the new rules may have been a series of game-changing events including the refusal of Iceland to bail out its banks and their depositors.
→ read full articleIs Burma’s Anti-Muslim Violence Led by “Buddhist Neo-Nazis”?
Ray Downs – TRANSCEND Media Service,
8 Apr 2013
When most Westerners think of Buddhism, they think of smiling men with potbellies and inspirational quotes from Phil Jackson. “Buddhist neo-Nazi” sounds like a contradiction in terms. But in Burma, vicious anti-Muslim sentiment has been on the rise, and Buddhist extremists are responsible for attacking Muslims and burning down their houses and mosques, …
→ read full articleOh, the Places You Won’t Go! World’s 25 Least-Visited Countries
Ryan Lenora Brown – The Christian Science Monitor,
1 Apr 2013
Using UN statistics, travel writer Gunnar Garfors found that top contenders for the least-visited award are often dangerous or remote. But some are just plain boring.
→ read full articleSri Lanka Accused of Ongoing Torture and Abuse of Tamil Prisoners
Mark Townsend and Hussein Kesvani – The Guardian,
25 Mar 2013
Calls for UK to withdraw from Commonwealth summit in Colombo as report claims brutal human rights violations by state. The torture of Tamil political prisoners is increasingly rife in Sri Lanka with some detainees dying in custody after suffering prolonged abuse, a new investigation claims.
→ read full articleNow Six – Not One – Hanford Tanks Leaking Radioactive Waste
Craig Brown – Common Dreams,
4 Mar 2013
Six aging, single-walled underground storage tanks are leaking radioactive waste, threatening groundwater below the Hanford nuclear site, Washington state Governor Jay Inslee announced on Friday [22 Feb, 2013] afternoon.
→ read full articleThe Trillion Dollar Coin: Joke or Game Changer?
Ellen Brown – TRANSCEND Media Service,
11 Feb 2013
The trillion dollar coin actually represents one of the most important principles of popular prosperity ever conceived: the creation of money by sovereign governments, debt-free.
→ read full articleWho Owns the Federal Reserve?
Ellen Brown – Global Research,
4 Feb 2013
“Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders.” – The Honorable Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1930s.
→ read full articleMali Conflict: A Challenging Assignment
Peter Townson – Doha Centre for Media Freedom,
28 Jan 2013
French military and Malian government forces are restricting access to conflict areas for members of the media, making covering the situation a major challenge.
→ read full articleCooperative Banking, the Exciting Wave of the Future
Ellen Brown - AlterNet,
28 May 2012
Rather than feeding off the community, banking can nourish the community and local economy. As our political system sputters, a wave of innovative thinking and bold experimentation is quietly sweeping away outmoded economic models.
→ read full articleAll Red Meat Is Bad For You, New Study Says
Eryn Brown - Los Angeles Times,
19 Mar 2012
Eating red meat — any amount and any type — appears to significantly increase the risk of premature death, according to a long-range study that examined the eating habits and health of more than 110,000 adults for more than 20 years.
→ read full articleHow Greece Could Take Down Wall Street
Ellen Brown – Web of Debt,
27 Feb 2012
The Houses of Morgan, Goldman and the other Big Five are justifiably worried right now, because an “event of default” declared on European sovereign debt could jeopardize their $32 trillion derivatives scheme. According to Rudy Avizius in an article on The Market Oracle (UK) on February 15th, that explains what happened at MF Global, and why the 50% Greek bond write-down was not declared an event of default.
→ read full articleDecline ‘Friend’ Request: Social Media Meets 21st Century Statecraft
Cyril Mychalejkon- Upside Down World,
23 Jan 2012
While the positive contributions of technology to social movements and uprisings have been been amply noted, if not overstated, more attention needs to be paid to the intrinsic dangers looming in the co-optation of this technology-driven networking, specifically by Washington, but by other repressive governments as well.
→ read full articleResistance Is Fertile: Palestine’s Eco-War
James Brownsell – Al Jazeeera,
7 Nov 2011
More than half a million olive trees have been uprooted or destroyed by Israeli civil and military forces in the past 10 years, a tree renowned for its symbolism since before the time of Noah. At 7 am on Tuesday, February 22, Abu Latifa got a phone call that Israeli troops were on his family’s farmland taking chainsaws to the trees. When he arrived at the field that his family had cultivated for the past 40 years, soldiers had cut down 150 trees and were poisoning the roots. “Olive trees are holy; what faith, what religion allows this to happen? How does any human being have the heart to kill trees like this?”
→ read full articleThe Military as a Jobs Program: There are More Efficient Ways to Stimulate the Economy
Ellen Brown – Global Research,
27 Jun 2011
“Most politicians understand . . . that weapons production is currently the number one industrial export product of the U.S. They know that major industrial job creation is largely coming from the Pentagon. Thus most politicians, from both parties, want to continue to support the military industrial complex gravy train for their communities.” That explains why the country seems to be permanently at war. If we had peace, the war machine would be out of a job.
→ read full articleInvesting in World Peace
Susan Carew (aka Peacefull Clown) - TRANSCEND Media Service,
14 Feb 2011
A Poem
→ read full articleHonduras: Campesinos Expelled Like ‘Vermin’
Giorgio Trucchi – Upside Down World,
20 Dec 2010
Soldiers and police armed to the teeth violently evict defenseless peasant families. The presence of human rights organizations and national and international journalists prevents, this time, a new blood bath in the Bajo Aguan.
→ read full articleWikiLeaks Backlash: The First Global Cyber War Has Begun, Claim Hackers
Mark Townsend, Paul Harris in New York, Alex Duval Smith in Johannesburg, Dan Sabbagh, Josh Halliday – The Guardian,
13 Dec 2010
As Julian Assange is held in solitary confinement at Wandsworth prison, the anonymous community of hacktivists takes to the cyber battlefields.
→ read full articleChina’s Creative Accounting: Using Debt as an Instrument of Economic Development
Ellen Brown –Global Research,
8 Nov 2010
China’s government can direct its banks to advance credit in the national currency as needed, because it owns the banks. Ironically, the Chinese evidently got that idea from us. Sun Yat-sen was a great admirer of Abraham Lincoln, who avoided a crippling national debt by issuing debt-free Treasury notes during the Civil War; and Lincoln was following the lead of the American colonists, our forebears.
→ read full articleTime for a New Theory of Money
Ellen Brown – Yes! Magazine,
1 Nov 2010
By understanding that money is simply credit, we unleash it as a powerful tool for our communities.
→ read full articleA Worse Record than Saddam’s
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown – The Independent,
1 Nov 2010
Now imagine good Muslims worldwide, who know all about universal rights, but can see that there is no universal accountability, that Third World despots are made to pay while others earn millions writing autobiographies and lecturing the world on good leadership and governance…. Hundreds of savvy, smart, keenly aware young people email me from various Muslim states asking: “What’s the point? They say one thing and do the opposite. They say they want to help us and kill our people. Why should we trust the British and Americans?”… What do our army commanders and American leaders advise me to tell these disenchanted Muslims?… Those who took us into this war are not obliged to explain themselves, not liable. In that they are worse than the dictator they toppled. Not comfortable that thought, but true.
→ read full articleBasel III: Tightening the Noose on Credit
Ellen Brown – The Web of Debt,
27 Sep 2010
The stock market shot up on September 13, after new banking regulations were announced called Basel III. Wall Street breathed a sigh of relief. The megabanks, propped up by generous taxpayer bailouts, would have no trouble meeting the new capital requirements, which were lower than expected and would not be fully implemented until 2019. Only the local commercial banks, the ones already struggling to meet capital requirements, would be seriously challenged by the new rules.
→ read full articlePolitics
Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service,
19 Jul 2010
Socialism: You have two cows, and you give one to your neighbor.
→ read full articleThirteen Religious Views of Life
Unknown – TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Jun 2010
Taoism: Shit happens.
→ read full articleAIG-GATE: THE WORLD’S GREATEST INSURANCE HEIST
Ellen Brown – Global Research,
10 Feb 2010
Rumor has it that Timothy Geithner is on his way out as Treasury Secretary, due to his involvement in the AIG scandal that is now unraveling in hearings before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. Bob Chapman writes in The International Forecaster:Each day brings more revelations of efforts of the NY Fed and Goldman Sachs […]
→ read full articleTHE VOICES OF PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY IN VENEZUELA
Hans Bennett - Upside Down Word,
26 Jan 2010
A review of Venezuela Speaks! Voices from the GrassrootsThere are many different ways that the corporate media continues to misrepresent the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. Many critics of this biased media coverage have directly challenged the demonization of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, but very few critics, if any, have exposed the media’s virtual erasure of […]
→ read full articleEU/IMF REVOLT: GREECE, ICELAND, LATVIA MAY LEAD THE WAY
Ellen Hodgson Brown – Dissident Voice,
20 Dec 2009
Europe’s small, debt-strapped countries could follow the lead of Argentina and simply walk away from their debts. That would shift the burden to the creditor countries, which could solve the problem merely by a change in accounting rules. Total financial collapse, once a problem only for developing countries, has now come to Europe. The International […]
→ read full articleTHE IMF TO PLAY ROLE OF GLOBAL CENTRAL BANK?
Ellen Brown,
6 Oct 2009
The Dollar Needs to be Devalued by Half?“A year ago,” said law professor Ross Buckley on Australia’s ABC News on September 22, “nobody wanted to know the International Monetary Fund. Now it’s the organiser for the international stimulus package which has been sold as a stimulus package for poor countries.” The IMF may have catapulted to […]
→ read full articleDON’T ISRAEL’S NUCLEAR WEAPONS COUNT?
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown,
28 Sep 2009
Netanyahu has what he wants to keep up the idea of his plucky, vulnerable little state.Influential Europeans – including many Muslims – recently debated freedom of expression with the Danish editor who commissioned the cartoons of Prophet Mohammed which led to riots. Held in Berlin, it was a good, at times blazing, debate. Freedom of […]
→ read full articleNOBEL PEACE LAUREATE MAIREAD MAGUIRE TALKS ABOUT HER ABDUCTION BY ISRAELI FORCES ON IRISH TV
Nightly News With Vincent Browne,
9 Jul 2009
Just out of a prison cell to where she was taken after being abducted by the Israeli navy in the Mediterranean on June 30, Mairead Maguire describes her ordeal and her reasons for trying to break the siege of Gaza in a panel discussion on the Palestinian/Israeli confict. TV3 CLICK TO VIEW (Join the […]
→ read full articleTORTURED TRUTH: WHAT CHENNEY LEARNED FROM STALIN
Andrew Brown,
6 Jul 2009
Who would have thought that Dick Cheney was a follower of French fashion? When he defends the routine use of torture as a means of warfare, however, theirs is the most recent example. The French, in the Algerian War, were the last Western army to systematize the use of torture on detainees. Alistair Horne describes […]
→ read full articleTHE TOWER OF BASEL: SECRETIVE PLANS FOR THE ISSUING OF A GLOBAL CURRENCY
Ellen Brown,
18 Apr 2009
Do we really want the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) issuing our global currency? In an April 7 article in The London Telegraph titled “The G20 Moves the World a Step Closer to a Global Currency,” Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote: “A single clause in Point 19 of the communiqué issued by the G20 leaders amounts to revolution […]
→ read full articleLIVERPOOL: A CITY THAT IS FINALLY GLAD TO BE GAY
Jonathan Brown,
13 Nov 2008
The Gay Village is a long overdue addition to a place where homophobic crime is rife. Journey on any typical Saturday night to downtown Liverpool and you can expect to find the dance floor at theG Bar on Erbele Street rammed and the music pulsating at ear-splitting volumes. Around the corner in Stanley Street a […]
→ read full articleEND OF CHICAGO FREE-MARKET IDEAS?
Sarah Brown in Chicago,
4 Nov 2008
Nestled within the leafy campus of the University of Chicago, stands a brownstone building known currently as the Chicago Theological Seminary Building. But the building’s new occupants have more worldly pursuits than the study of God. It is now the planned site for what will be the Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics. The […]
→ read full article