Articles by M
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Monsanto’s GM Maize Retreat
Gordon Davidson – The Scottish Farmer,
6 Feb 2012
France has held firm in its opposition to Monsanto’s genetically modified MON 810 maize – and the agri-chemical multinational has admitted defeat.
→ read full article2012: The Year of the Cooperative
Jessica Reeder – Yes! Magazine,
6 Feb 2012
How an old business model is finding new relevance all over the world.
→ read full articleArgentina: Fair Trade Going Strong amid Global Crisis
Marcela Valente – Inter Press Service-IPS,
6 Feb 2012
With a steady growth in production and exports, fair trade in Argentina is proving that socially and environmentally sustainable practices can be much more than a refuge from external crises.
→ read full articleAnimal Enterprise Terrorism Act Threatens Activism
Will Potter, Jurist – TRANSCEND Media Service\,
6 Feb 2012
Jurist Guest Columnist Will Potter, an independent journalist who specializes in the topic of eco-terrorism, says the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act classification of activists as terrorists threatens to end activism, in part to stem corporate profit loss.
→ read full articleNobel Peace Prize Jury under Investigation
Common Dreams staff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Feb 2012
Probe: Has Nobel Peace Prize Lost Its Way?
→ read full articleLest We Forget in Myanmar
Nancy Hudson-Rodd – Asia Times,
6 Feb 2012
The Myanmar delegation to the United Nations in Geneva complained last year that some members failed to show due diplomatic respect by referring to their country as Burma rather than Myanmar. Now most diplomats and news publications refer to the country as Myanmar as a reward the regime’s recent so-called reforms. But is this respect justified and are long-time Myanmar observers now suffering from selective amnesia?
→ read full articleDivine Injustice
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Jan 2012
Drone warfare can be used to thwart democratic movements, anywhere. In October last year, a 16 year-old called Tariq Aziz was travelling through North Waziristan in Pakistan with his 12 year-old cousin, Waheed Khan. Their car was hit by a missile from a US drone(13). As always, their deaths made them guilty: if we killed them, they must be terrorists. But they weren’t. Tariq was about to start work with the human rights group Reprieve, taking pictures of the aftermath of drone strikes. A mistake? Possibly. But it is also possible that he was murdered out of self-interest.
→ read full articleSafe to swim here?
TMS Editor,
30 Jan 2012
While sports fishing off the Florida coast, a tourist capsized his boat.
→ read full articleNepal: Announcement of Federal States Is the Beginning of the End of the Country
Dr. Bishnu Pathak – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Jan 2012
Sujit Mainali for The Telegraph Weekly and its online edition telegraphnepal.com approached and interviewed this scholar on several aspects of Nepali politics, ongoing peace process and security related issues. Below the excerpts of this exclusive interview: Chief Editor.
→ read full articleThe Issue of Federalism in Nepal Appears More Complex than the Peace Process and Constitution Writing
Dr. Bishnu Pathak (Nepal) – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Jan 2012
Federalism in present Nepal has become a topic of great contention.
→ read full articleSyria: Opportunities and Limits of International Observation Efforts
Rene Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Jan 2012
The League of Arab States Observer Mission to Syria is in an administratively critical time with the Observer Mission members from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council States of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates leaving the Mission on Tuesday 24, January. This represents 52 persons of an estimated 160, already badly understaffed.
→ read full article‘Big Brother’ Concerns over Google Changes
Al Jazeera – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Jan 2012
The California-based internet giant said in a blog post that the changes were designed to improve the user experience across various Google products, which range from web search to Gmail, YouTube and Google+, the social networking platform launched by the company last year. “Instead of keeping separate vats of information for each of its products, Google will now allow them to cross-pollinate, creating a complete picture of who you are, what you read, where you’re going and what you’re up to.”
→ read full articleHurrah for Egypt!
Uri Avnery - TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Jan 2012
The impossible has happened. The Egyptian parliament, democratically elected by a free people, has convened for its first session. For me this is a wonderful, a joyful occasion. For many Israelis, this is a worrisome, a threatening sight.
→ read full articleIs the World Really Safer Without the Soviet Union?
Mikhail Gorbachev – The Nation,
30 Jan 2012
I am convinced that it is time to return to the path we charted together when we ended the cold war. Once again, the world needs new thinking, based not just on the recognition of universal interests and of global interdependence but also on a certain moral foundation.
→ read full articleACTA: The International Treaty You’ve Never Heard of That Could Affect Internet Freedom
Common Dreams staff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Jan 2012
US among countries that have already signed ACTA. Under this new treaty, Internet Service Providers will police all data passing through them, making them legally responsible for what their users do online. And should you do something considered “breach of copyright” like, for instance, getting a tattoo of a brand logo, taking a photo and posting it somewhere, you may be disconnected from the Internet, fined or even jailed.
→ read full articleMaking Sense of Twitter’s Censorship
Ali M Latifi – Al Jazeera,
30 Jan 2012
In an announcement on its official blog, the micro-blogging service Twitter has said it will enable country-specific censorship of content on the site. In a Forbes article highly circulated on the site early Friday [27 Jan 1012], Mark Gibbs wrote that Twitter was committing “social suicide” with the censorship announcement. Gibbs’ article raised fears of an algorithm incapable of understanding the sarcasm that permeate the 140-character blasts comprising the service’s contents.
→ read full articleThe Freedom to Be Free: Battle Lines Drawn in Global Copyright Confrontation
Marcel Rosenbach and Gregor Peter Schmitz – Der Spiegel,
30 Jan 2012
Recent weeks have seen spectacular arrests and mounting tension between those who would like to make it harder to share copyrighted material online and those who champion Internet freedom. Controversial US legislation has been shelved, but the battle continues.
→ read full articleThematic Social Forum: Working Towards a Never-Ending Democracy
Antonio Martins – TerraViva Europe,
30 Jan 2012
For five centuries, Europe has taken it upon itself to enlighten the world, teaching it ways to address and overcome crises, from ideas and wars to missionary work and genocides. But it forgot it only held a part of the world’s knowledge and now it is on the verge of the abyss, and it is time for a different approach.
→ read full articleHow the Media Manipulates Us into War
Koozma J. Tarasoff, Spirit-Wrestlers – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Jan 2012
Generally, people assume that the media has the responsibility of presenting the truth and nothing but the truth in its journalistic reports about peace and war. It is agreed that an informed public is less likely to go to war.
→ read full articleDying Honeybees: It Was the Insecticides All Along
Jeanne Roberts, Celsias – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Jan 2012
With news that the U.S. honeybee population has been so devastated that some beekeepers will qualify for disaster relief dollars, comes a report from Purdue University that one of the causes of honeybee deaths is – as long suspected – neonicotinoids.
→ read full articleFidel Castro Calls for LatAm Unity in Opposition to FTA
Prensa Latina – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Jan 2012
The leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, called for Latin American unity in opposition to the Free Trade Agreements (FTA), sponsored by the United States in the region.
→ read full articleNuclear Free Middle East: Desirable, Necessary, and Impossible
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Jan 2012
Finally, there is some argumentation in the West supportive of a nuclear free zone for the Middle East. Such thinking is still treated as politically marginal, and hardly audible above the beat of the war drums.
→ read full articleWhat Are Human Rights? [Legendado em Portugues] (VIDEO OF THE WEEK)
TMS Editor,
30 Jan 2012
O que são Direitos Humanos? Documentary produced by United for the Human Rights. Documentário produzido por United for the Human Rights
→ read full articleYear of the Dragon Roars into Asia
Al Jazeera – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2012
23 Jan 2012 – Millions across Asia celebrate the Chinese New Year, with superstitious anticipating a year filled with luck. A billion-plus Asians have welcomed the Year of the Dragon with a cacophony of fireworks, hoping the mightiest sign in the Chinese zodiac will usher in the wealth and power it represents.
→ read full articleThose Poor, Moody Standards
Johan Galtung, 23 Jan 2012 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2012
What are the three credit rating agencies, Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s, and Fitch–95 percent of the rating “industry”–about? Not very transparent, yet “Standard & Poor’s: silent but deadly” (El País, 16 Jan 2012), stimulates some reflections.
→ read full articleStop Warmongering in the Middle East
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2012
To be objective commentators we must ask ourselves whether Iran’s posture toward its nuclear program is unreasonable under these circumstances. When was the last time [Iran] resorted to force against a hostile neighbor? The surprising answer is over 200 years ago! Can either of Iran’s antagonists claim a comparable record of living within its borders? Why does Iran not have the same right as other states to take full advantage of nuclear technology?
→ read full articleThe Day the Internet Roared
Amy Goodman – Truthdig,
23 Jan 2012
Wednesday, Jan. 18 [2012], marked the largest online protest in the history of the Internet. Websites from large to small “went dark” in protest of proposed legislation before the U.S. House and Senate that could profoundly change the Internet.
→ read full articleOn Burma’s ‘Changes’
Dr. Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2012
Why the media coverage and expert yukings on Burma are so fundamentally non-sense. Firstly, the greatest misperception and flaw in the current media coverage about Burma’s changes is talking about these reforms as if it were the works of President Thein Sein. Like the Chinese Communist Party or the former USSR’s CCCP, the Burmese regime in power is a collective leadership with one big guy in the back.
→ read full articleDead on Arrival: SOPA Shelved Indefinitely, Obama Succumbs to Pressure, Issues Official Veto Threat
Mac Slavo, shtfplan – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2012
We aren’t one bit convinced that this veto was done in the interests of free expression, as the administration may claim. In November, the President issued a similar veto threat about the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). He flip-flopped on the issue just a couple of weeks later, and signed the bill into law over New Year’s weekend to complete silence from the mainstream media. It is our view that SOPA, in one form or another, will return with a vengeance.
→ read full articleJulian Assange: The Rolling Stone Interview
Michael Hastings – Rolling Stone,
23 Jan 2012
Under house arrest in England, the WikiLeaks founder opens up about his battle with the ‘Times,’ his stint in solitary and the future of journalism. It’s a few days before Christmas, and Julian Assange has just finished moving to a new hide-out deep in the English countryside.
→ read full articleWhen Is A Terrorist Not A Terrorist? & War with Iran or Not?
Alan Hart – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2012
When is a terrorist not a terrorist in the eyes of the Obama administration (not to mention all of its predecessors) and the governments of the Western world? Answer: When he or she is an Israeli Mossad agent or asset. In the case of the assassination of Iranian scientists, the Mossad’s assets are almost certainly members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) also known as The Peoples’ Mujahedin of Iran, which is committed to overthrowing the regime of the ruling mullahs.
→ read full article(Castellano) El Salvador: Funes Ordena Reescribir la Historia a la Luz de la Masacre de el Mozote
Fernando Romero/Amadeo Cabrera/ María José Saavedra – La Prensa Gráfica,
23 Jan 2012
Presidente ordena al Ejército hacer una revisión de su propia interpretación de la masacre de hace más de 30 años. Aseguró que no se considerará “héroes” a militares violadores de derechos humanos.
→ read full articleHow to Learn Nonviolent Resistance as King Did
Mary Elizabeth King – Waging Nonviolence,
23 Jan 2012
In commemorating Dr. King’s birthday, it is worth remembering that everyone can learn nonviolent action as he did. King may not have invented the nonviolent strategies that he advanced, but he was an apt student, and his understanding of them would in the decades to come encourage other movements on the world stage. He became one of history’s most influential agents for propagating knowledge of the potential for constructive social change without resorting to violence.
→ read full articleThe Myth of “Isolated” Iran: Following the Money in the Iran Crisis
Pepe Escobar - TomDispatch,
23 Jan 2012
So Iran may be “isolated” from the United States and Western Europe, but from the BRICS to NAM (the 120 member countries of the Non-Aligned Movement), it has the majority of the global South on its side. And then, of course, there are those staunch Washington allies, Japan and South Korea, now pleading for exemptions from the coming boycott/embargo of Iran’s Central Bank. No wonder, because these unilateral U.S. sanctions are also aimed at Asia. After all, China, India, Japan, and South Korea, together, buy no less than 62% of Iran’s oil exports.
→ read full article
Cancer Risk To Young Children Near Fukushima Daiichi Underestimated!
Global Research TV – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2012
In this video, Fairewinds introduces additional analysis by Ian Goddard showing that the BEIR VII report underestimates the true cancer rates to young children living near Fukushima Daiichi. Looking at the scientific data presented by Mr. Goddard, Fairewinds has determined that at least one out of every 20 young girls (5%) living in an area where the radiological exposure is 20 millisieverts for five years will develop cancer in their lifetime.
→ read full articleA Debt Based Monetary System, Export Warfare & Third World Debt
Mira Tekelova, Positive Money – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2012
Now, it is abundantly clear from this that the IMF and the World Bank are not just lending money; they are involved in creating it. Although Special Drawing Rights, SDRs, are described as amounts ‘credited’ to a nation, no money or credit of any kind is put into nations accounts. SDRs are actually a credit facility, just like a bank overdraft – if they are borrowed, they must be repaid. The IMF and the World Bank are all in a system of sustaining the unsustainable. Until we recognise that a debt based system will not work and cannot work the Third world poverty will worsen.
→ read full articleHoneybee Problem Nearing a ‘Critical Point’
Claire Thompson – Grist,
23 Jan 2012
Of particular concern is a group of pesticides, chemically similar to nicotine, called neonicotinoids (neonics for short), and one in particular called clothianidin. Instead of being sprayed, neonics are used to treat seeds, so that they’re absorbed by the plant’s vascular system, and then end up attacking the central nervous systems of bees that come to collect pollen.
→ read full articleThe Future We Want? Between Hope and Despair on the Road to the Rio Earth Summit
Daniel Mittler, Greenpeace – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2012
The lack of spine is clearest in the last paragraph which calls for voluntary commitments announced at Rio to be stapled together in a “registry/compendium that will serve as an accountability framework.” In other words, there will be no enforcement or control. Your word will be taken at face value and the “accountability framework” will be the act of stapling all voluntary commitments together in one document. An invitation to greenwash, if there ever was one.
→ read full articleA Close Look at SOPA-Stop Online Piracy Act
Jonathan Zittrain, Kendra Albert and Alicia Solow-Niederman – Future of the Internet,
23 Jan 2012
This document is a guide to the Stop Online Piracy Act as proposed in the United States House of Representatives. Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), H.R. 3261, 112th Cong. (2011). It represents our notes as we sought to understand exactly what it does and how it does it — along with our corresponding sense for why its principal mechanisms make for poor law. Our aim is for this analysis to be useful to anyone wanting to understand the Act — whatever his or her point of view may be on technology or intellectual property policy.
→ read full articleWant to be healed?
TMS Editor,
23 Jan 2012
Three guys were fishing in a lake one day, when an angel appeared in the boat.
→ read full article
Spain’s ‘Indignados’ and the Globalization of Dissent (VIDEO OF THE WEEK)
The Real News Network – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2012
The Occupy Movement has taken much of its inspiration from Spain’s “Outraged” Movement: what lessons does Spain have for Occupy now?
→ read full articleHungary and the EU: A Constitutional Crisis
René Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2012
The Right Wing-Populist policies of the Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, symbolized by dropping the term ‘Republic’ from the name of the country, has created a constitutional crisis within the European Union (EU).
→ read full articleConfiguring the Varieties of Experiential Nothingness
Anthony Judge – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2012
The despair is necessarily both planet-wide and highly personal (Implication of Personal Despair in Planetary Despair, 2010). The condition can be described as a form of cognitive “ground zero” — a sense of pointlessness notably articulated through recognition that the future offers “nothing”, especially for those reduced to “nothing” by a combination of factors, as separately discussed (Reintegration of a Remaindered World, 2011; Way Round Cognitive Ground Zero and Pointlessness, 2012).
→ read full articleBlood on Whose Hands? Bradley Manning, Washington, and the Blood of Civilians
Chase Madar – TomDispatch,
23 Jan 2012
Who in their right mind wants to talk about, think about, or read a short essay about… civilian war casualties? What a bummer, this topic, especially since our Afghan, Iraq, and other ongoing wars were advertised as uplifting acts of philanthropy: wars to spread security, freedom, democracy, human rights, gender equality, the rule of law, etc.
→ read full articleThe Cooperative Spirit and Its Many Manifestations
Rene Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2012
The United Nations General Assembly in Resolution A/RES/64/136 has designated 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives in order to highlight the large role that cooperatives can play in ecologically-sound development and poverty reduction.
→ read full articleOhio Quakes Raise Fracking Questions
Kristen Saloomey – Al Jazeera,
23 Jan 2012
Seismologists from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources-ODNR asked to study the quakes had already gone on record saying they were directly linked to one well in particular. “I think this case has reached point of being proven beyond a reasonable doubt,” John Armbruster told me when I visited him at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
→ read full articleThousands of Dogs and Other Animals Spared Cruel Chemical Tests in Europe
Humane Society International/Europe – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2012
HSI celebrates largest animal test reduction in history. Humane Society International/Europe is celebrating a change in European law on biocides, non-food pesticides, that will save tens of thousands of dogs, rabbits and rodents from painful and lethal chemical poisoning tests. Dogs, rabbits, rodents, birds and fish are all commonly used in biocides testing. The chemicals are injected into their blood, force-fed into their stomach and lungs, applied to their skin, or placed in their food and water. They can experience nausea, convulsions and death—all without pain relief.
→ read full articleFukushima Radiation Spreads Worldwide
Washington's Blog – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2012
California, Finland, Canada, Australia Hit by Radiation
→ read full articleAnti-peace Coalition Governing Israel – The Blockbusters
Uri Avnery – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2012
“Israel has no foreign policy, only a domestic policy,” Henry Kissinger once remarked. This has probably been more or less true of every country since the advent of democracy. Yet in Israel, this seems even truer. (Ironically, it could almost be said that the US has no foreign policy, only an Israeli domestic policy.)
→ read full articleMonsanto to Face Biopiracy Charges in India
Sayer Ji, OpEdNews – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Jan 2012
In an unprecedented decision, India’s National Biodiversity Authority(NBA), a government agency, declared legal action against Monsanto (and their collaborators) for accessing and using local eggplant varieties (known as brinjal) to develop their Bt genetically engineered version without prior approval of the competent authorities, which is considered an act of “biopiracy.”
→ read full articleDid the U.S. Leave Behind a Civil War in Iraq?
Ashley Smith – Socialist Worker,
23 Jan 2012
“Everything that the American troops have done in Iraq–all the fighting and all the dying, the bleeding and the building, and the training and the partnering–all of it has led to this moment of success,” Obama said. “[W]e’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.” Such claims are a lie. Obama’s claims about America’s “extraordinary achievement” in Iraq are Orwellian. In reality, the U.S. war and occupation further wrecked an already devastated country, left it in a shambles rather than rebuild it and stoked sectarianism between Iraq’s three main groups–Kurds, Shia Muslims and Sunni Muslims.
→ 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 articleComplexities of Post-Laden Politics in Pakistan and Implications
Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Jan 2012
The recent developments in Pakistan’s politics particularly the relations between the civilian government and military, in the background of troubled US-Pakistan relations exacerbated by the November killing of Pakistan soldiers by US drones and killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May, will have far reaching implications not only for Pakistan, but also for Afghanistan, South Asia, and far beyond.
→ read full articleWhy We Need To Stop SOPA and PIPA
Joi Ito and Ethan Zuckerman – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Jan 2012
SOPA – the Stop Online Piracy Act – and a sister bill, PIPA – the Protect IP Act – seek to minimize the dissemination of copyrighted material online by targeting sites that promote and enable the sharing of copyright-protected material, like The Pirate Bay. While this goal may be laudable, entrepreneurs, legal scholars and free speech activists are worried about the consequences of these bills for the architecture of the Internet.
→ read full articleDavos: The 1% World
Johan Galtung, 16 Jan 2012 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Jan 2012
How are the 1%’ers going to handle the country that has attacked more other countries and peoples than any other, and mainly in defense of a special type of hyper-connection: hyper-capitalism? It still has a monopoly on the world reserve currency exercised by a club of private banks, among them the worst culprits in the finance economy coup, the Federal Reserve. How are they going to handle the US hold on the rating agencies? And the growing inequality, from comfortable seats at the top? Answer: the same way as feudal aristocracy in France in the 18th century; by not handling it.
→ read full articleJustice in a Global Age: Becoming Counselors to the World
Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Jan 2012
Invited Keynote Address, Counselors for Social Justice, American Counseling Association – I have no hesitation in telling you that I, like many of you, am deeply troubled and saddened by the abuses of privilege and power that are now occurring in our government, business, and religious sectors. Indeed the strategic convergence of shared interests and agendas among these three sectors of our society, in combination with a media failing to meet its responsibilities to accurately report news and to conduct investigative journalism, now constitutes, in my opinion, a serious threat to the foundations of our society, and ultimately, to global peace and harmony.
→ read full articleDoomsday Clock Moves to Five Minutes to Midnight
Science and Security Board, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Jan 2012
It is five minutes to midnight. Two years ago, it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats that we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed. For that reason, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is moving the clock hand one minute closer to midnight, back to its time in 2007.
→ read full article
Faking It: How the Media Manipulates the World into War (VIDEO OF THE WEEK)
Global Research TV – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Jan 2012
As the US and Iranian governments escalate tensions in the already volatile Straits of Hormuz, and China and Russia begin openly questioning Washington’s interference in their internal politics, the world remains on a knife-edge of military tension. Far from being a dispassionate observer of these developments, however, the media has in fact been central to increasing those tensions and preparing the public to expect a military confrontation. But as the online media rises to displace the traditional forms by which the public forms its understanding of the world, many are now beginning to see firsthand how the media lies the public into war.
→ read full articleThe Political Psychology of Obama’s Iran Policy
Reza Marashi, Muftah – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Jan 2012
The U.S. track record of implementing containment and destabilization policies worldwide is far from noteworthy. In the case of Iran, it is abysmal. With no on-the-ground presence and restricted interaction with Iranian counterparts, the United States is largely unable to accurately assess the real strengths and weaknesses of any policy. As a result, U.S. policy toward Iran under the Obama administration is rapidly falling prey to the same entrapments and mistakes that overwhelmed the four preceding U.S. administrations.
→ read full articleThe pessimist and the Dog
TMS Editor,
16 Jan 2012
An avid duck hunter was in the market for a new bird dog. His search ended when he found a dog that could actually walk on water to retrieve a duck.
→ read full article(German) Medienmacht – wie und zu wessen Nutzen unser Bewusstsein gemacht wird
Bernd Hamm – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Jan 2012
”Wenn man eine grosse Lüge erzählt und sie oft genug wiederholt, dann werden die Leute sie am Ende glauben. Man kann die Lüge so lange behaupten, wie es dem Staat gelingt, die Menschen von den politischen, wirtschaftlichen und militärischen Konsequenzen der Lüge abzuschirmen. Deshalb ist es von lebenswichtiger Bedeutung für den Staat, seine gesamte Macht für die Unterdrückung abweichender Meinungen einzusetzen. Die Wahrheit ist der Todfeind der Lüge, und daher ist die Wahrheit der grösste Feind des Staates.” — Joseph Göbbels, Propagandaminister der Nazis
→ read full articleBradley Manning – The Undisputed Person of the Year
Eamonn McCann – Socialist Worker,
16 Jan 2012
If Bradley Manning had committed war crimes rather than exposing them, he wouldn’t be in so much trouble. As a beacon of moral light in the darkness which has deepened since the election of Obama, he is, indisputably and by some distance, the American Man of the Year.
→ read full article10 Reasons the U.S. Is No Longer the Land of the Free
Jonathan Turley – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Jan 2012
The list of powers acquired by the U.S. government since 9/11 puts us in rather troubling company. Below is today’s [15 Jan 2012] column in the Sunday Washington Post. The column addresses how the continued rollbacks on civil liberties in the United States conflicts with the view of the country as the land of the free. We seem as a country to be in denial as to the implications of these laws and policies. Whether we are viewed as a free country with authoritarian inclinations or an authoritarian nation with free aspirations (or some other hybrid definition), we are clearly not what we once were.
→ read full articleA Momentum of Cynicism
Robert C. Koehler – Common Wonders,
16 Jan 2012
At this late stage of the American republic, military-industrial corruption permeates not only our foreign policy but our ideals. We go to war because the business of war is beyond all constraint. “In a striking departure from the ideological preferences of the post-Vietnam Democratic Party, President Barack Obama has made overseas arms sales a pillar of U.S. foreign policy,” Loren Thompson, chief operating officer at the Lexington Institute, a D.C. think tank, wrote – uncritically – for Forbes last week.
→ read full articleIs Israel Suicidal?
MJ Rosenberg – Political Correction,
16 Jan 2012
A man wrote me the other day to complain about something I had written regarding my belief that Israel has every right to exist in peace and security. He responded that Israel should not exist, asserting that Israel is simply a Western colony implanted in the Middle East that is as “authentic as white Rhodesia” was.
→ read full article
Palestine 1896
TMS Editor,
16 Jan 2012
First Film Footage Taken in Palestine (Lumier Bros.) – Just one year before the first Zionist Congress…
→ read full article(Castellano) Galicia Prohibirá la Entrada de Menores de 12 Años en las Corridas de Toros
TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Jan 2012
27 de diciembre de 2011 – Galicia prohibirá en la futura ley de espectáculos, cuyo borrador está actualmente en elaboración, la entrada de niños menores de 12 años a las corridas de toros, tal y como han acordado los tres grupos parlamentarios –PPdeG, PSdeG y BNG– en la Comisión Institucional.
→ read full article(Castellano) Peru: Prohibirían Ingreso de Menores a Espectáculos Taurinos
Congreso de Peru – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Jan 2012
“Así como se prohíbe el ingreso de menores a la exhibición de pornografía, a las salas de juego, casinos, al acceso a las bebidas alcohólicas, el propósito es evitar que los menores sean afectados en su integridad moral”, sostuvo el legislador Julio Rosas Huaranga.
→ read full articleLearning from the Northern Ireland and South Africa’s Conflicts (Cont’d)
Pierre Celestin Bakunda – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Jan 2012
Through my own participant observation during research at Queen’s University from September 2008 to March 2009, the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement is of a great help. Nowadays both communities coexist in peace even though some isolated cases of attacks can be observed. Some people believe that the wounds would take generations to be healed while others think that the South African process through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission-TRC would be an asset to grant forgiveness and amnesty to the ones who committed wrongdoings.
→ read full article(Italian) Chi Era Gesù?
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jan 2012
La chiesa non era strapiena come soleva esserlo per la messa di mezzanotte alla vigilia di Natale. Ma il rituale si svolse come era stato fatto per secoli, attorno alla “piccola bibbia” di Giovanni 3:16, “Perché Dio amava il mondo tanto da dare il suo unico Figlio cosicché ognuno che creda in lui non perirà ma avrà vita eterna”.
→ read full article(Italian) Galtung e Gesù: Un Comment
Enrico Peyretti – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jan 2012
In questo breve testo su Gesù, nell’occasione del Natale 2011, egli affronta una problematica dibattuta da un paio di millenni, in cui mi sembra che semplifichi in modo unilaterale la figura complessa di Gesù, con una scelta legittima, ma assai controversa. (Ho già commentato, il 30 aprile 2009, un analogo testo di Galtung su “Gesù, Giuda e Che Guevara”).
→ read full articlePolitical Transition in Nepal and the Role of the International Community
Yadab Bastola – Peace & Collaborative Development Network,
9 Jan 2012
UN including UN Human Rights (OHCHR) has to pressure to the government to improve the human rights situation and work on the post conflict justice system. UN and other international community should advice to work immediately on full picture of independent Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
→ read full articleThe Delusional Assumptions of Capitalism
Doug Harvey – Common Dreams,
9 Jan 2012
One of the more delusional aspects of capitalism is the idea that if one pursues the acquisition of private wealth with abandon, that this is somehow automatically “good” for human society. The pursuit of resources and markets to feed a system that MUST grow to survive has made the planet and all of its inhabitants commodities. In capitalist mythology, EVERYTHING has a monetary value, including and perhaps especially, people. Ultimately, our “house” is the planet – there is NO getting around this fact. For some time now we have had pictures of Planet Earth taken from space. The empirical evidence is clear: we are a very small household in a vast sea of time and space. We MUST cooperate or perish.
→ read full articlePreparing Peace Teachers and Peace Workers in the Community
Charles Mercieca, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jan 2012
It is quite obvious that two of the most important groups we have in this world to make a big difference for endless future generations are peace teachers and peace workers.
→ read full articleHaiti: Seven Places Where Earthquake Money Did and Did Not Go
Bill Quigley and Amber Ramanauskas - Truthout,
9 Jan 2012
The effort so far has not been based a respectful partnership between Haitians and the international community. The actions of the donor countries and the NGOs and international agencies have not been transparent so that Haitians or others can track the money and see how it has been spent. Respect, transparency and accountability are the building blocks for human rights.
→ read full articleNo Therapy in Retail
Prof. Vandana Shiva – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jan 2012
Firstly, rising prices are driven by the commodification of food and speculation on food commodities. Industrialisation and globalisation of food and agriculture has transformed food from a source of life into a commodity, and as a commodity, food is divorced from its sources – the seeds, the soil, the farmer – and from its end use as nourishment for our bodies.
→ read full articleFBI Tracking Videotapers as Terrorists?
Dean Kuipers – Los Angeles Times,
9 Jan 2012
The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force has recommended for many years that animal activists who carry out undercover investigations on farms could be prosecuted as domestic terrorists. New documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by activist Ryan Shapiro show the FBI advising that activists – including Shapiro – who walked onto a farm, videotaped animals there and “rescued” an animal had violated terrorism statutes.
→ read full articleHaiti: From Displacement Camps to Community
Alexis Erkert and Beverly Bell – Toward Freedom,
9 Jan 2012
As 2012 begins, a growing movement of displaced people and their allies in Haiti is actively claiming the right to housing, which is recognized by both the Haitian constitution and international treaties to which Haiti is signatory. Haitians displaced by the earthquake two years ago face many crises, but perhaps none worse than ongoing homelessness: 520,000 people still living in displacement camps.
→ read full article
Total Ignorance: Where’s Libya, Iraq or Iran? NYC doesn’t care!
Russia Today – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jan 2012
Leaders of the ‘Free World’: the joke is on them – The men and women hoping to beco
me the next President of the U.S. appear to spend as much time demonstrating their ignorance of the world, as they do their political credentials. But as RT’s Anastasia Churkina found out, that could just be a reflection of society.
“Zombie” Fly Parasite Killing Honeybees
Katherine Harmon – Scientific American,
9 Jan 2012
John Hafernik, a biology professor at San Francisco State University, collected some belly-up bees from the ground around the University’s biology building. “But I left them in a vial on my desk and forgot about them. The next time I looked at the vial, there were all these fly pupae surrounding the bees,” he said. A fly (Apocephalus borealis) had inserted its eggs into the bees, using their bodies as a home for its developing larvae. And the invaders had somehow led the bees from their hives to their deaths.
→ read full articleMcDonald’s Goes Belly Up in Bolivia
Pravda – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jan 2012
McDonald’s leaves Bolivia healthier forever! It is the first Latin-American country that will remain without any McDonald’s, and the first country in the world where the company has to close because it persists in having their numbers in the red for over a decade.
→ read full article‘Destroying Democracy’: Hungarians Protest Controversial New Constitution
Der Spiegel – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jan 2012
Tens of thousands of Hungarians took to the streets of Budapest on Monday night [2 Jan 2012] to protest the country’s new constitution, which took effect on Jan. 1. The document, in combination with other recent laws, severely curtails the independence of the country’s central bank and courts. Religious rights have also been slashed.
→ read full article(Castellano) Maquiavelo ¿Maquiavélico?
Fernando Montiel T. – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jan 2012
La dedicatoria en los Discursos y no el texto de El Príncipe hablan del Maquiavelo real, y no del “realista”, del político y no del politólogo. Hablan pues, del maquiavelismo del hombre en detrimento de la idea que de él se tiene. Y sobre este hombre solamente queda la descripción -casi desconocida para los profanos en las artes políticas- que de él hizo Juan Jacobo Rousseau: “Un hombre honesto y un buen ciudadano”.
→ read full articleAustralia: Economic Forecasters Lose Their Way in Extreme Weather
Peter Martin – BusinessDay,
9 Jan 2012
WHO would have thought it? Certainly none of the 20-odd members of the economic forecasting panel this time last year. The rate of inflation turned out to be higher than the highest of their predictions, the budget deficit bigger than the biggest, and the sharemarket far lower than all but two thought likely. It is trite to say it, but they did not know what was coming.
→ read full articleIn West Bank, Israel’s Rule is that of the Jungle
Haaretz, Editorial – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jan 2012
In the hands of this government, which mainly involve moving buildings built on private lands to ‘state lands’, have become instruments to deepen the occupation and obstruct the two-state solution. Defense Minister Ehud Barak has likened Israel to a “villa in the jungle.” Nothing is closer to the law of the jungle than a system of distorted laws and procedures that make it possible to build villa neighborhoods in the settlements and legalize wildcat outposts like Ramat Gilad.
→ read full articleAfghanistan: Catch ’em Young, for Prostitution
Rebecca Murray – Inter Press Service-IPS,
9 Jan 2012
Soma was a teenager in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif when her grandfather arranged her marriage to a husband she had never met. Every night Soma’s father-in-law hosted parties, where for 200 dollars visiting men could eat, drink alcohol and watch Soma and her two sister-in-laws dance. The girls would then be forced to sleep with up to four men in one night. Soma said she was regularly injected for her blood, which was then displayed on bed sheets as ‘proof’ to clients she was a virgin.
→ read full articleReflections on the Myths and Ethoses That Promote and Sustain War as a “Way of Life” and Acceptable Moral Code for the USA
Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D. - TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jan 2012
The unassailable truth is that the United States of America is a culture of war! A culture of war is a shared set of meanings and behaviors that are socialized by macrosocial and microsocial institutions via support for certain cultural myths and ethoses that present war and associated acts of violence and aggression as an acceptable action for pursuing domestic and national goals and purposes.
→ read full articleCuba Launches World’s First Vaccine against Lung Cancer
ZeitNews – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jan 2012
From the island nation known for the quality of its cigars comes some pretty big news today [3 Jan 2012]: Xinhua reports that Cuban medical authorities have released the first therapeutic vaccine for lung cancer. CimaVax-EGF is the result of a 25-year research project at Havana’s Center for Molecular Immunology, and it could make a life or death difference for those facing late-stage lung cancers, researchers there say.
→ read full articleWhere Are We Heading?
Johan Galtung, 9 Jan 2012 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jan 2012
The clouds are dark. And we sense one on the horizon, black; a point so far. The name of the cloud: using a major war, even with Russia-China, to revive an economy in depression; destroying capital, rebuilding.
→ read full article
(Spanish, English, Portuguese) Eduardo Galeano – El Derecho al Delirio (VIDEO OF THE WEEK)
TMS Editor,
9 Jan 2012
Subtitles in English – The Right to Delirium
Legendado em Portugues – O Direito ao Delírio
Coca-Cola Accused of Propping Up Notorious Swaziland Dictator
David Smith in Johannesburg – The Guardian,
9 Jan 2012
The king has travelled to Coca-Cola’s headquarters in Atlanta in the US, much to the disgust of Swazi political activists. Mswati III has 13 wives and hosts an annual dance where he can choose a new bride from tens of thousands of bare-breasted virgins. With a fortune of about $100m, he presides over one of the worst-off countries in the world, with most people living in absolute poverty. Political parties are banned and activists are regularly arrested, imprisoned and tortured.
→ read full articleCombating Slavery in Coffee and Chocolate Production
Jeff Nall – Toward Freedom,
9 Jan 2012
Quite simply, much of the coffee and chocolate improving our health is simultaneously jeopardizing the freedom and lives of hundreds of thousands around the world including many children. Yet most American consumers are ignorant to the mounting evidence indicating that the laborers whom they have to thank for cultivating these products are being grossly exploited, live in spiraling poverty, and, in some cases, are modern-day slaves.
→ read full articleHow Congress Has Signed Its Own Arrest Warrants in the NDAA Citizen Arrest Act
Naomi Wolf – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jan 2012
They may have supported this bill because—although it’s hard to believe—they think the military will only arrest active members of Al Qaida; or maybe, less naively, they believe that ‘at most’, low-level dissenting figures, activists, or troublesome protesters might be subjected to military arrest. But they are forgetting something critical: history shows that those who signed this bill will soon be subject to arrest themselves.
→ read full articleFallujah Babies: Under A New Kind of Siege
Dahr Jamail – Al Jazeera,
9 Jan 2012
While the US military has formally withdrawn from Iraq, doctors and residents of Fallujah are blaming weapons like depleted uranium and white phosphorous used during two devastating US attacks on Fallujah in 2004 for what are being described as “catastrophic” levels of birth defects and abnormalities.
→ read full articleWestern Oil Firms Remain As US Exits Iraq
Dahr Jamail – Al Jazeera,
9 Jan 2012
The end of the US military occupation does not mean Iraqis have full control of their oil. While the US military has formally ended its occupation of Iraq, some of the largest western oil companies, ExxonMobil, BP and Shell, remain.
→ read full article
Philosopher Slavoj Zizek on World Affairs
Al Jazeera – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jan 2012
The Slovenian philosopher and critical theorist talks to Al Jazeera about the momentous changes taking place in the global financial and political system.
→ read full articleRemembering the Best and Worst of 2011
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jan 2012
We will learn in 2012 whether we are moving closer to fulfilling our hopes, dreams, and goals or are trying to interpret and overcome a recurrence of disappointment and demoralization with respect to progressive change in world affairs. The stakes for some societies, and for humanity, have rarely been higher.
→ read full articleWanna buy a frog?
TMS Editor,
9 Jan 2012
A man walks into a bar and asks the bartender, “If I show you a really good trick, will you give me a free drink?”
→ read full articleIn Nigeria, Boko Haram Is Not the Problem
Jean Herskovits – The New York Times,
9 Jan 2012
Governments and newspapers around the world attributed the horrific Christmas Day bombings of churches in Nigeria to “Boko Haram” — a shadowy group that is routinely described as an extremist Islamist organization based in the northeast corner of Nigeria. Indeed, since the May inauguration of President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian from the Niger Delta in the country’s south, Boko Haram has been blamed for virtually every outbreak of violence in Nigeria.
→ read full article(Castellano) Israel, ¿El País Que Tiene un Ejército o el Ejército Que Tiene un País?
Carmen Rengel – Periodismo Humano,
9 Jan 2012
Israel, su ejército y su pueblo son tres realidades ensambladas a fuego en una sola. Imposible separarlas. Nacieron juntas, se forjaron juntas y juntas siguen, aunque cada vez se levanten más voces que reclaman una separación de poderes efectiva que haga de Israel un país con ejército, como en el resto del mundo, y no un ejército que domina un país.
→ read full article