Articles by M
We found 36604 results.
Space Warfare: Preparing the “Battlespace” for a New Imperial Adventure
Tom Burghardt – Global Research,
30 Aug 2010
Secretive Mini-Shuttles and Spy Satellites
→ read full article8 Reasons You Should Stay the Hell Away From Eggs
Martha Rosenberg - AlterNet,
30 Aug 2010
It was enough to make the nation put down their Egg McMuffins. Almost a billion “government-inspected” eggs were recalled because they might harbor salmonella, a bacterium that causes bloody and mucoid diarrhea, fever and vomiting. FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg warned people that if they ate their eggs runny and over-easy, something else could become runny and over-easy — not to mention sunny-side-up.
→ read full articleA Month without Monsanto
April Dávila – Yes! Magazine,
30 Aug 2010
April Dávila wondered what it would take to cut the GMO giant out of her family’s life. She found that it was far more entrenched than she’d ever realized.
→ read full articleRegional Economic Cooperation as a Key to Solve Afghanistan Problem
Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Aug 2010
‘Economics is the key to overcoming all problems,’ observed the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov while articulating the main content of quadrilateral meet of Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan at the Russian Black Sea resort Sochi on 18 August 2010.
→ read full articleWaging Peace from Afar: Divestment and Israeli Occupation
Phyllis Bennis – Yes! Magazine,
30 Aug 2010
A growing grassroots movement is using the techniques of the anti-apartheid movement to challenge U.S. support for Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
→ read full articleSounds Familiar
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Aug 2010
A little boy wanted $100 very badly, he prayed and prayed for two weeks but nothing happened.
→ read full articleThe Global Media Dictatorship
Manuel E. Yepe – Pravda,
30 Aug 2010
It would be wrong to presume that these huge consortiums are subordinate to the United States government and therefore abide by the dictates of the White House. The truth is that both Washington and the giants of information, are controlled by the same power elite in the exercise of its world tyranny.
→ read full article
The Big Lie Technique vs. the Reality of Iran’s Nuclear Program
Russia Today – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Aug 2010
Antiwar Radio host Scott Horton discusses the Iranian nuclear program on Russia Today.
→ read full articleUS Wars: People vs Generals
Marwan Bishara – Al Jazeera,
30 Aug 2010
While the Obama administration continues to affirm its intention to withdraw US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, the US’ military presence in the Muslim world is actually expanding and this is exacerbating tensions and inflaming animosities. Barack Obama’s promise to open a new page with the Muslim world on the basis of mutual respect and interests – supplemented and enforced by the use of soft rather than hard power – now rings hollow.
→ read full articleBurma: Six Reasons to Welcome US Support for War Crimes Probe
Dr. Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Aug 2010
On 24 Aug, the United States officially confirmed that it is “exploring how best to proceed” on the initiative to push for “a properly structured international commission of inquiry that would examine allegations of serious violations of international law in Burma”.
→ read full articleThe Un-Disappeared Orientalist Gaze
Vithal Rajan – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Aug 2010
Ramanujan’s life was enclosed within the theory of numbers, not only loved by pure mathematicians for its sheer beauty, as believed by Hardy, who lived within the privileged cloisters of Cambridge, but as the recently-held International Congress of Mathematicians proclaimed in Hyderabad, it is intimately involved in several practical applications, and even in elucidating the very nature of the Universe.
→ read full article(Italian) A Jo Pyronnet
Silvia Berruto – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Aug 2010
Microtributo a Jo
“On a fêté, on a fêté, nos retrouvailles, nos retrouvailles, ça fait de la peine mais il faut que je m’en aille …”
An Open Letter to Israel
Lauren Booth – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Aug 2010
This morning I set out to write a piece about the looting of the aid Flotilla to Gaza, by your soldiers. As you may have read, an Israel Defense Forces officer, has been remanded by a military court, suspected of stealing laptop computers from passengers. Interestingly, Haretz newspaper, now refers to the fleet as an ‘aid flotilla.’ Which it was. Rather than the ‘terror’ fleet your leaders would have had you call it. But I digress.
→ read full articleThe Two-Tier Internet: Fighting for Control of the Web’s Future
Frank Dohmen, Martin U. Müller and Hilmar Schmundt - Spiegel,
30 Aug 2010
As data volumes continue to grow, it’s clear that the Internet’s infrastructure needs upgrading. What’s not clear is who is going to pay for it. Web activists fear the development of a two-tier Internet, where corporations have priority and dissenting voices get pushed to the margins.
→ read full articleBoats Reach Gaza Despite Blockade
Al Jazeera – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Aug 2010
Human rights activists reach Hamas-ruled strip by sea, despite Israeli blockade.
→ read full articleWikiLeaks and War Crimes
Jeremy Scahill – The Nation,
30 Aug 2010
Four months before WikiLeaks rocketed to international notoriety, the Robin Hoods of the Internet quietly published a confidential CIA document labeled “NOFORN” (for “no foreign nationals”)—meaning that it should not be shared even with US allies. That’s because the March “Red Cell Special Memorandum” was a call to arms for a propaganda war to influence public opinion in allied nations. The CIA report describes a crisis in European support for the Afghanistan war, noting that 80 percent of German and French citizens are against increasing their countries’ military involvement.
→ read full article10 Needed Steps for Obama to Start Dismantling America’s Gigantic, Destructive Military Empire
Chalmers Johnson - AlterNet,
30 Aug 2010
The following is an excerpt from Chalmers Johnson’s new book, Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope (Metropolitan Books, 2010).
→ read full article(Portuguese) A Paz e a Energia Nuclear
Marcelo Barros – Brasil de Fato,
30 Aug 2010
Se governos como o dos Estados Unidos quiserem realmente colaborar para a paz do mundo, basta não invadirem o país dos outros.
→ read full articleThe Transformation of Latin America is a Global Advance
Seumas Milne – The Guardian,
23 Aug 2010
The radical tide is about to be put to the test in Brazil and Venezuela. If support holds, it will have lessons for all of us.
→ read full articleThe Mavi Marmara Inquiry: Denying the Obvious
Gwynne Dyer - MWDN,
23 Aug 2010
The deaths speak for themselves. And just as Kent State destroyed US popular support for the Vietnam War and Bloody Sunday killed the myth of a benevolent British army protecting Catholics from Protestants in Northern Ireland, the events on the Mavi Marmara will ultimately end the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.
→ read full articleGenetically Manipulated Crops: The GMO Catastrophe in the USA. A Lesson for the World
F. William Engdahl – Global Research,
23 Aug 2010
Recently the unelected potentates of the EU Commission in Brussels have sought to override what has repeatedly been shown to be the overwhelming opposition of the European Union population to the spread of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) in EU agriculture. EU Commission President now has a Maltese accountant as health and enviromnent Commissioner to rubber stamp the adoption of GMO. The former EU Environment Commissioner from Greece was a ferocious GMO opponent. As well, the Chinese government has indicated it may approve a variety of GMO rice. Before things get too far along, they would do well to take a closer look at the world GMO test lab, the USA. There GMO crops are anything but beneficial. Just the opposite.
→ read full articleFrance Urged to Repay Haiti Billions Paid For Its Independence
Kim Willsher in Paris – The Guardian,
23 Aug 2010
A group of international academics and authors has written to Nicolas Sarkozy calling on France to reimburse the crushing “independence debt” it imposed on Haiti nearly 200 years ago.
→ read full articleIceland Set to Become a Press Freedom Haven
RTÉ/Ireland – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Aug 2010
After Iceland’s near-economic collapse laid bare deep-seated corruption, the country aims to become a safe haven for journalists and whistleblowers from around the globe by creating the world’s most far-reaching freedom of information legislation. The project is being developed with the help of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
→ read full articleRed Shirt vs. Yellow Shirt: Thailand’s Political Struggle
David McNeill in Lamphun – The Independent,
23 Aug 2010
The supporters of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra are massing again.
→ read full article
Why Isn’t the World Rushing to Rescue Pakistan?
Paul Jay, TRNN – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Aug 2010
Snehal Shingavi: US has blamed Pakistan for failed policies in region.
→ read full articleThe Rom: World Citizens Ahead of Time
Rene Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Aug 2010
There are estimates that there are 10 to 12 million Rom living in the European Union with the largest concentration in Romania — some two million according to unofficial estimates. There are also fairly large Rom groups in the former Soviet Union, in particular the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus, as well as in Turkey. Originally from India, the Rom have spread through Europe probably between the ninth and fourteenth centuries. Why they left northern India is not clear. They seemed to have been from the start a nomadic population living from handicrafts and providing music and dance to settled populations. It is only recently that some Rom intellectuals have become interested in their Indian heritage and have been making contacts with groups which still live in India and which may have had common ancestors.
→ read full articlePakistan: Where the International Community Got It Wrong
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey – Pravda,
23 Aug 2010
The people of Pakistan have been left to rot by the international community. The scale of the flood disaster has either been wholly misunderstood or else there are forces at play which wish to take advantage of a destabilized Pakistan; the pitifully weak response by the international community moves this country and the region nearer to the abyss of chaos. This week UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the UN General Assembly “Make no mistake: this is a global disaster, a global challenge. It is one of the greatest tests of global solidarity in our times”.
→ read full articleWhy WikiLeaks Must Be Protected
John Pilger – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Aug 2010
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the importance of Wikileaks as a new and fearless form of investigative journalism that threatens both the war-makers and their apologists, notably journalists who are state stenographers.
→ read full articleHalf of Niger’s Population Hungry
Press TV – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Aug 2010
Niger is facing the worst hunger crisis in its history, with almost half of the population (or 7.3 million people) in desperate need of food, the UN’s World Food (WFP) Program says. The WFP says 17 percent of the African nation’s children, or one in five, are acutely malnourished.
→ read full articleAssembly Line
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Aug 2010
Two people went along a road with pick and shovel.
→ read full articleFrance’s Debt of Dishonour to Haiti
Isabel Macdonald – The Guardian,
23 Aug 2010
After Haiti won independence, France extorted compensation for its slave-owning colonists. Now Nicolas Sarkozy must repay it.
→ read full articleGiving Up Meat for a Better World
Katja Thimm - Spiegel,
23 Aug 2010
Industrial-scale poultry farmers inject birds with “broths” and salty solutions, so that they look plump in the store and their meat is more flavorful. Hog farmers cut off the teeth of piglets and rip out their testicles — without anesthesia. In tuna fishing, 145 other species — fish, birds and mammals — are also caught in the nets, where they die and are subsequently tossed back into the ocean. Factory farming accounts for between 18 and 51 percent — depending on the study — of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The biggest offenders are cows, which release methane during digestion. Methane is 23 times as harmful to the climate as CO2. Some factory farms are so big that they produce more excrement every day than some major cities.
→ read full articleBin Laden is Dead; Long Live “Bin Laden”
Maidhc Ó Cathail – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Aug 2010
Who’s keeping the terror myth alive?
→ read full articleThe Secret Killers: Assassination in Afghanistan and Task Force 373
Pratap Chatterjee – TomDispatch,
23 Aug 2010
“Find, fix, finish, and follow-up” is the way the Pentagon describes the mission of secret military teams in Afghanistan which have been given a mandate to pursue alleged members of the Taliban or al-Qaeda wherever they may be found. Some call these “manhunting” operations and the units assigned to them “capture/kill” teams. Whatever terminology you choose, the details of dozens of their specific operations — and how they regularly went badly wrong — have been revealed for the first time in the mass of secret U.S. military and intelligence documents published by the website Wikileaks in July to a storm of news coverage and official protest.
→ read full articleCatholic Activists Arrested at Kansas City Nuclear Weapons Facility
Joshua J. McElwee – National Catholic Reporter,
23 Aug 2010
Singing choruses of “we shall not be moved” while scattering sunflower seeds, 14 activists were arrested here Aug. 16 after blocking an earth moving vehicle on the site of a proposed nuclear weapons manufacturing facility. The acts of civil disobedience came at the end of a three-day conference which drew peace activists here from around the nation. The efforts were aimed at building awareness of and resistance to the construction of the weapons plant, which will replace an existing plant here.
→ read full articlePakistan – A Disaster of Daunting Magnitude
Miami Herald, Editorial – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Aug 2010
The eyes see. The ears hear. Yet, somehow, the mind struggles to grasp the full dimension of this catastrophe. Almost 20 million people need shelter, food and emergency care. That is more than the entire population hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami, the Kashmir earthquake, Cyclone Nargis and the earthquake in Haiti — combined.
→ read full articleOpen Letter to the Panorama BBC Team
Mairead Maquire, Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Aug 2010
The role of the BBC is not to give credibility to the Israeli military but to report facts and allow the public to make up their own minds. By planting doubts in the minds of the public about the events on board the MV ‘Mavi Marmara’, it has done a grave injustice and further injury to the families of all those who were assassinated by Israeli Navy seals on that terrible morning of 3lst May, 2010.
→ read full articleEducation and Peacebuilding
Johan Galtung, 23 Aug 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
23 Aug 2010
Talk at the Japan Education Research Association, Hiroshima
→ read full articleUS – Venezuela: The Empire Strikes Back (and Loses)
Prof. James Petras – ICH,
16 Aug 2010
US policy toward Venezuela has taken many tactical turns, but the objective has been the same: to oust President Chavez, reverse the nationalization of big businesses, abolish the mass community and worker based councils and revert the country into a client-state.
→ read full articleGeronimo’s Remains to Remain with Skull and Bones: Judge Dismisses Lawsuit
Grant Lawrence – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2010
It has been reported that George W. Bush’s Yale Skull and Bones Society uses the skull of Geronimo for their college rituals. Skull and Bones, out of respect, should apologize and turn the skull over to the descendants of Geronimo. Instead they refuse to do what is right by hiding behind the law. Recently a judge threw out the lawsuit by the descendants of Geronimo, a great Apache Indian leader, asking for his remains to be returned and buried in New Mexico.
→ read full articleWorld Feeling the Heat as 17 Countries Experience Record Temperatures
John Vidal, environment editor – The Guardian,
16 Aug 2010
2010 sees record highs in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine but also many African, Middle Eastern and Latin American countries.
→ read full articleCivilian Peace Service
Johan Galtung, 16 Aug 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2010
Thus, the Nonviolent Peaceforce, and the Civilian Peace Service, are riding on these waves into the future. What could they pick up from past and present? There is a basic problem: now coming from the West, there is always the danger that they could become the continuation of aggressive Western governmental politics by nongovernmental means.
→ read full articleHumanitarian Catastrophe in Niger: Where is This Story?
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey – Pravda,
16 Aug 2010
The buzz-words of the moment are Naomi Campbell and blood diamonds, Cristiano Ronaldo and his troupe of girlfriends and the (sickeningly close) new soccer season. However, where is the story about the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Niger? (Where?) where 670,000 children are at risk of starving to death and eight million people need emergency food assistance?
→ read full article(Portuguese) Água como Mercadoria
Frei Betto – Mercado Ético,
16 Aug 2010
De olho no faturamento, empresas transnacionais procuram incutir na opinião pública a ideia da água como mercadoria de grande valor econômico, capaz de tornar-se uma fonte de renda para um país como o Brasil. Retira-se da água sua dimensão de direito humano, seu caráter vital, sua dimensão sagrada. Quem se opõe a esta ideologia é rotulado como “contrário ao progresso”. Porém, é na defesa da água como direito e bem comum que reside a possibilidade de salvarmos o planeta Terra – “Planeta-Água” – da desolação, e assegurarmos a vida das gerações futuras.
→ read full articleNews at 11: How Climate Change Affects You
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW!,
16 Aug 2010
“Heat, heat, heat is the name of the game on planet Earth this year,” as the world is beset with extreme weather events that have caused the death of thousands and the displacement of millions. Wildfires in Russia have blanketed the country with smoke, exacerbating the hottest summer there in 1,000 years. Torrential rains in Asia have caused massive flooding and deadly landslides in Pakistan, Kashmir, Afghanistan and China. An ice shelf in Greenland has broken off, sending an ice island four times the size of Manhattan into the ocean. Droughts threaten Niger and the Sahel.
→ read full articleIsrael Again Razes Bedouin Village
CNN Wire Staff – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2010
On the eve of the holy month of Ramadan, Israeli police re-entered a Bedouin village Tuesday [10 Aug 2010] to repeat the demolition of homes they had razed only a few days earlier. Israeli police closed off entrances to Al-Araqeeb, in southern Israel’s Negev Desert, and tore down houses that had been partially rebuilt in the past week, confiscated water tanks, attacked livestock and arrested five people, said Talab El-Sana, an Arab member of the Knesset.
→ read full articleThe Horrific Derivatives Bubble That Could One Day Destroy the Entire World Financial System
Michael Snyder – The Economic Collapse,
16 Aug 2010
Today there is a horrific derivatives bubble that threatens to destroy not only the U.S. economy but the entire world financial system as well, but unfortunately the vast majority of people do not understand it. When you say the word “derivatives” to most Americans, they have no idea what you are talking about. In fact, even most members of the U.S. Congress don’t really seem to understand them. But you don’t have to get into all the technicalities to understand the bigger picture.
→ read full articlePakistan Floods, Russia Heat Match Climate Trend
Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent - Reuters,
16 Aug 2010
Devastating floods in Pakistan and Russia’s heat wave match projected trends of ever more extremes caused by global warming even though it is impossible to blame humankind for single severe weather events, scientists said.
→ read full articlePress Censorship: How the Truth Was Hidden About Nagasaki
Greg Mitchell – The Nation,
16 Aug 2010
Nagasaki, which lost over 70,000 civilians (and a few military personnel) to a new weapon sixty-five years ago today, has always been The Forgotten A-Bomb City. No one ever wrote a bestselling book called Nagasaki, or made a film titled Nagasaki, Mon Amour. Yet in some ways, Nagasaki is the modern A-bomb city. For one thing, when the plutonium bomb exploded above Nagasaki it made the uranium-type bomb dropped on Hiroshima obsolete. In fact, if it had not exploded off-target the death toll in the city would have easily topped the Hiroshima total.
→ read full article(Portuguese) Transgénicos: Nome de Código, “Monsanto”
Bloco de Esquerda, Portugal – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2010
(Leitura obrigatória para esclarecer-se e educar-se acerca dos males da Monsanto. –Nota do Editor da TMS). Em causa estão a saúde pública no mundo, a preservação ambiental e a biodiversidade. Trabalhos científicos sobre estes assuntos permitiram estabelecer um decálogo de malfeitorias dos OGM e do controlo de Monsanto sobre a sua produção e comercialização: riscos para a saúde pública; contaminação genética sem controlo; aumento da contaminação química devido ao maior uso de biocidas; perda permanente da biodiversidade agropecuária e florestal; aumento da insegurança e perda da soberania alimentar; grande concentração de poder em poucas empresas; degradação da democracia através das pressões sobre a classe política e a actuação dos lobbies; aumento da desigualdade Norte-Sul; prejuízos para a agricultura ecológica devido à contaminação.
→ read full articleGuantánamo’s Child-Soldier Trial
Amy Davidson - The New Yorker,
16 Aug 2010
“Where are our concerns about the rehabilitation of child soldiers when one falls into our own hands?”
→ read full articleAudio Podcast Interview with Johan Galtung
Panopticon Podcast – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2010
Prof. Galtung discusses the fall of the US empire, its wars, conflict resolution, and more.
→ read full articlePost-Copenhagen Quest for Global Warming Accord Stuck in Reverse
Pete Spotts - The Christian Science Monitor,
16 Aug 2010
Negotiators seeking to lay the groundwork for a global warming summit in Mexico in November appear to be moving further from consensus.
→ read full articleWarp and Weft of Future Governance
Anthony Judge – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2010
Ninefold Interweaving of Incommensurable Threads of Discourse. The purpose here is merely to point to the possibility of combining the threefold weaving explored by Gidley with the quite different weaving explored by Douglas Hofstadter (Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, 1979). The implication this ninefold weaving responds to dimensions of the challenge of governance neglected by the two threefold weavings considered individually.
→ read full article
Earth Song
Michael Jackson – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2010
Michael’s powerful video calling attention to our destruction of the Earth and of each other.
→ read full articleChina-Japan: Senkaku/Diaoyutai Islands Conflict
COVA-Confederation of Voluntary Associations - TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2010
Through 2009 we had brought to you a series briefly outlining disputes in 188 countries. Now we are happy to announce that we shall be sharing with you, every week, details of some major conflicts in different countries around the world. We hope that an understanding of the genesis and nature of different conflicts we help us in resolving these and making the world what it should be – A Heaven for all!!!
— The COVA-Confederation of Voluntary Associations team
Out of Sight, Out of Mind (Even when it’s not out of sight)
Dahr Jamail – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2010
New York Times: “The government is expected to announce on Wednesday [11 Aug 2010] that three-quarters of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak has already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated — and that much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm.” The Times was accommodating enough to lead the story with a nice photo of a fishing boat motoring across clean water with several birds in the foreground. This message was disseminated far and wide, via other mainstream media outlets like the AP and Reuters, effectively announcing to the masses that despite the Gulf of Mexico suffering the largest marine oil disaster in US history, most of the oil was simply “gone.” This kind of government cover-up is nothing new, of course.
→ read full articleSome of the Last Words of Rachel Corrie to Her Mother
Submitted by Dr. Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2010
This was sent by a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer who was on one of the Turkish vessels boarded by Israeli commandos off Gaza.
→ read full articleActivists Storm Field, Crush GM Maize
ANSA/Italy – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2010
Italy: A group of 70 no global activists on Monday [9 Aug 2010] staged a lightning strike against a field of genetically modified (GM) maize, crushing all the plants and effectively preventing their harvest.
→ read full articleGoogle-Verizon Pact Worse than Feared
Free Press – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2010
They are promising Net Neutrality only for a certain part of the Internet, one that they’ll likely stop investing in. But they are also paving the way for a new ‘Internet’ via fiber and wireless phones where Net Neutrality will not apply and corporations can pick and choose which sites people can easily view on their phones or any other Internet device using these networks. It would open the door to outright blocking of applications, just as Comcast did with BitTorrent, or the blocking of content, just as Verizon did with text messages from NARAL Pro-choice America. It would divide the information superhighway, creating new private fast lanes for the big players while leaving the little guy stranded on a winding dirt road.
→ read full articleFrom Marx to Goldman Sachs: The Fictions of Fictitious Capital
Michael Hudson - ICH,
16 Aug 2010
As published in Critique, based on a presentation given at the China Academy of Sciences, School of Marxist Studies in Beijing in November 2009, and at the Left Forum in New York City, March 20, 2010.
→ read full articleSymmetric
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2010
A husband and wife spent their vacation at a lake where he enjoyed fishing.
→ read full articleThe BP Cover-Up
Julia Whitty – Mother Jones,
16 Aug 2010
The Deepwater Horizon is different from any other spill in human history. The extreme technology used to drill at unprecedented depths lacks the extreme safety equipment and protocols needed to stave off disaster. BP, gambling at the border of controllable engineering, has lost spectacularly in its bid to be the deepest and cheapest driller of them all. And no one is ready for it. Not the Minerals Management Service, catering submissively to BP’s laughable Gulf oil-spill “plan,” a document featuring wildly inaccurate wildlife assessments (including walruses and other species nonexistent in the Gulf) and an on-call expert who’s been dead for years. Not the scientists whose research is paid for by the oil cowboys. Not the environmental groups, who did not foresee the stupendous potential for cataclysm on oil’s farthest frontier. Not the media…
→ read full article
CrossTalk: Is Israel a Rogue State?
Russia Today – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2010
Robert Fisk from the Independent debates Dan Diker from the World Jewish Congress. On this edition of Peter Lavelle’s CrossTalk, he asks his guests whether the real problem when finding peace in the Middle East is the US-Israel alliance.
→ read full articleA Prison That Stains US Moral Authority
The Independent, Editorial – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2010
The first case to be tried under the new commissions is that of child soldier Omar Khadr, who was 15 years old when he was accused of throwing a grenade which killed a US serviceman in Afghanistan in 2002. Mr Khadr’s trial has been condemned by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, who stress that it is America which has led the world in recognising that children caught in war zones in Africa must be treated as victims and not combatants. The Khadr case serves only to confirm the alternative legal universe in which Guantanamo exists.
→ read full articleGoing Organic: The Siege on Gaza
Jon Elmer – Al Jazeera,
16 Aug 2010
In February 2006, following Hamas’ electoral victory, a top advisor to Ehud Olmert, the then Israeli prime minister, Dov Weisglass, described the essence of Israel’s Gaza policy. “It’s like a meeting with a dietitian,” Weisglass said. “We need to make the Palestinians lose weight, but not to starve to death.”
→ read full articleMalu ‘Aina – Volunteers of All Skills, and No Particular Skills, Needed!
Jim Albertini, Center for Nonviolent Education and Action – TRANSCEND Media Service,
16 Aug 2010
If you are interested in organic farming and helping a non-profit peace farm to grow food to share with people in need, supporting its work for justice and peace, please email me or give me a call. (Note from TMS Editor Antonio C. S. Rosa: I have lived at Malu Aina when I was doing my Ph.D. work at the University of Hawaii in the 90s. I highly recommend the experience to activists, students, nature lovers, hard workers for peace/social justice/anti-militarism, and all those interested in improving the lot of our planet – and their own lives as human beings. You work in the farm, do research, engage in nonviolent direct actions, connect, learn, make a difference. Simple living, high thinking. No pain, no gain. Making the best of our short lives here).
→ read full articleFrom Church Bulletins
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Aug 2010
“Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church.
→ read full articlePress TV Under Attack
Gilad Atzmon – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Aug 2010
The Guardian and the Jewish Chronicle reported today [3 Aug 2010] that Ofcom, the UK broadcasting standards body, has ruled that Iranian-backed Press TV’s coverage of the Gaza flotilla incident breached guidelines on impartiality…. Ofcom said the show had started with “a pro-Palestinian song set to anti-Israeli/pro-Palestinian imagery”.
→ read full articleThe Thinker: Neighbors Like These
Dr. Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Aug 2010
Once again India has rolled out the red carpet for Burma’s aging despot Than Shwe, whose sleep has reportedly been disrupted by his deep-seated fears of being hauled to The Hague for his alleged crimes against humanity.
→ read full articleWe’re Hot as Hell and We’re Not Going to Take It Any More
Bill McKibben - TomDispatch,
9 Aug 2010
Three Steps to Establish a Politics of Global Warming. Try to fit these facts together:
→ read full articleNuke U: How the University of California Is Helping to Blow Up the World
Norman Solomon – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Aug 2010
Since the early 1940s, UC has managed the nation’s top laboratories for designing nuclear bombs. Today, California’s public university system is still immersed in the nuclear weapons business. Sixty-five years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, the University of California imprimatur is an air freshener for the stench of preparations for global annihilation. Nuclear war planners have been pleased to exploit UC’s vast technical expertise and its image of high-minded academic purpose.
→ read full articleAdvocacy from Afar – Towards Human Rights for Victims of Sri Lanka’s Civil War
Nirmanusan Balasundaram – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Aug 2010
In 2009, the global media turned its attention to the military defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). At the time, many questions were raised on the treatment of the Tamil civilians trapped in the conflict.
→ read full articleSix and a Half Decades after ‘Little Boy’: Hiroshima Fights to Keep Memory of Nuclear Attack Alive
Till Mayer in Hiroshima, Japan - Spiegel,
9 Aug 2010
Hiroshima was largely destroyed 65 years ago in the world’s first attack using a nuclear bomb. The bomb, dropped by a US Air Force plane, killed tens of thousands and destroyed an entire generation in the city. Six decades later, Hiroshima is fighting to keep the memory of the attack alive.
→ read full articleBeyond Violence and Nonviolence: Resistance as a Culture
Ramzy Baroud - Truthout,
9 Aug 2010
Even those who purport to sympathize with resisting nations often contribute to the confusion. Activists from Western countries tend to follow an academic comprehension of what is happening in Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Thus, certain ideas are perpetuated: suicide bombings bad, nonviolent resistance good; Hamas rockets bad, slingshots good; armed resistance bad, vigils in front of Red Cross offices good. Many activists will quote Martin Luther King Jr., but not Malcolm X. They will infuse a selective understanding of Gandhi, but never of Guevara. This supposedly “strategic” discourse has robbed many of what could be a precious understanding of resistance – as both concept and culture.
→ read full articleBanking on Hunger
Alan Maass – Socialist Worker,
9 Aug 2010
Goldman Sachs and the rest of Wall Street gambled on food. Their bets paid off big time–at the cost of igniting a food crisis that pushed hundreds of millions into the ranks of the hungry.
→ read full articleCall to President Obama and World Leaders to Help Mordechai Vanunu Get His Freedom
TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Aug 2010
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate, and Gerry Grehan, Chair, Peace People Northern Ireland, have written to President Obama, other world leaders and prominent personalities, to ask for their help in the lifting of all restrictions and for Vanunu to be allowed to leave Israel.
→ read full articleThe Burma Insurgency
COVA-Confederation of Voluntary Associations - TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Aug 2010
Through 2009 we had brought to you a series briefly outlining disputes in 188 countries. Now we are happy to announce that we shall be sharing with you, every week, details of some major conflicts in different countries around the world. We hope that an understanding of the genesis and nature of different conflicts we help us in resolving these and making the world what it should be – A Heaven for all!!!
— The COVA-Confederation of Voluntary Associations team
Oxpeace – Professor Johan Galtung
Andy Russell - Different Films,
9 Aug 2010
Keynote address by Prof. Johan Galtung at Oxford University’s OxPeace, May 2010.
→ read full articleCrime and Punishment under Capitalism
Paul D’Amato – Socialist Worker,
9 Aug 2010
What if there was a three strikes law for Corporate America’s repeat offenders? As Rosa Luxemburg once wrote, bourgeois justice is “like a net, which allowed the voracious sharks to escape, while the little sardines were caught.”
→ read full articleHaiti’s Colonial Overlord
Ashley Smith – Socialist Worker,
9 Aug 2010
The role of Bill Clinton’s Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission and other institutions that claim to look out for the interests of Haiti’s poor.
→ read full articlePlease Sign the Petition to Release Mordechai Vanunu
TMS Editor – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Aug 2010
Please express your support for this letter by signing this petition.
http://humanrights.change.org/petitions/view/release_mordechai_vanunu
The following letter has been sent by Mairead Maguire-Nobel Peace Laureate and Gerry Grehan-Chair of the Peace People, Northern Ireland, to President Barak Obama, UK Prime Minister David Cameron, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, other world leaders and prominent personalities, to ask for their help in obtaining the lifting of all restrictions on Mordechai Vanunu and for him to be granted freedom to leave Israel.
→ read full articleTop Secret America: A Washington Post Investigation (PART 1)
Dana Priest and William M. Arkin - The Washington Post,
2 Aug 2010
A Hidden World, Growing Beyond Control. The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.
→ read full articleTop Secret America: A Washington Post Investigation (PART 2)
Dana Priest and William M. Arkin - The Washington Post,
2 Aug 2010
National Security Inc. -To ensure that the country’s most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation’s interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called “inherently government functions.” But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post.
→ read full articleTop Secret America: A Washington Post Investigation (PART 3)
Dana Priest and William M. Arkin -The Washington Post,
2 Aug 2010
The Secrets Next Door. In suburbs across the nation, the intelligence community goes about its anonymous business. Its work isn’t seen, but its impact is surely felt.
→ read full articleCluster Bomb Ban Comes Into Effect
Al Jazeera – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Aug 2010
A global treaty banning cluster munitions has gone into force. The Convention on Cluster Munitions, which became binding international law on Sunday [1 Aug 2010], prohibits the use, production and stockpiling of the weapon, which is blamed for killing and maiming tens of thousands of civilians.
→ read full articleThe Suffering of Fallujah
Robert C. Koehler – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Aug 2010
And so it turns out that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, though not until we arrived and started using them. This is the power of language. Call it “war” and along come glory, duty, courage, sacrifice: the best of humanity writ large. The word is impenetrable; it sets the heart in motion; God makes an appearance, blesses the troops, blesses the weapons. Operation Iraqi Freedom: They’ll greet us with open arms. At what point do we learn our lesson, that “war” is a moral cesspool of horrific consequences, especially, and most troublingly, unintended ones?
→ read full articleAfghanistan: The War Logs
Simon Rogers – The Guardian,
2 Aug 2010
Key incidents from the Wikileaks Afghanistan war logs selected by Guardian writers. As a spreadsheet, with co-ordinates.
→ read full articleBrazil: Democracy vs. Poverty
Arthur Ituassu – Open Democracy,
2 Aug 2010
In half a generation, a period that straddles two presidencies, politics has lifted millions of Brazilians from misery. Arthur Ituassu explains how it was done.
→ read full articleDesmond Tutu Backs U.S. Food Co-Op Boycott of Israeli Products
Natasha Mozgovaya – Haaretz,
2 Aug 2010
South African Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu issues statement of support for boycott announced by food co-op in Rachel Corrie’s hometown of Olympia, Washington.
→ read full articleWikiLeaks’ Afghan War Diary
Amy Goodman – Democracy NOW! - Truthdig,
2 Aug 2010
Homeland security agents descended on a recent hacker conference in New York where he was scheduled to speak. He had canceled. He said the Obama administration also tried to get the Australian government to arrest him. Speaking to me from London, Assange said: “We are not pacifists. We are transparency activists who understand that transparent government tends to produce just government. That is our modus operandi behind our whole organization: to get out suppressed information into the public where the press and the public and our nations’ politics can work on it to produce better outcomes.”
→ read full article(Italian) 21 giugno Strage di piazza della Loggia … A quando la verità?
Silvia Berruto – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Aug 2010
parte II
Nel 36° Anniversario di Piazza Loggia
In memoria del salodiano Vittorio Zambarda
Children
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Aug 2010
“Don’t worry if children don’t listen to you.
→ read full articleThe Shame of the Fourth Estate
Charles Kaiser, Hillman Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Aug 2010
“Let me make this utterly clear: What you see on Fox News, what you read on Right Wing websites, is the utter and complete perversion of journalism, and it can have no place in a civilized society. It is words crashed together, never to inform, only to inflame. It is a political guillotine. It is the manipulation of reality to make the racist seem benevolent, and to convict the benevolent as racist – even if her words must be edited, filleted, stripped of all context, rearranged, fabricated, and falsified, to do so.
→ read full article(Portuguese) Espiritualidade, Economia e o Mundo dos Negócios
Pravda – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Aug 2010
O português Paulo Vieira de Castro, consultor de empresas e diretor do Centro de Estudos Aplicados em Marketing do Instituto Superior de Administração e Gestão (Porto) e o economista brasileiro, Marcus Eduardo de Oliveira, professor e especialista em Política Internacional, dialogam sobre espiritualidade, economia social e humana e o mundo dos negócios. Na essência, ambos os especialistas conversam sobre a necessidade de integrar o ser humano numa visão mais abrangente, tanto no contexto da economia, quanto dos negócios, envolvendo desde a busca da felicidade à realização plena de cada um, comungando, nesse aspecto, a vida humana e a espiritualidade.
→ read full articleIs Israel a Liability for the US?
Marwan Bishara – Al Jazeera,
2 Aug 2010
The all too predictable pro and con nature of the debate meant repeating same-old same-old selective mantras about the “special relationship”. More importantly, as per usual for such discussions, the debate fell within the ideological limits of US-based mainstream think-tank perspectives. The question of whether US foreign policy is a liability for the Middle East; whether serving Washington’s interests is a liability for Americans, Arabs and Israelis did not arise. And whether US foreign policy is a liability to the future of a Jewish presence in the region was totally discounted.
→ read full articleIsrael and Palestine
Deena Stryker – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Aug 2010
In 1988 I visited Israel as the first intifada was gathering steam. I interviewed several political figures sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, and saw from the air how narrow Israel was from East to West, between the Mediterranean and the West Bank. Twenty-two years later, two concepts I imagined then could, I believe, break the continuing deadlock between Israel and the people it displaced. The first is process dynamics.
→ read full articleIsrael Demolishes Bedouin Village
Al Jazeera – TRANSCEND Media Service,
2 Aug 2010
Israeli authorities have demolished the homes of about 300 Bedouins in a village in the southern Negev desert. The entire village of al-Arakib was bulldozed on Tuesday [27 Jul 2010], with many of the former residents’ cattle, trees and belongings lost. Al-Arakib, which had about 40 homes, is one of 45 Bedouin villages not recognised by Israeli authorities.
→ read full articleCameron Uses Turkish Visit to Launch Ferocious Attack on Israel
Catrina Stewart in Jerusalem – The Independent,
2 Aug 2010
David Cameron signalled a toughening stance on Israel yesterday [27 Jul 2010] by comparing the besieged Gaza Strip to “a prison camp” and urging Israel to end its three-year blockade. Mr Cameron’s comments will carry additional diplomatic weight because they were made in Turkey, which has threatened to sever ties with Israel after its deadly assault on a flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza.
→ read full articleThe End of (Military) History?: The United States, Israel, and the Failure of the Western Way of War
Andrew J. Bacevich - TomDispatch,
2 Aug 2010
“In watching the flow of events over the past decade or so, it is hard to avoid the feeling that something very fundamental has happened in world history.” This sentiment, introducing the essay that made Francis Fukuyama a household name, commands renewed attention today, albeit from a different perspective.
→ read full article