Articles by M
We found 37535 results.
The Poodle Speaks
Maureen Dowd – The New York Times,
6 Sep 2010
Even in the thick of a historical tragedy, Tony Blair never seemed like a Shakespearean character. He’s too rabbity brisk, too doggedly modern. The most proficient spinner since Rumpelstiltskin lacks introspection. The self-described “manipulator” is still in denial about being manipulated. The Economist’s review of “A Journey,” the new autobiography of the former British prime minister, says it sounds less like Disraeli and Churchill and more like “the memoirs of a transatlantic business tycoon.”
→ read full articleFlying the Flag, Faking the News
John Pilger – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Sep 2010
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger traces the history of propaganda to Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, who invented the term “public relations”. Bernays believed in “engineering public consent” and creating “false realties” as news. Here are examples of how this works today.
→ read full articleIn South America, the Left and Indigenous Movements Are Searching for a Way to Co-Exist
Benjamin Dangl - AlterNet,
6 Sep 2010
At the heart of these conflicts is a question leftist governments and social movements across Latin America are grappling with: what should this “other world that is possible” look like? “Is it one based on constant economic growth, even if this is ‘socialist’ and would raise the real income of people in the global South?” sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein asks about today’s Latin America. “Or is it what some are calling a change in civilizational values, a world of buen vivir [living well]?” This latter philosophy includes living in harmony with others and with nature, rather than accumulating capital and material things while destroying the earth.
→ read full articleJapanese Hunt Dolphins into the Cove, Once More
Ravi Somaiya - Newsweek,
6 Sep 2010
Activists protest start of annual chase, which locals see as a cultural event.
→ read full articleJean Giono (1895-1970): The Energies of the Earth
René Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Sep 2010
The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed the year 2010 as the International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures. Thus we are pleased to present the creative efforts of individuals who have helped to create bridges of understanding among cultures.
→ read full articleSettlers Reveal Deep Disdain for Events in Washington
Donald Macintyre in Kiryat Arba, West Bank – The Independent,
6 Sep 2010
Yaniv Mor, 30-year-old father of a one-month-old baby girl, and a settler was blunt: “We don’t care about Washington. Nothing will come out of it, like always. This is a war of religions – we want everything, they want everything. There is no way there will ever be agreement. That is the reality.”
→ read full articleAnother False Ending: Contracting Out the Iraq Occupation
Bill Quigley and Laura Raymond – Truthout,
6 Sep 2010
Another false ending to the Iraq war is being declared. Nearly seven years after George Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln, President Obama has just given a major address to mark the withdrawal of all but 50,000 combat troops from Iraq. But while thousands of US troops are marching out, thousands of additional private military contractors (PMCs) are marching in. The number of armed security contractors in Iraq will more than double in the coming months.
→ read full articleNo Comment
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Sep 2010
A monk and a nun play ping-pong.
→ read full articleUFOs
Johan Galtung - TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Sep 2010
Being an agnostic on UFOs, let me give one justification, and then one metaphor, for a serious exploration of the UFO scenario.
→ read full articleMass Extinction Threat: Earth on Verge of Huge Reset Button?
Jeremy Hsu, LiveScience Senior Writer – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Sep 2010
Mass extinctions have served as huge reset buttons that dramatically changed the diversity of species found in oceans all over the world, according to a comprehensive study of fossil records. The findings suggest humans will live in a very different future if they drive animals to extinction, because the loss of each species can alter entire ecosystems.
→ read full articleArmy Downplays Depleted Uranium Risk on Hawaiian Island
William Cole – Honolulu Star-Advertiser,
6 Sep 2010
Radiation levels safe at Pohakuloa, Army says. Jim Albertini with the Malu Aina Center for Nonviolent Education & Action said yesterday [4 Sep 2010] that the Army was “stonewalling community involvement in seeking the truth about DU radiation contamination at Pohakuloa.” Albertini said the Army has made unreliable safety claims based on questionable assumptions and scientific methodology and no peer-reviewed studies.
→ read full articleThree Degrees Is At Least One Too Many
The Independent, Editorial – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Sep 2010
It is fittingly ominous that 2010, year of the next big climate change conference, has been the hottest in recorded history. The heat rises inexorably yet the world dithers and looks away. None of the excitement that surrounded the opening stages of the climate summit at Copenhagen last year looks like materialising this November at Cancún in Mexico.
→ read full articleWhat an Increase of 3.5C Really Means to the Planet
Mark Lynas – The Independent,
6 Sep 2010
Firstly, the ice cap over the North Pole will have disappeared entirely during the summer months, changing the planet’s energy balance and weather patterns. Secondly, melting permafrost in Siberia and other high-latitude areas will be releasing millions of tonnes of the extra-powerful greenhouse gas methane, and there will be nothing we can do to stop it. And lastly, the world’s most important and biodiverse tropical forest, the Amazon region, will be burning up and transforming into desert.
→ read full articleFree Abdallah Abu Rahmah!
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Sep 2010
Nobel Peace laureate and TRANSCEND member, Mairead Maguire, calls upon the Israeli government to release human rights defender Abdallah Abu Rahmah and calls on the international community to take concrete steps to defend Abdallah Abu Rahmah and Palestinian human rights activists from Israeli repression and unlawful imprisonment.
→ read full article
Behind Mexico’s Bloodshed (Part 1)
The Real News Network – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Sep 2010
Interview with investigative journalist Bruce Livesey, who recently returned from Ciudad Juárez, scene of some of the most concerning violence in Mexico’s ongoing drug cartel conflict. According to Livesey, the problem has its roots in the free trade agreement that wiped out Mexico’s traditional agriculture economy, after which the drug cartels moved in to fight for each other’s market share.
→ read full articleIraq to Spend $13B on U.S. Arms, Equipment
Jim Michaels - USA Today,
6 Sep 2010
Iraq is preparing to buy as much as $13 billion in American arms and military equipment, a huge order of tanks, ships and hardware that U.S. officials say shows Iraqi-U.S. military ties will be tight for years to come.
→ read full article
How to Be Alone
Tanya Davis – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Sep 2010
What can we learn about ourselves when we let go of our fear of loneliness?
→ read full articleA Speech for Endless War
Norman Solomon – Truthout,
6 Sep 2010
While now trumpeting the nobility of an Iraq war effort that he’d initially disparaged as “dumb,” Barack Obama is polishing a halo over the Afghanistan war, which he touts as very smart. In the process, the Oval Office speech declared that every US war – no matter how mendacious or horrific – is worthy of veneration.
→ read full article
Behind Mexico’s Bloodshed (Part 2)
The Real News Network – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Sep 2010
According to investigative journalist Bruce Livesey, in Ciudad Juarez, the murder capital of Mexico, the military is picking winners amongst the cartels.
→ read full articleRebel Soldiers: Dissent Grows in the British Military
Dan Read – Toward Freedom,
6 Sep 2010
Glenton had spent the last nine months behind bars for refusing to return to Afghanistan and espousing his anti-war views. Addressing a meeting of the Stop the War Coalition after his confinement, he said it was “badge of honor to have gone to prison” and that he has “more in common with the people of Afghanistan than my own political and military leaders.”
→ read full articleNature’s Bottom Line: The Folly of Endless Growth
Wayne Ellwood – New Internationalist magazine,
6 Sep 2010
We’ve been captured by a myth far more alluring than the one that Charles Darwin confronted 150 years ago: the dream of perpetual economic growth. In the North we have been living beyond our ecological means for decades, consuming too much and producing more waste than the environment can absorb, while inequality grows.
→ read full article(Italian) “Sa Phrala – Ogni Persona E’ Tuo Fratello “
Silvia Berruto - TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Sep 2010
Io Ho Aderito: Sono Con Rom E Sinti
→ read full articleNepali Diaspora in Australia
Bishnu Pathak, PhD, Peace and Conflict Study Center – TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Sep 2010
The author visited Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPACS) at the University of Sydney to participate at the TRANSCEND Global Meeting; “Enabling Peace: Pedagogy and Training”, in early July 2010. The meeting was approved to establish the TRANSCEND Peace University (TPU), South Asia Regional Chapter, the first ever in Nepal. While I visited John Street in Grandville, in the New South Wales Sydney, I found a total of 12 Nepali families.
→ read full article
Should People Boycott Israel?
Paul Jay interviewing Omar Barghouti - TRANSCEND Media Service,
6 Sep 2010
Omar Barghouti explains the aims of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.
→ read full articleSustaining a Community of Strange Loops
Anthony Judge – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Aug 2010
Comprehension and Engagement through Aesthetic Ring Transformation
→ read full articlePakistan Floods: Senior UN Figure Criticises Response
BBC – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Aug 2010
A senior United Nations official has called on the global community to urgently step up its response to the floods that have struck Pakistan. Louis-George Arsenault, director of emergency operations for Unicef in New York, described the lack of support as “quite extraordinary”. The humanitarian crisis was the largest “in decades”, he warned.
→ read full article(Italian) Prima Che Sia Troppo Tardi…
Prof. Nanni Salio – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Aug 2010
Riflettendo amaramente sui tragici eventi della seconda guerra mondiale, Martin Niemöller (Lippstadt, 14 gennaio 1892 – Wiesbaden, 6 marzo 1984) scrisse un testo poetico di grande amarezza che ancora oggi dovrebbe servirci per guidare i nostri pensieri e le nostre azioni di fronte all’arroganza, alla follia e alla mancanza di dignità che in questi tempi caratterizzano gran parte degli uomini politici, dell’industria e della finanza ovunque nel mondo: forti coi deboli, deboli coi forti.
→ read full articleWhat You Will Not Hear About Iraq
Adil E. Shamoo – Foreign Policy in Focus,
30 Aug 2010
Iraq has between 25 and 50 percent unemployment, a dysfunctional parliament, rampant disease, an epidemic of mental illness, and sprawling slums. The killing of innocent people has become part of daily life. What a havoc the United States has wreaked in Iraq.
→ read full articleEarth is Our Common Home: UN Desert Decade
Rene Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Aug 2010
God created lands filled with water as a place for man to live; and the desert so that he can discover his soul.
→ read full article
Has Blackwater Founder Erik Prince Fled the US?
CODEPINK – TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Aug 2010
CODEPINK cofounder Medea Benjamin and other DC area activists were detained at the home of Blackwater Founder Erik Prince.
→ read full articleJapan Right Now: What Happens?
Johan Galtung, 30 Aug 2010 - TRANSCEND Media Service,
30 Aug 2010
There are reasons for deep concern. Of the countries in the grip of the US alliances Japan may have become the most American. Beaten in its deep cultural foundations, not only militarily, Japan is like a monotheistic country with God residing 7/24 in Washington. Being so different, americanization was not a dialect, a variation on one’s own idiom, like in Germany and Norway, but a new language.
→ read full articleSpace 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 article