PEACE JOURNALISM PERSPECTIVE
EDITORIAL
The Colombia Peace Accords
Johan Galtung, 5 Oct 2015 - TRANSCEND Media Service
Therapy: To alleviate suffering and reduce inequality the bottom has to be lifted up. Get started, of 32 departments select the 3 most miserable by low average lifespan and the 3 least violent; of 1119 municipalities select the 10% most miserable and 10% least violent.
NOBEL LAUREATES
Harold Pinter’s Nobel Acceptance Speech: Art, Truth & Politics
Harold Pinter, Nobel Literature Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service
The justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Qaeda and shared responsibility for 9/11. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. None of it was true. We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it ‘bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East’.
OTHER COMMENTARIES
NEWS
Saudi Arabia’s Troubling Death Sentence
Adam Coogle, Human Rights Watch – TRANSCEND Media Service
On September 14, Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of Ali al-Nimr for participating in protests four years ago, when he was 16. The sentence stipulates that he should be beheaded and that his headless body should be crucified for public display.
BY TRANSCEND MEMBERS
The Yemen Catastrophe: Beset by Contradictions of Will and Intellect
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service
The UN Security Council seems shockingly supportive of a major Saudi military intervention that started in March 2015, severely aggravating the overall situation by unanimously adopting a one-sided anti-Houthi Resolution 2216. This Saudi use of force is contrary to international law, violates the core principle of the UN Charter, and magnifies the violent disruption of Yemeni society.
Gandhi Jayanti, Gandhi’s Dream
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph. D. – TRANSCEND Media Service
On behalf of those of us who struggle to honor Gandhi’s legacy to the world, I would like to wish Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi ‘happy birthday!’ He was born on 2 October 1869. Gandhi’s dream of a world without violence might be fanciful. But, as John Lennon once sang, he is ‘not the only one’. Many of us share this dream. Are you a dreamer too?
SPECIAL FEATURE
Filipino Children Diving, Dying for Gold
Human Rights Watch – TRANSCEND Media Service
Boys lowered 75 feet into mine pits, and small children, even 8, 9, or 10-years-old, handling poisonous mercury to separate the gold from the ore. Juliane Kippenberg, associate director of the children’s rights division, talks to Amy Braunschweiger about being at an underwater mine, the vertigo-inducing narrowness of some mine shafts, and the toll this takes on the Philippine children who work in gold mining.
IN FOCUS
No Papal Bull: Francis Hails Peace and the Activists Who Fight for It
Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan – Truthdig
Lincoln and King need little introduction. Dorothy Day was a crusading 20th-century activist who is formally being considered for Catholic sainthood. “She was a radical in her youth, underwent a conversion, and then started a movement, the Catholic Worker, to combine her faith with her commitment to social justice, the poor and the pursuit of peace.”
Right Livelihood Awards 2015: The Laureates
The Right Livelihood Award Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service
2015 Right Livelihood Awards honour courageous and effective solutions to secure human rights and respond to global crises.
SURVEILLANCE / SPYING / WHISTLEBLOWING / BIG BROTHER
The Revolutionary Act of Telling the Truth – WikiLeaks
John Pilger - TeleSur
These are dark times, in which the propaganda of deceit touches all our lives. It is as if political reality has been privatized and illusion legitimized. The information age is a media age–a surreal assembly line of cliches and false assumptions.
Julian Assange “Winning” against Intelligence Agencies
TeleSur – TRANSCEND Media Service
Julian Assange is “winning” in his conflict with the United States intelligence agencies, the WikiLeaks founder told a Latin American conference for the progressive left on Wednesday [30 Sep 2015]. “We are winning because secrets breed incompetency.”
ANGLO AMERICA
Why Doesn’t the Foreign Policy Establishment Take World Peace Seriously?
Didier Jacobs – Foreign Policy In Focus
The faculty goes through a list of US “national interests.” The usual suspects are all there: preventing nuclear proliferation, strengthening democracy, and so on. I raise my hand to argue that protecting the Brazilian rainforest is also a vital U.S. national interest. The faculty’s reaction? “Er, so, if Brazilians keep chopping down their forest, should we bomb them?” Welcome to the establishment’s mindset!
The 10 Most Egregious U.S. Abuses of Psychology and Psychiatry
Bruce E. Levine, Alternet - Salon
From Project MKUltra to the CIA’s torture program, mental health professionals in the US have some explaining to do.
ASIA & THE PACIFIC
Finally, Nepal Gets a Constitution
Deepak Adhikari – Foreign Policy In Focus
First promised over a half a century ago, Nepal’s new constitution is surprisingly progressive. But it’s led to tensions with neighboring India and with underrepresented ethnic groups.
BRICS
Electoral Revolution in Brazil Aimed at Neutralising Corporate Influence
Mario Osava, IPS – Human Wrongs Watch
29 Sep 2015 – From now on, elections in Brazil will be more democratic, without corporate interference, which had become decisive and corruptive. A September 17 Supreme Court ruling declared unconstitutional articles of the elections act that allow corporate donations to election campaigns.
Our Standards and Their Standards: India vs Abolitionist Countries [Death Penalty]
Asian Centre for Human Rights – TRANSCEND Media Service
This report is being published by the “National Campaign for Abolition of Death Penalty in India”. It shows that there are countries with fewer resources than India which faced far more protracted and deadly insurgencies and acts of terrorism but did not feel the necessity to use death penalty to ensure national security. These countries are mainly in Asia including Philippines, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
EUROPE
Twenty-Five Years since the Reunification of Germany
Peter Schwarz, WSWS – TRANSCEND Media Service
On October 3, 1990 the German Democratic Republic (East Germany, known as the GDR), a state with 17 million inhabitants, was disbanded 41 years after its founding and incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany. In both East and West Germany, only a few of those affected were aware of the consequences of this step. There was no public debate and no referendum.
MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA
Nonagon of Toxic Conflict: Notes on the Turkish Quagmire
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service
The focus on Turkey, and its role with respect to Syria, PKK, and ISIS is not meant to minimize the importance of the other actors in the region that are part of the geopolitical nonogon. There are several overlapping regional proxy wars that have precluded a diplomatic resolution, including serious intraregional tensions between Saudi Arabia and Syria as well as the extraregional rivalry between the United States and Russia.
The Middle East’s New Nakba
John Feffer – Foreign Policy In Focus
The chain of events set into motion by the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq is reaching its logical conclusion — the disintegration of multi-ethnic states and a great expulsion of innocents. Nationalist forces have squared off against religious extremists over not only who controls the states, but the very nature of the state institutions.
PALESTINE / ISRAEL
Netanyahu’s Real Message Was to Israel’s Jews: “Talk Peace but Prepare for Doomsday”
Alan Hart – TRANSCEND Media Service
How Israel’s Jews would react if they were put on notice that they would be subjected to complete isolation and effective sanctions? Left behind in a walled-in nuclear-armed fortress, the zealots would be prepared, as Golda Meir once said to me in a BBC Panorama interview when she was Israel’s prime minister, to take the region and the world down with them.
How US Colleges Have Become Ground Zero for Suppression of Palestine Solidarity
Sarah Lazare – Common Dreams
Two new reports highlight the systematic intimidation, harassment, and censorship that are silencing free speech critical of Israel. The study highlights the common tactic of conflating anti-Semitism with criticism of Israel, and equating all Jews with the Israeli state, in an effort to shut down debate.
In Gaza, No Figures Can Express the Sorrow
International Solidarity Movement - Global Research
Zionist aggression caused a real slaughter, the almost 70 years of Israeli occupation still remains and it will continue causing damages and death mainly among women, youth and children, as Israel’s military objectives are always homes, mosques, schools used as shelters, ambulances. The numbers speak for themselves but today I cannot contain human suffering into figures. Sorrow is not measurable, sorrow is just that and it is everything.
The ‘New Antisemitism’
Antony Lerman – Open Democracy
A succinct account of the use of the term ‘new anti-Semitism’ that replaces the ‘figure of the Jew’ with the state of Israel (collective Jewry) as the object of hate. Thus, anti-Zionism becomes the same as antisemitism giving Israel hegemony over checking both.
SYRIA IN DEPTH
Confronting ‘Looting to Order’ and ‘Cultural Racketeering’ in Syria
Franklin Lamb – TRANSCEND Media Service
It is recalled that the looting following the United States-led 2003 invasion of Iraq involved organized international gangs, sometimes with corrupt “Operation Iraqi Freedom” coalition military personnel involved that were contracted to raid the National Museum in Baghdad and Mosul Museum.
Hillary Clinton’s ‘Wicked’ Syrian Choice
Rick Sterling – Consortium News
As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton bought into the neocon/liberal-hawk agenda that spread the chaos of Iraq across Libya, Syria and now into Europe. How Clinton approached those challenges suggests that she would head down the same “regime change” path as President.
CIA Interventions in Syria: A Partial Timeline
Michael S. Rozeff, Lew Rockwell – TRANSCEND Media Service
3 Oct 2015 – This partial timeline provides evidence that the U.S. government and Obama in particular bear a significant responsibility for the Syrian war and the results of that war. The CIA meddling is distinct from the Pentagon’s failed plan to train moderate rebels, not covered in this timeline.
Russia and Iran Are Coordinating in Syria to Preserve Regional Stability
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya – Strategic Culture Foundation
Similar to Russian-Chinese cooperation in Eastern Eurasia and Asia-Pacific region, Iran and Russia are collaborating together in the Middle East and the central portion of Eurasia. From the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus to the Levant and the Mediterranean Sea, Tehran and Moscow have been acting as forces of stability.
THE UNITED NATIONS
UK and Saudi Arabia ‘in Secret Deal’ over UN Human Rights Council Place
Owen Bowcott – The Guardian
29 Sep 2015 – Britain conducted secret vote-trading deals with Saudi Arabia to ensure both states were elected to the UN Human Rights Council, according to leaked diplomatic cables. Riyadh has sanctioned more than a hundred beheadings so far this year – more than the Islamic State.
CAPITALISM
The Ongoing Epidemic of Corporate Crime
Dean Baker – Al Jazeera
Volkswagen is just the latest scandal from an epic decade of white-collar criminality. Reforming the SEC will not by itself be sufficient to reverse the corporate crime epidemic, but it would be a big step in the right direction.
Volkswagen: EPA to Investigate Other Automakers in Wake of Emissions Cheating Scandal, Report Says
Mark Hanrahan – International Business Times
3 Oct 2015 – The U.S. regulator that exposed German automaker Volkswagen’s cheating on emissions testing is expanding its investigations into the sector and will scrutinize diesel vehicles produced by BWM, Chrysler, General Motors, Land Rover and Mercedes-Benz, to see if other manufacturers were engaged in similar deceptive practices.
MEDIA
The Western Media Is Dying and Here’s Why
Tony Cartalucci – New Eastern Outlook
Seymour Hersh has risked much over his decades of journalism. He is a true journalist who has been attacked, slandered, and shunned by all sides simply because he seems to resist taking any side. When he reported on US atrocities in Vietnam, he was first attacked and denounced as a traitor or worse.
The Power of False Narrative
Robert Parry – Consortium News
28 Sep 2015 – In this age of pervasive media, the primary method of social control is through the creation of narratives delivered to the public through newspapers, TV, radio, computers, cell phones and any other gadget that can convey information. This reality has given rise to an obsession among the power elite to control as much of this messaging as possible.
MILITARISM
One Day after Warning Russia of Civilian Casualties, the U.S. Bombs a Hospital in Afghanistan
Glenn Greenwald – The Intercept
Several reports suggest that this hospital has been viewed with hostility because it treats all injured human beings, regardless of which side they’re on. “The hospital treated the wounded from all sides of the conflict, a policy that has long irked the Afghan security forces,” reports the NYT. Al Jazeera notes that “a caretaker at the hospital, who was severely injured in the air strike, told Al Jazeera that [the] clinic’s medical staff did not favor any side of the conflict.
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
The Nuclear Challenge: 70 Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki – Nuclear Civil Disobedience (7)
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service
In the years after World War II there was a widespread belief that rational minds would prevail, and that nuclear weapons would not be further developed, and their possession as well as their threat or use prohibited.
ENERGY
Fusion Reactors ‘Economically Viable’ Say Experts
Science Daily, Durham University – TRANSCEND Media Service
Fusion reactors could become an economically viable means of generating electricity within a few decades, and policy makers should start planning to build them as a replacement for conventional nuclear power stations, according to new research.
GENETIC ENGINEERING
GMO-Free Zone: Germany Tells EU It Bans Genetically Modified Crops Cultivation
Russia Today – TRANSCEND Media Service
1 Oct 2015 – Germany has opted out of cultivating GMO crops on its territory, informing the EU Commission of the move and in the process joining Poland, France, Scotland and several other member states.
Poland Becomes the 14th European Nation to Officially Ban GMO’s!
Amanda Froelich, True Activist – TRANSCEND Media Service
1 Oct 2015 – The fourteenth country to opt out of growing GM crops, Poland joins the ranks of Russia, Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Latvia, Italy, Germany, Scotland, Wales, Lithuania, Austria, Ireland, France, and Greece.
SCIENCE
Hail to the Worm: Plastic-Eating Worm Might Be the Solution to Global Crisis
Russia Today – TRANSCEND Media Service
1 Oct 2015 – New research could have staggering implications for plastic waste pollution: An international team of researchers found that the Darkling Beetle larvae, the mealworm, can subsist on a diet of Styrofoam and other forms of polystyrene.
HISTORY
This Week in History
Satoshi Ashikaga – TRANSCEND Media Service
Oct 5-11 QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Follow your passion. The rest will attend to itself. If I can do it, anybody can do it. It’s possible. And it’s your turn. So go for it. It’s never too late to become what you always wanted to be in the first place.” – J. Michael Straczynski
The Enlightenment Keeps on Winning
James A. Haught, Peace Voice – TRANSCEND Media Service
If you study history, you’ll see episodes that changed civilization. For three centuries, by fits and starts, Western progress has been mostly a chronicle of progressives defeating conservative resistance. Reformers repeatedly toppled old privileges, hierarchies and establishments. Look at the historical record:
October: This Month in Nuclear Threat History
Jeffrey W. Mason – Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
October 4, 1957 – The Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, the world’s first artificial satellite, as the Space Age began. U.S. government leaders concerned that a missile capable of launching satellites might soon be able to place a nuclear warhead on U.S. or allied territory led to fears of a “missile gap.”
STORIES TO INSPIRE YOU
Effect of Germany’s Occupation on Norway
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service
Joint suffering can sometimes bring former opponents together if three conditions are fulfilled…
SPIRITUALITY
Physicist David Bohm and Philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti on Love, Intelligence, and How to Transcend the Wall of Being
Maria Popova, Brain Pickings – TRANSCEND Media Service
Physicist David Bohm and Indian spiritual philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti sat down for a mind-bending, soul-stretching series of conversations about some of the most abiding human concerns: time, transcendence, compassion, death, the nature of reality, and the meaning of existence.
ARTS
Poets’ Talk: Pope Francis, Masilo, Marc Beaudin, et. al.
Gary Corseri and Charles Orloski – TRANSCEND Media Service
Artists used to know, intuitively, that they were pattern-makers and code-decoders. What’s the place, the function, of the artist in this frenetic world? Is there a place for what Wordsworth called “the philosophic mind”—the one who reflects, inquires, challenges, contemplates?
HEALTH
The Benefits of Ozonated Olive Oil for Toenail Fungus
Dr. Edward Group, Global Healing Center – TRANSCEND Media Service
Untreated, foot fungus, also known as athlete’s foot or tinea pedis, “eats” away at the skin of the foot and can easily spread to other areas of the body, such as the groin. Toenail fungus, or onychomycosis, disfigures the toenail and creates thick discolored nails that can cause painful pressure and difficulty walking.
POETRY FORMAT
Peace Can Be Transcended
Francisco Gomes de Matos – TRANSCEND Media Service
Rhymed Reflection
IN OTHER LANGUAGES
(Ελληνική-Greek) Οι ελίτ θέλουν περισσότερους πρόσφυγες: Γιατί;
Robert Burrowes, Ph.D. – Pressenza International Press Agency
Αν δεν είμαστε επαρκώς ενημερωμένοι, μπορούμε να ασχολούμαστε μόνο με ένα ή περισσότερα συμπτώματα της δικής τους παραφροσύνης. Οι ελίτ θέλουν περισσότερους πρόσφυγες, εν μέρει διότι με αυτόν τον τρόπο αποσπάται η προσοχή μας και δεν αναλύουμε ή δεν αντιστεκόμαστε σε αυτό που κάνουν συνολικά.
(Deutsch) Japan – 70 Jahre nach Kriegsende
Eiichi Kido - Informationsstelle Militarisierung-IMI
Erinnerungskultur – Pazifismus-Gebot – Remilitarisierung? Wird Deutschland damit die Militarisierung und die Verneinung der Rechtstaatlichkeit Japans weiter unterstützen? Das würde viele BürgerInnen in Japan stark enttäuschen, die für Freiheit, Frieden und Demokratie engagiert sind, weil sie in Deutschland ein Vorbild sehen.
(Português) Iliguagem e Glotopolítica: Descomunhão
Hildo do Couto – TRANSCEND Media Service
Tenho presenciado membros de uma família fisicamente juntos no restaurante, mas todos ligados no celular, WhatsApp, trocando mensagens com alguém que não está ali. O que estamos a testemunhar é o contrário da comunhão. As pessoas estão fisicamente juntas (nível natural), mas mentalmente separadas, pois cada uma está ligada a alguém ausente. Trata-se, portanto, de uma incomunhão, ou melhor, de uma descomunhão, no contexto da Linguística Ecossistêmica.
SHORT VIDEO CLIPS
Why Are Some People Left-Handed?
Daniel M. Abrams, TED Ed – TRANSCEND Media Service
Today, about one-tenth of the world’s population is southpaws. Why are such a small proportion of people left-handed — and why does the trait exist in the first place?
Powerful, Inspirational True Story… Don’t Give Up!
Connie Lynne – TRANSCEND Media Service
There is more than one way to success. Do not believe in failure beforehand.
Mas Que Nada (Music Video of the Week)
Miloš Karadaglić – TRANSCEND Media Service
Miloš, international guitar sensation, plays Brazilian composer Jorge Ben. Bossa Nova. Enjoy!
JOKE OF THE WEEK
To Protect and Serve…
Posted by Antonio C. S. Rosa, editor - TRANSCEND Media Service
Police…
“Militaries are the ultimate manifestation of direct, structural and cultural violence—a cancer that must be extirpated from humanity.” — Antonio C. S. Rosa, M.A.
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