PEACE JOURNALISM PERSPECTIVE
EDITORIAL
A Pope, a Patriarch, a Spiritual Revolution
Johan Galtung, 7 Mar 2016 - TRANSCEND Media Service
The first editorial, “50 Years of Fidel Castro” 3 March 2008, celebrated a political revolution that changed the world, and spelt the end of US-Western imperialism. This editorial celebrates a spiritual revolution that may also change the world, spelling the end of Western materialism, and spread from there. Again, Cuba played a major role, as meeting place between two major parts of Christianity, Catholic and Orthodox.
NOBEL LAUREATES
Nobel-Prize Economist Condemns Obama’s ‘Trade’ Deals
Eric Zuesse, Washington’s Blog – TRANSCEND Media Service
3 Mar 2016 – The Nobel-Prize-winning former chief economist of the World Bank, and Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the U.S. President, Joseph Stiglitz, went to England to warn the British public, and Parliament, that “no democracy” can support U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposed trade-deals, because all of these have a feature built into them, called Investor State Dispute Resolution, or ISDS, which will establish a supra-national authority…
OTHER COMMENTARIES
BY TRANSCEND MEMBERS
How Neoliberalism Really Works: A Small Anecdote
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service
27 Feb 2016 – Along with several million, I suffer from the eye disease known as glaucoma. It can be managed, rather than cured, by taking eye drops several times a day.
The Impossibility of Politics – And How to Make Politics Possible
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service
The thesis that politics today is impossible (or stated a bit less briefly, that the goals that politics sets out to achieve are unattainable) is so far more a provocation than a hypothesis. To make it into a meaningful claim I have to assign meanings to the word “politics” and to the word “impossible.”
Refugees Per Kiloton: RPK as a Complement to GDP
Anthony Judge – TRANSCEND Media Service
The indicator might have the additional advantage of focusing debate on an equivalent to the Polluter Pays Principle, namely on a Provider Pays Principle, as adapted to bombing — a Bomber Pays Principle. This could reframe financial responsibility for the integration of refugees.
Who Is My Neighbour?
John Scales Avery – TRANSCEND Media Service
Among the symptoms of loss of solidarity is the drift towards violence, racism and aggressive foreign policy that can be seen in the United States. Another warning symptom is the inhospitable reception that refugees have received in Europe and elsewhere.
A Forever Imminent Threat?
Robert Kowalczyk – TRANSCEND Media Service
Two towering exclamation points have been writ high on the sky, each an indelible imprint on human consciousness. Hiroshima! Nagasaki! And yet, 70 years later, through the countless wars that have followed WWII, on the surface of the fracturing social, economic and political global landscape, humanity dreams on, unaware and unforgiven.
Make Monsanto Pay
Prof. Vandana Shiva – Asian Age
Herbicide tolerance, which goes hand in hand with Monsanto’s Glyphosate based RoundUp herbicide, has failed across the world at controlling weeds, creating super weeds. Glyphosate, classified by the World Health Organisation as a carcinogen, is already being used across India and we are seeing an explosion of cancers in villages where Glyphosate is used.
Can We Give Meaning to the Destruction of Syria?
Jan Oberg - Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research
In 2011 when it all began, an educated conflict analyst or otherwise conflict competent person would have said about the conflict in Syria that it was a very complex thing, caused by history, environment, traumas, external factors, the economic situation, etc. And that al-Assad and his government was certainly an important reason but far from the only one.
International Day of Women: The Goddess of March
Rene Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service
March 8 is the International Day of Women and is placed under the sign of the goddess of the month of March — Minerva. Minerva derives her name from the Latin mens (mind), and so she has a special relation to teachers and artists.
CONFLICT RESOLUTION / MEDIATION
No Standards in Mediation
Daniel Erdmann – World Mediation Organization
Before starting a reflection on this content, we might have to understand that mediation itself is not a newly developed healing procedure for society, but it forms part of human civilization from the very beginning of our existence.
NONVIOLENCE
10 Things to Know about Nonviolent Struggle
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service
4. There are more than 200 methods of nonviolent action, including marches, demonstrations, rallies, boycotts, strikes, sit-ins, blockades, noncooperation, civil disobedience, work stoppages and slowdowns, refusal to provide services and much more.
ACTIVISM
What Everyone Should Know about Filming (and Sharing) Injustice on Social Media
Amber van Moessner, PolicyMic – TRANSCEND Media Service
25 Feb 2016 – Armed with mobile devices and social media, citizen journalists around the world have become essential agents of democracy, bearing witness to criminal behavior and abuses of power that might otherwise remain obscured and unseen. That genie’s not going back in the bottle.
IN FOCUS
Lift the Ban! – Kofi Annan on Why It’s Time to Legalize Drugs
Kofi Annan – Der Spiegel
Drugs are dangerous, but current narcotics policies are an even bigger threat because punishment is given a greater priority than health and human rights. It’s time for regulations that put lives and safety first, argues former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
How a Little Pink Flower Defeated the World’s Sole Superpower
Alfred McCoy – Foreign Policy In Focus
24 Feb 2016 – After fighting the longest war in its history, the United States stands at the brink of defeat in Afghanistan. How can this be possible? American military technology transformed remote, landlocked Afghanistan into the world’s first true narco-state.
HUMAN RIGHTS
2015: When Global Governments Trampled Human Rights in Name of National Security
Andrea Germanos – Common Dreams
24 Feb 2016 – Governments worldwide in 2015 capitalized on supposed national security threats to trample over human rights. That’s Amnesty International’s assessment of global human rights in its latest report.
SPOTLIGHT
Top Psychologist’s Personal History of MK-ULTRA: “The CIA-LSD Story in Retrospect”
Valtin, Invictus – TRANSCEND Media Service
MK-ULTRA – In considering the total body of classified research conducted by or for the CIA that had as its overriding aim the control and manipulation of behavior, two questions suggest themselves: what motivated the scientists to work covertly on questionable projects; and what, in the end, was the yield in knowledge of these studies?
ANGLO AMERICA
Why Democratic Party Foreign Policy Fails and Will Continue to Fail
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service
5 Mar 2016 – An earlier version of this essay appeared on March 2, 2016 in The Progressive Magazine. It tries to explain the entrapment of liberal Democrats in an iron cage of militarism when it comes to international security policy.
ASIA & THE PACIFIC
The Rape of East Timor: “Sounds like Fun”
John Pilger – TRANSCEND Media Service
25 Feb 20126 – Secret documents found in the Australian National Archives provide a glimpse of how one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century was executed and covered up. They also help us understand how and for whom the world is run. The documents refer to East Timor, now known as Timor-Leste, and were written by diplomats in the Australian embassy in Jakarta.
EUROPE
Brexit and the Failure of the European Union Project
Andrea Mammone – Al Jazeera
Granting special powers back to member states essentially mean legitimising local nationalisms.
Spain’s Radical Left Podemos Party Refuses to Sell Out
Robert Mackey – The Intercept
During an impassioned speech to parliament, Iglesias said that his radical left party, which is now Spain’s third largest, would not allow the “miserable” leader of the more mainstream Socialists, Pedro Sánchez, to become prime minister because he had adopted the economic policies of the right.
LATIN AMERICA & THE CARIBBEAN
Twilight of the Idols: Rise and Fall of the Personalist Left
Prof. James Petras – TRANSCEND Media Service
Over the past three years Latin American leftist leaders, who presided over heterodox ‘free trade’ and commodity based welfare economies, lost presidential, legislative and municipal elections and referendums or faced impeachment.
MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA
Kurds: Pawns and Kings in Syria and Iraq?
Sharif Nashashibi – Al Jazeera
The Kurdish issue is causing tensions within the US-led anti-ISIL coalition.
‘Plan B’ – Not an Enigma: Why the West Is Keen on Dividing the Arabs
Ramzy Baroud – TRANSCEND Media Service
The Arab world has always been seen in western eyes as a place of conquest, to be exploited, controlled and tamed. That mindset continues to define the relationship. While Arab unity is to be dreaded, further divisions often appear as ‘Plan B’, when the current status quo, call it ‘Plan A’, seems impossible to sustain.
PALESTINE / ISRAEL
In Israel, Racism Is the Law
Ben White – Al Jazeera
Successive Israeli governments since 1948 are responsible for the institutionalised discrimination against Palestinians. The Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, under military rule within this de facto single state, are subjected to severe policies of discrimination and segregation, as well as military brutality and repression.
UN: Israel Demolished 41 Palestinian Homes, a School in 1 Week
TeleSur – TRANSCEND Media Service
The demolition took place in a Palestinian village called Khirbet Tana, which is home to approximately 250 people who rely on herding and agriculture for their livelihood, according to the U.N. report.
SYRIA IN DEPTH
Why the Arabs Don’t Want Us in Syria
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, Politico – TRANSCEND Media Service
As we focus on the rise of the Islamic State and search for the source of the savagery that took so many innocent lives in Paris and San Bernardino, we might want to look beyond the convenient explanations of religion and ideology. Instead we should examine the more complex rationales of history and oil — and how they often point the finger of blame back at our own shores.
ENVIRONMENT
No Bliss in This Ignorance: The Great Fukushima Nuclear Cover-Up
Linda Pentz Gunter – The Ecologist
Once you enter a radiation controlled area, you aren’t supposed to drink water, let alone eat anything. The idea that somebody is living in a place like that is unimaginable.
The Mercury Doesn’t Lie: We’ve Hit a Troubling Climate Change Milestone This Week
Bill McKibben – The Boston Globe
5 Mar 2016 – Thursday [3 Mar], while the nation debated the relative size of Republican genitalia, something truly awful happened. Across the northern hemisphere, the temperature, if only for a few hours, apparently crossed a line: it was more than two degrees Celsius above “normal” for the first time in recorded history and likely for the first time in the course of human civilization.
MILITARISM
Afghanistan War: Just What Was the Point?
Nick Paton Walsh - CNN
Fatigue was always going to be the decider. Western fatigue with the horrors their troops saw, and with the violence inflicted daily on Afghans themselves. The fatigue of the financial cost, where a power station that was barely ever switched on cost Uncle Sam a third of a billion dollars. And the other fatigue — the one felt by the Taliban — mostly distinguished by its absence; they felt only the tirelessness of their cause.
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
Dragging Our Feet toward Disaster
Dr. Ira Helfand, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service
A new policy-making body called the Open Ended Working Group will consider ways to break the current impasse in efforts to reduce the danger of nuclear war. The group was established by an overwhelming majority at the UN. The U.S. and all of the other nuclear weapons states voted against and are boycotting the meeting. Why?
Scrapping Trident and Transitioning to a Nuclear-Free World
Rajesh Makwana, Share the World’s Resources – TRANSCEND Media Service
As the illicit trade in nuclear weapons escalates alongside the risk of geopolitical conflict, it’s high time governments decisively prioritised nuclear disarmament – and that means scrapping Trident, the UK’s inordinately expensive nuclear deterrent, which would also facilitate the redistribution of scarce public resources to fund essential services.
New Nuclear Hysteria in the Middle East
Baher Kamal - Human Wrongs Watch
Now that the so-called P5+1group (US, UK, France, Russia and China, plus Germany) few months ago concluded an agreement with Iran to prevent the risk of an eventual military nuclear programme in exchange of lifting massive Western sanctions, a new wave of nuclear hysteria seems to be in the air.
ISIL and the Poor Man’s Nuke
Luke Coffey – Al Jazeera
It’s only a matter of time before ISIL employs a dirty bomb either on the streets of the West or in the towns of Syria. It is no surprise that a terror group such as ISIL, which has declared its intent to acquire weapons of mass destruction, would be eager to get its hands on enough radioactive material for a dirty bomb.
RELIGION
Grand Jury Finds 50 Priests Raped Hundreds of Philadelphia Children
Rmuse, Politicus USA – TRANSCEND Media Service
The wheels of justice didn’t turn at all in Philadelphia because the Church concealed the crimes and protected the rapists.
HEALTH
The Benefits of Aloe Vera for Your Heart
Dr. Edward Group, Global Healing Center – TRANSCEND Media Service
Aloe vera is great for flushing out toxins and waste from the digestive tract [3], which in turn helps the body to absorb nutrients more effectively. This also supports circulation and gets more oxygen-rich blood to cells throughout the body. Today, we’ll look at how aloe vera supports heart health.
New Teflon Toxin Causes Cancer in Lab Animals
Sharon Lerner – The Intercept
3 Mar 2016 – The chemical introduced by DuPont in 2009 to replace the surfactant PFOA causes many of the same health problems in lab tests that the original chemical did, including cancer and reproductive problems, according to documents obtained by The Intercept. PFOA, also known as C8, was a key ingredient in Teflon.
A Chemical Shell Game: How DuPont Concealed the Dangers of the New Teflon Toxin
Sharon Lerner – The Intercept
3 Mar 2016 – Mark Strynar and Andrew Lindstrom walked down the muddy bank of the Cape Fear River toward the water, sampling equipment in hand. It was the summer of 2012, and the scientists, who both work for the Environmental Protection Agency, were taking the first steps in what would be more than two years of detective work. On the western bank of the river sits a large plant built by DuPont.
Duty To Warn – Big Pharma’s Nefarious Control of Health Care and the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program
Gary G. Kohls, MD – TRANSCEND Media Service
Everybody should be aware by now of the large amount of control that for-profit multinational corporations have over both state and federal legislative bodies. But they also have a lot of control over the major media, the “defense” spending priorities, educational institutions, many of our medical schools and even what constitutes post-graduate medical education for physicians.
HISTORY
This Week in History
Satoshi Ashikaga – TRANSCEND Media Service
Mar 7-13 QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Our thoughts create our reality – where we put our focus is the direction we tend to go.” – Peter McWilliams
March: This Month in Nuclear Threat History
Jeffrey W. Mason – Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
March 11, 2011 – After a large magnitude earthquake and a powerful tsunami struck northeast Japan, three of the six nuclear reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) Fukushima Dai-chi facility suffered partial meltdowns resulting in the evacuation of tens of thousands of nearby residents. Five years later, the disaster which has claimed more than 15,000 lives so far is an ongoing catastrophe.
POETRY FORMAT
Message to Youth
David Krieger – TRANSCEND Media Service
You are not required
to kill on command, to wear
a uniform, to camouflage yourself,
to place medals on your chest,
IN OTHER LANGUAGES
(Italiano) Imparare dalla matematica
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service
Rendere noiosa la Regina è un crimine contro l’umanità. Smettetela.
(Español) Nueva Histeria Nuclear en Medio Oriente
Baher Kamal – Inter Press Service-IPS
Ahora que el Organismo International de Energía Atómica anunció, el 18 de enero, que había verificado que Irán completó los pasos que aseguran que su programa nuclear será exclusivamente pacifico, una nueva ola de histeria nuclear parece haberse desatado ahora en la región. Véase de que se trata.
(Italiano) Spagna: uno Stato, due, o cinque in alternativa?
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service
Costruire una rete di relazioni verso altre nazioni all’interno e all’esterno, in una comunità di nazioni, è nello spirito dei nostri tempi. Imporre nazioni dominanti su altre in uno stato pretendendo l’unità, non lo è. Né lo è il potere ereditario.
(Español) África crea zona de intercambio para 620 millones de consumidores
Baher Kamal y Fareed Mahdy
24 feb 2016 – Más de 1.500 representantes de sectores financieros privados, expertos y líderes políticos decidieron el 20 y 21 de este mes lanzar el mayor bloque de intercambio comercial de África, de 26 países que suman 620 millones consumidores y un PIB de 1.200 billones de dólares.
(Italiano) L’etica della semplicità volontaria
Nanni Salio – Centro Studi Sereno Regis
Tratto da: Cinzia Picchioni, Semplifichiamo! Semplicità volontaria in pillole, Edizioni L’Età dell’Acquario, Torino 2015. In ricordo di Nanni, a un mese dalla morte… Ciao Nanni!
(Français) Traité transpacifique ou le règne des multinationales
Marcel Claude, Le Journal de Notre Amérique - Investig’Action
Le TPP (Accord de partenariat Trans-pacifique), qui a été signé le 5 octobre dernier entre les États-Unis et 11 pays (Australie, Brunei, Canada, Chili, Japon, Mexique, Malaisie, Nouvelle-Zélande, Pérou, Singapour et Vietnam) et que la Présidente du Chili, Michelle Bachelet, est sur le point de ratifier, n’est autre qu’un pas de plus vers le nouvel ordre économique mondial où les grandes puissances économiques agissent en toute impunité et jouissent d’un pouvoir sans limite.
(Português) São Paulo, a 1ª Cidade do Brasil a Proibir o Comércio de Peles de Animais
O Planeta Que Temos – TRANSCEND Media Service
3 Mar 2016 – Depois de receber um abaixo-assinado com cerca de 100 mil assinaturas, a prefeitura de São Paulo atendeu à reivindicação da população e pôs fim a duas atividades de extrema crueldade animal: a fabricação e venda de foie gras e o comércio de peles de animais.
SHORT VIDEO CLIPS
Peace Train (MUSIC VIDEO OF THE WEEK)
Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam – TRANSCEND Media Service
Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) plays Peace Train live on his Earth Tour, 1976.
JOKE OF THE WEEK
Map
Ludo Goderis – TRANSCEND Media Service
You are here.
“Capitalism and State sovereignty are goners. Bankism rules the world in all respects now.” “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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