PEACE JOURNALISM PERSPECTIVE
EDITORIAL
Mediation by Judges, by the Police
Nº 424 – Johan Galtung, 18 Apr 2016 - TRANSCEND Media Service
Police? The judges have more social status but the police know better the local situation and possible lawbreakers.
TMS PEACE JOURNALISM
Creating Resilient Communities
Robert C. Koehler – TRANSCEND Media Service
Real peace — positive peace, which transcends violence and turns conflict into opportunity — is and always has been part of who we are. We know a lot more about how to create peace than we think we do. We’re perfectly capable of transcending violent solutions to our troubles and building a sustainable future. The first step is to take our conflicts out of isolation.
OTHER COMMENTARIES
BY TRANSCEND MEMBERS
Nonviolence Charter: Progress Report #8 (April 2016)
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D., Anita McKone and Anahata Giri – TRANSCEND Media Service
Here is the latest six-monthly report on progress in relation to ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ and a sample of news about Charter signatories. Building a worldwide consensus against the use of violence in all contexts is quite a challenge but we are making solid progress!
Should We Vote for Hilary Clinton? A Meditation
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service
14 Apr 2016 – It seems now almost inevitable that Hilary Clinton will be the candidate for the Democratic Party in November. This inevitability came about by a combination of ‘a Southern strategy’ […] Should feelings of solidarity and revolutionary patience outweigh a principled refusal to go along with militarist opportunism?
Jakob Von Uexküll and the World Future Council
John Scales Avery – TRANSCEND Media Service
14 Apr 2016 – In a recent speech to the World Future Council, the distinguished writer, philanthropist, activist and former politician Jacob von Uexküll outlined the future dangers facing our world with an accuracy and eloquence that has seldom been equaled. Besides being a former member of the European Parliament and a leader of the German Green Party, von Uexküll himself founded both the Right Livelihood Award (sometimes called the Alternative Nobel Prize) and the World Future Council.
They Would Call Me an ‘Extremist’: Why I Don’t Celebrate Or Send Anyone Any New Year’s Greetings
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service
A Hindu-Buddhist New Year Note – Though a Burmese from Mandalay , Burma’s most popular site for the Thin Gyan or water throwing new year festival, I do not celebrate the New Year–because my country that likes to call itself “Buddhist” is committing a slow genocide against the Muslim Rohingya stigmatizing them as “Bengali”.
Reversing the Anthem of Europe to Signal Distress
Anthony Judge – TRANSCEND Media Service
Transcending Crises of Governance via Reverse Music and Reverse Speech? Despite antipathy to the demonic, the extent of “demonisation” of those who fail to “sing from the same hymn sheet” is widely evident — most notably between political factions variously proposing alternative strategies. With respect to any anthem, “hymn sheet” may then be an especially inappropriate metaphor.
ACTIVISM
22 April: On Earth Day, Commit to the Great Turning
Rivera Sun, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service
Hold actions to slow the destruction of human-based systems on the Earth and other beings. These activities include all the political, legislative, and legal work required to reduce the destruction, as well as direct actions–blockades, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of noncooperation and nonviolent intervention.
Democracy Spring: Thousands Descend on US Capitol, Over 400 Arrested
Scott Galindez - Reader Supported News
12 Apr 2016 – Thousands of Americans have descended on Washington to launch one week of civil disobedience under the banner Democracy Spring. Their main demand is to get money out of politics. Over 400 people were arrested today, and over 3,000 have pledged to risk arrest over the next week.
IN FOCUS
I’m on the Kill List – This Is What It Feels Like to Be Hunted by Drones
Malik Jalal – The Independent
Friends decline my invitations and I have taken to sleeping outside under the trees, to avoid becoming a magnet of death for my family.
Echo Papa Exposed: Inside Erik Prince’s Treacherous Drive to Build a Private Air Force
Jeremy Scahill and Matthew Cole – The Intercept
The conversion of crop dusters into light attack aircraft had long been part of Prince’s vision for defeating terrorists and insurgencies in Africa and the Middle East. In Prince’s view, these single-engine fixed-wing planes, retrofitted for war zones, would revolutionize the way small wars were fought. They would also turn a substantial profit.
Here’s a Way to Shut Down Panama Papers-Style Tax Havens — If We Wanted To
Jon Schwarz – The Intercept
Tax havens serve two functions: tax evasion, which involves hiding assets and is illegal, and tax avoidance, which is done by multinational corporations in the open and is legal (since the same corporations have conveniently made sure the laws work that way.). Eliminating them requires different strategies. It is not technically difficult to crush the tax haven industry. The challenge would be mustering the political will.
SPECIAL FEATURE
Broken at the Top – The Oxfam Report
Oxfam America – TRANSCEND Media Service
The gap between rich and poor is reaching new extremes. The richest 1% have accumulated more wealth than the rest of the world put together. Meanwhile, the wealth owned by the bottom half of humanity has fallen by a trillion dollars in the past five years. Just 62 individuals now have the same wealth as 3.6 billion people – half of humanity.
Sixty-Two Billionaires Own Half the World
Samuel Harris – TRANSCEND Media Service
The latest in a series of annual reports from Oxfam, detailing the level of economic inequality in our world, is a striking example of Marx’s prediction that capitalism concentrates wealth in fewer and fewer hands.
SPOTLIGHT
The Corruption Revealed in the Panama Papers Opened the Door to Isis
Patrick Cockburn – CounterPunch
No ordinary Afghans, Iraqis and Syrians will fight and die for rulers they detest as swindlers. Crucial to the rise of Isis, al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan is not their own strength and popularity, but the weakness and unpopularity of the governments to which they are opposed. The detachment of interests of elites from the countries they rule has already produced failed states or are wracked by conflict and war.
Panama Papers: Reigniting the Debate for a Global Tax Body
Share the World’s Resources – TRANSCEND Media Service
Establishing a globally agreed tax body under the auspices of the United Nations and putting an end to dubious tax avoidance activities would bolster government revenues and help finance the provision of essential public services, especially in the Global South.
The Panama Papers and the 1%
Mel Gurtov, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service
Global companies do not simply “go abroad”; they shift capital, as well as labor and technology, to wherever the advantages are greatest. This reality of globalization is well known, and it is matched by the similar behavior of powerful, wealthy individuals, including present and former top government officials who find tax shelters abroad where their money is completely hidden from public view. It’s what the One Percent do.
Panama Papers: City of London Is ‘Beating Heart’ of Tax Cheats Empire
teleSUR – TRANSCEND Media Service
Filmmaker and journalist Mark Donne says British tax avoidance policies amount to a second British Empire. Even the media reporting on the issue “such as News UK and the Murdoch empire have more than 192 shell companies in tax havens. The messengers that are telling you the story are absolutely using tax avoidance.”
ANGLO AMERICA
Krugman Attacks: The Establishment Snarls a Warning to Sanders
Rick Sterling - CounterPunch
Krugman does not hold back. Bernie supporters and Bernie himself are described by Krugman as intolerant, cultish, shallow, vague, without substance, lacking character and values, dishonest, short on ethics, really bad, petulant and self-righteous. Wow. Krugman’s diatribe deserves scrutiny and lampooning.
ASIA & THE PACIFIC
Singapore Family Feud
The Wall Street Journal – TRANSCEND Media Service
The city-state’s reputation for meritocracy comes under attack from an unexpected source.
BRICS
The Man Who Wants to Impeach Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff Named in Panama Papers
TeleSUR – TRANSCEND Media Service
Brazilian House Speaker Eduardo Cunha, who claims he wants to root out corruption, is again exposed as a criminal. Cunha, of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party or PMDB that recently broke with Rousseff’s Workers’ Party, was paid bribes allegedly funded by Portuguese business mogul Idalecio de Castro Rodrigues de Oliveira who owned a conglomerate of 14 companies registered in the British Virgin Islands from 2003 to 2011.
WATCH: Exclusive Interview by Glenn Greenwald with Former Brazilian President Lula da Silva
Glenn Greenwald – The Intercept
Facing one of the worst scandals of his political career, including a criminal investigation, Lula is more challenging than ever and shows willingness to face the presidential elections of 2018.
EUROPE
Migration Crisis Infographic: The 95,000 Unaccompanied Children Seeking Asylum in Europe in 2015
Safya Khan-Ruf, Maeve McClenaghan, Gemma Newby and Eilidh Urquhart – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
The numbers and their voices can be read and heard by clicking on the image for our unique infographic below.
LATIN AMERICA & THE CARIBBEAN
Hillary Clinton and Haiti
Ricardo Seitenfus – CounterPunch
The Clintons’ high-profile interest in Haiti dates back to their wedding in 1975. Shortly after their honeymoon in Acapulco, Bill and Hillary Clinton received an invitation from David Edwards — a friend and Citibank executive — to accompany him to Haiti. Edwards’s motivation was neither cultural nor humanitarian. The reason was Citibank’s long-standing financial interests in the country, which now go back over a century.
Is US-Funded Destabilization in Latin America Now Paying Off?
Francisco Dominguez - teleSUR
Riots, street demonstrations, anti-corruption campaigns, protests about the impact of the world economic crisis, general strikes, impeachment efforts, economic sabotage, and the like, have become the battle horses on which oligarchic forces in cahoots with Washington are riding to carry out ‘regime change’ in various Latin American countries.
MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA
Can an Animal Heist Fable Help Solve the Middle East Crisis?
Baher Kamal – Human Wrongs Watch
Make no mistake-the Middle East is the longest and perhaps the most complex crisis in recent History, this explaining the innumerable, successive –and frustrating- attempts to solve it.
SYRIA IN DEPTH
Restoring Our Cultural Heritage in Syria —The Debate over Why, How, When, By Whom, In What Order, & Who Pays? Intensifies!
Franklin Lamb – TRANSCEND Media Service
This observer has been advised by two Congressional sources that concerns for the restoration of our shared global cultural heritage in Syria, widespread relief that Palmyra has been liberated from ISIS iconoclasm, and American public support for the repair and restoration of Palmyra’s treasures, are major reasons for moving the tough new and most welcomed ban on Syrian cultural property forward.
Negotiating Syria’s Future with Terrorists?
Catherine Shakdam – Human Wrongs Watch
Jaysh al-Islam used chem weapons in Syria & has delegate at UN peace talks. Beyond the catchy headlines and talk of democratization, reforms and just retribution, Western powers and their regional allies are in fact debating Syria’s right to self-govern; everything else has been political white noise.
MILITARISM
World Military Spending Resumes Upward Course in 2015: SIPRI
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service
5 Apr 2016 -World military expenditure totaled almost $1.7 trillion in 2015, an increase of 1 per cent in real terms from 2014, according to new figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The data is being released to coincide with the start of the Stockholm Forum on Security and Development.
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
What Does “Nuclear Terrorism” Really Mean?
Elisabeth Eaves – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
There are few scarier pairs of words: “nuclear,” evoking the great 20th century fear of atomic annihilation, and “terrorism,” the bogeyman of the 21st. Put them together and you’ve got a frightening specter.
Ground Zero Is Everywhere
Winslow Myers, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service
As President Obama convened an international conference to discuss the sequester of fissile materials against terrorists, he has also quietly agreed to an obscenely expensive long-term renewal of U.S. nuclear weapons systems. Setting an example demands that citizens become more engaged with foreign policy, acknowledge that there is good and evil in all of us, and bear the truth that ground zero is everywhere on one small planet.
Obama’s Trillion-Dollar Nuclear-Arms Train Wreck
Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan – Democracy NOW!
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” These were the words from the Hindu religious text, the Bhagavad-gita, which flashed through the mind of the creator of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, as the first nuclear explosion lit up the dark desert sky in New Mexico on July 16, 1945.
MEDIA
When Newspapers Die and Reporters Go Bad
Peter White – CounterPunch
On dead newspapers and rotten reporters. Is there no such thing as truth anymore or not a single honest reporter in town? No. And we shouldn’t expect there to be.
Why We’re Never Told Why We’re Attacked
Joe Lauria – Consortium News
Connecting terrorism to Western intervention could spark a serious self-examination of the West’s behavior in the region leading to a possible retreat and even an end of this external dominance. But that is clearly something policymakers in Washington, London and Paris – and their subservient media – aren’t prepared to do.
Cable News Devotes 30 Seconds to Mass Arrests Protesting Political Corruption
Lee Fang and Zaid Jilani – The Intercept
The Democracy Spring, a protest to “end the corruption of big money in our politics” and “ensure free and fair elections,” on Monday [11 Apr] staged a nonviolent sit-in on Capitol Hill that resulted in over 400 arrests. CNN did not devote any coverage, MSNBC mentioned the protests for approximately 12 seconds, while Fox News mentioned the arrests and discussed the protests for about 17 seconds.
SOCIALISM / MARXISM
Where Are Marx and Lenin When We Need Them?
Paul Craig Roberts – TRANSCEND Media Service
Marx and Lenin were ahead of their time. Marx wrote before offshoring of jobs and the financialization of the economy. Lenin presided over a communist revolution that jumped the gun by taking place in a country in which feudal elements still predominated over capitalism. Today capitalism is being financialized with the consequence that its productive power is being drained into the service of debt.
CAPITALISM
The Zombie Doctrine
George Monbiot – TRANSCEND Media Service
Crisis after crisis is being caused by a failed ideology. But it cannot be stopped without a coherent alternative. So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Rothschild Bank Now under Criminal Investigation after Baron David de Rothschild Indictment
Matt Agorist, The Free Thought Project - TRANSCEND Media Service
Last year, Baron David de Rothschild was indicted by the French government after he was accused of fraud in a scheme that allegedly embezzled large sums of money from British pensioners. It has taken many years to bring this case against Rothschild and his company the Rothschild Financial Services Group, which trapped hundreds of pensioners in a bogus loan scheme between the years of 2005 and 2008.
SEXUALITIES
Reign of Terror: Hunting Down Gays in Nigeria
Philip Obaji Jr. – The Daily Beast
A look at the dirty war Nigeria is waging against its LGBT people and anyone associated with them.
HISTORY
This Week in History
Satoshi Ashikaga - TRANSCEND Media Service
Apr18-24 QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Being HUMBLE is much more important than being WISE! Because GOD doesn’t need a PROUD mouth that SPEAKS much. But a KIND heart that LISTENS.” – Unknown
OTHER THAN POLITICS
Anokhe Lal – A Simple Man of Peace and Kindness
Dr Ravi P Bhatia – TRANSCEND Media Service
Anokhe Lal was a do-gooder — a man of simple tastes and limited money. The name was appropriate since the name meant a strange person, a man whom we see rarely in society. He lived in a small hut in a poor colony.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Myanmar’s Democratic Transition: What Does That Mean for the Persecuted Rohingya?
Prof. Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service
One-Day Open Research Conference, the University of Oxford: 11 May 2016. To continue shining the spotlight of university and independent research onto Myanmar’s slow genocide of the Muslim Rohingya among international genocide and legal scholars and world’s icons such as Desmond Tutu, George Soros, Mairead Maguire, Amartya Sen, the Dalai Lama etc.
POETRY FORMAT
(Español) Armagedón
José María Lopera – TRANSCEND Media Service
No puedo sentir paz mientras que matan
a niños inocentes
y a mujeres y hombres desvalidos
en guerras genocidas
con crueles armas que la ciencia inventa.
IN OTHER LANGUAGES
(Italiano) Realpolitik vs Politica realistic
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service
Gli americani che si rivoltarono contro il colonialismo ed abolirono la propria schiavitù possono anche mettere in discussione la propria politica estera ed abolire il proprio imperialismo e la propria disinvoltura guerrafondaia. Dopo aver abolito due flagelli istituzionali dell’umanità, farebbero solo bene ad abolirne altri due. I vantaggi sono ovvi e di pronto incasso: vera grandezza, affetto, posizione guida, uscita dalla spirale di crescente irrilevanza.
(Português) ASSISTA: Entrevista Exclusiva de Glenn Greenwald com ex-Presidente Lula
Glenn Greenwald – The Intercept
Enfrentando um dos piores escândalos de sua carreira política, incluindo uma investigação criminal, Lula é mais desafiador do que nunca, e se mostra disposto para a corrida presidencial de 2018.
(Italiano) Sul referendum del 17 aprile 2016 da Aosta, Italy
Silvia Berruto – TRANSCEND Media Service
Ora a te lettrice e a te lettore, dopo la lettura della sitografia che segue e che avevo promessa alle mie compagne e ai miei compagni attivisti, chiedo con una citazione lieve
” … damme ‘na mano a faje di’ de SI “
(Português) Baleias do Sea World: Fim ou Meios?
Carol Zerbato - ANDA Agência de Notícias de Direitos Animais
Assim, aos ativistas que lutam pelo fim do cativeiro de cetáceos como eu, resta lamentar. Porque as últimas notícias não são o fim do Sea World. São só os meios que o parque encontrou de se agarrar na borda para não morrer afogado.
SHORT VIDEO CLIPS
Money (Music Video of the Week)
Pink Floyd – TRANSCEND Media Service
‘Money’ by Pink Floyd from the iconic album The Dark Side of the Moon. Originally released in 1973, it became one of the most critically acclaimed albums of all time.
In 2016, *Banksters* rule the world above governments and all other human institutions. Read the Lyrics.
JOKE OF THE WEEK
Unemployed
Posted by Antonio C. S. Rosa, editor – TRANSCEND Media Service
Needs help…
“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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