PEACE JOURNALISM PERSPECTIVE
EDITORIAL
Police Mediation: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
Johan Galtung, 25 Jan 2016 - TRANSCEND Media Service
The state system emerged in the 17th century, with institutions for force. One was for internal and one for external use: the national police and the national military, national standing for the dominant nation in the states… May police mediation take roots and blossom. For more peaceful societies. For peace in general.
NOBEL LAUREATES
Collapse of a Peace Presidency: Obama’s Speech Highlights Foreign Policy Failures
Spencer Ackerman – The Guardian
The expectations for Obama were so high he received a Nobel Peace Prize within months. Never a pacifist, he accepted the award with a speech defending the use of military force. He will leave office as Bush did: passing on two wars – one the longest in American history, the other a reboot of the conflict he promised to end.
Aung San Suu Kyi [Nobel Peace Laureate], the Dragon’s Lady
Min Zin – International New York Times
Why would Beijing, which has long backed Myanmar’s military regime and refused to engage with pro-democracy parties, now support the N.L.D.? One reason is that the political tide is turning in Myanmar. Another is that Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is a consummate pragmatist. “In this type of geopolitical analysis We the People have no role, no power, in history making.” – Maung Zarni
OTHER COMMENTARIES
SPOTLIGHT
Relationships – Reflections on Refugees
Dr Hakim, Afghan Peace Volunteers – TRANSCEND Media Service
As relationships are built on various aspects of love, they are powerful. If we build more and more relationships, they will be an alternative power to the abusive power of governments and corporations, and that’s when governments and corporations will become more obvious in their efforts to sabotage relationships.
BY TRANSCEND MEMBERS
Global Resources and Challenges for 2016
Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service
What is different this year – 2016 – is the “global stage” in which the challenges and resources are being tested and contested. It is clear to me we are unable to grasp the “global” level of events and forces. We are unprepared for the magnitude of stage! The problem is our resources, those things we have reflexively, conventionally, and traditionally relied upon (i.e., political, economic, cultural, military) are inadequate in the face of our challenges.
Extreme, Extremer, Extremest
Uri Avnery – TRANSCEND Media Service
As is well-known, Israel is a “Jewish and democratic state”. That is its official designation. Well… As for Jewish, it’s a new kind of Jewishness, a mutation. Since 1967, Israel has been a hybrid creation – half democratic, half dictatorial. Like an egg that is half fresh, half rotten.
An Open Letter to the American People: Political Responsibility in the Nuclear Age
Richard Falk, David Krieger and Robert Laney – TRANSCEND Media Service
What is most notable about the Nuclear Age is that we humans, by our scientific and technological ingenuity, have created the means of our own demise. The world currently is confronted by many threats to human wellbeing, and even civilizational survival, but we focus here on the particular grave dangers posed by nuclear weapons and nuclear war.
NONVIOLENCE
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Timeless Vision
Michael Nagler, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service
He came out against the war. Against all advice. Just as Gandhi honed his nonviolence in South Africa and then felt that he was ready to carry the struggle into the heart of the empire, King here announced that he had enlarged his passion from those of his own race in one region of the country to the policies of that country itself.
ACTIVISM
A Tale of Two Grandmothers – Jailed for Photographing Protest Outside Drone Base
Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan – Democracy NOW!
The group, the Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars, gathered there on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2013, protesting the weaponized drones used in the Obama administration’s targeted killing program. It was only one of many of the group’s peaceful vigils.
IN FOCUS
A World Divided: Elites Descend on Swiss Alps amid Rising Inequality
Ben Hirschler and Noah Barkin, Reuters – TRANSCEND Media Service
Just 62 people, 53 of them men, own as much wealth as the poorest half of the entire world population and the richest 1 percent own more than the other 99 percent put together, anti-poverty charity Oxfam said on Monday [18 Jan]. Significantly, the wealth gap is widening faster than anyone anticipated, with the 1 percent overtaking the rest one year earlier than Oxfam had predicted only a year ago.
Can Targeted Killing Work as a Neutral Principle?
Jeremy Waldron, New York University School of Law - Social Science Research Nework
Abstract. This paper casts doubt on the prospects for legitimizing what is known as “targeted killing” – the use of assassins, death squads, or other murderous techniques – against identified civilians whose continued existence is thought to pose a serious threat of some kind to a given community and its members.
AFRICA
Africa, Only If It Bleeds It Leads?
Baher Kamal – Human Wrongs Watch
Deep roots lying beneath most African dramas: centuries-long colonialism; slavery; massive depletion of natural resources by voracious multinational corporations; big sales of western weapons to parties in conflicts; extensive land grabbing and the heavy impact of climate change caused far away from Africa by industrialized states, just to mention some.
Seven Top Challenges Facing African Women
Baher Kamal – Inter Press Service
These challenges are now top on the agenda of the “8thAfrican Union Gender Pre-Summit on 2016 African Year of Human Rights,with Particular Focus on the Rights of Women” taking place in Addis Ababa on 17 – 21 January.
ANGLO AMERICA
Parallel Standards Offer Way Out of Violence
Kristin Christman – TRANSCEND Media Service
One Step to a Change in Mideast Relations Is a Change in the U.S. Mindset
ASIA & THE PACIFIC
Australia’s Day for Secrets, Flags and Cowards
John Pilger – TRANSCEND Media Service
On 26 January, one of the saddest days in human history will be celebrated in Australia. The racism that allows this in one of the most privileged societies on earth runs deep. In the 1920s, a “Protector of Aborigines” oversaw the theft of mixed race children with the justification of “breeding out the colour”. Today, record numbers of Indigenous children are removed from their homes and many never see their families again.
West Papuans Testify
Jason MacLeod – TRANSCEND Media Service
We have come to testify. There is much that we want the world to know. We want you to hear stories of suffering from the mouths of ordinary people. Our memories are clear and sharp. ‘In this river our father was murdered.’ ‘On that mountain slope there used to be villages. They were destroyed by the military.’ ‘On that open field, our old men were forced to burn their koteka [penis sheaths] because they were considered primitive.’ ‘In the past that mountain was ours, now people have destroyed our mother.’ We want you to travel with us to the sites of the massacres. We want to testify about the killings and the beatings with rifles.
EUROPE
British Empire Compared to ‘ISIS on Steroids’ after UK Public Says It Is ‘Proud’ of Colonial Past
Adam Withnall – The Independent
20 Jan 2016 – After a new poll found that the British public is generally proud of the country’s imperial history, people have started comparing the worst atrocities of the Empire to the present-day horrors of ISIS.
The End of Liberal Europe
Peter Schwarz, WSWS – TRANSCEND Media Service
The shift to the right by the European elites is rooted in explosive social, economic and political contradictions that have been building up since the collapse of the Soviet Union 25 years ago, and especially since the international financial crisis of 2008. German imperialism has played a crucial role in these developments.
U.K. Court, in David Miranda Case, Rules Terrorism Act Violates Fundamental Rights of Free Press
Ryan Gallagher – The Intercept
19 Jan 2016 – A British appeals court has ruled that the United Kingdom’s broad counterterrorism laws breach fundamental rights in a case involving the seizure of encrypted documents from David Miranda, the partner of Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald, at a London airport in 2013.
LATIN AMERICA & THE CARIBBEAN
Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti
Mark Schuller - CounterPunch
Foreign imperialism in the form of NGOs. As Gina Athena Ulysse has powerfully demonstrated, Haiti needs new narratives. Maybe the earthquake story has run its course, in the foreign memory at least.
PALESTINE / ISRAEL
The Radical New Face of the Jewish Settler Movement
Naomi Zeveloff, Forward – TRANSCEND Media Service
“There is no doubt that the hilltop youth today are outside the boundaries of normal life. That is the way it is perceived in Israel,” said Tzvi Sukkot, a former member. “Some people feel threatened by their lifestyle. They say that these people live on the fringe of society or that they were thrown out of their homes.” The so-called hilltop youth, a loosely affiliated group of Jewish settlers in their teens and 20s live away from their parents on the hilltops surrounding established settlements.
The Learned Helplessness of Israeli Youth
Jews for Justice for Palestinians – TRANSCEND Media Service
The passivity of Israelis, especially its youth, in the face of political injustice. Many have tried, and failed, to right the wrongs of the occupation. Now they have accepted their powerlessness as normal.
Israel: Businesses Should End Settlement Activity
Human Rights Watch – TRANSCEND Media Service
19 Jan 2016 – Businesses should stop operating in, financing, servicing, or trading with Israeli settlements in order to comply with their human rights responsibilities, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Those activities contribute to and benefit from an inherently unlawful and abusive system that violates the rights of Palestinians.
ENVIRONMENT
By 2050, There Will Be More Plastic than Fish in the World’s Oceans, Study Says
Sarah Kaplan – The Washington Post
About a third of all plastics produced escape collection systems, only to wind up in the stomach of some unsuspecting bird. That amounts to about 8 million metric tons a year — or, as Jenna Jambeck of the University of Georgia put it to The Washington Post, “Five bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline in the world.”
‘Voluntary’ International Law and the Paris Agreement
Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service
16 Jan 2016 – Now that the celebrations by the diplomats have ended, it is time to take a hard look at what was and was not accomplished by the Paris Agreement. What we need and should seek is a moral epistemology that reconnects knowledge with human values configured so as to achieve justice, sustainability, and the pleasures of ‘a good life.’
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
“Modernizing” the Opportunities for Nuclear War
Lawrence S. Wittner, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service
A fight now underway over newly-designed U.S. nuclear weapons highlights how far the Obama administration has strayed from its commitment to build a nuclear-free world. The fight concerns a variety of nuclear weapons that the U.S. military is developing or, as the administration likes to say, “modernizing.”
The US Tiger and the North Korean Mouse
John LaForge, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service
The Environmental Protection Agency has recommended increased radiation exposure limits. It would save the industry a bundle to permit large human exposures, rather than shut down rickety reactors. The EPA proposal is a knock-off prompted by Fukushima, because after the triple meltdown Japan increased — by 20 times — the allowable radiation exposures deemed tolerable for humans.
After the Iran Agreement: How Close Are We to “a World Free of Nuclear Weapons?”
Amb. Sergio Duarte – TRANSCEND Media Service
The JCPOA is undoubtedly a victory for non-proliferation advocates, but the current possessors of nuclear weapons do not seem willing to apply the same logic to their own continuing programs of increase and “modernization” of their arsenals and point to the technological advancement of their rivals in order to justify their own military efforts. The nuclear arms race takes on new forms as bombs become smaller, lighter and smarter.
How Does It End?
Winslow Myers, PeaceVoice – TRANSCEND Media Service
What makes our own arrogant and pompous leaders one whit less adolescent than theirs? We are subject like the North Koreans to the same self-perpetuating paranoia, the same lack of moral imagination, the same suppression of truth-telling, the same wildly unnecessary secrets and lies, the same demagogic rationalizations of the status quo, the same folly of an endless arms race, the same nuclear dictatorship that leaves citizens without a voice when world-ending decisions are made.
ECONOMICS
Nonprofits: Beware the Hand That Feeds
Auset Marian Lewis - TeleSur
Can we really depend on big money to fund change? With dissent bent and compromised to fit a corporate 501c(3) model, the cry for change can be muted and misdirected. To that extent nonprofit models can coopt social justice movements who depend on them for support.
CAPITALISM
Goldman Sachs Will Pay $5 Billion to Settle Financial-Crisis Claims
Jim Zarroli, NPR – TRANSCEND Media Service
14 Jan 2016 – Goldman Sachs will pay about $5 billion to resolve state and federal investigations into its handling of mortgage-backed securities in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, the bank said today. Regulators have already won large multibillion-dollar settlements from several large banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup.
DEVELOPMENT
Wealth, Influence of Gates Foundation Distorting Int’l Development – Global Justice Now
Russia Today – TRANSCEND Media Service
20 Jan 2016 – Enormous wealth and influence wielded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is distorting the direction of international development in a global vacuum of accountability, a new report claims. With assets totaling $43.5 billion, the BMGF is the world’s biggest charitable group. It is viewed by some as the most powerful actor on issues of international health, environment and agriculture, and distributes more aid for global health than any democratically elected government.
Gates Foundation’s “Corporate Merry-Go-Round”: Spearheading the Neo-liberal Plunder of African Agriculture
Colin Todhunter – TRANSCEND Media Service
Global Justice Now’s analysis of the BMGF’s programmes shows that the foundation’s senior staff are overwhelmingly drawn from corporate America. As a result, the question is: whose interests are being promoted – those of corporate America or those of ordinary people who seek social and economic justice rather than charity?
TRADE
How Kenya Confirmed the Deathbed of WTO
Horace G. Campbell – Pambazuka News
The outcome of the meeting, the so-called Nairobi Package, was a slap in the face for the peoples of the South. It was especially egregious that the US used the 10th Ministerial, with the help of the Kenyan leadership, to undermine the future of Pan-African trading relations and to drive a wedge between the BRICS societies and those that the US wants to manipulate in the poor countries. The 10th Ministerial has hastened the demise of the WTO.
HEALTH
Duty to Warn – Does Prescribing Anti-psychotic Drugs to Infants, Toddlers and Young Children Meet the Definition of Reckless Endangerment?
Gary G. Kohls, MD – TRANSCEND Media Service
When physicians (or medical paraprofessionals) prescribe psychiatric drugs to children without the parent or legal guardian’s fully informed consent, the prescribers could reasonably be charged with reckless endangerment and/or child endangerment because such drugs commonly cause a multitude of well-known adverse effects.
REVIEWS
Rightward Bound – ‘Dark Money,’ by Jane Mayer
Alan Ehrenhalt – International New York Times
Mayer begins with revealing that the Kochs’ father, industrialist Fred Koch, helped build an oil refinery in Nazi Germany—a project approved personally by Adolf Hitler. The refinery was critical to the Nazi war effort, fueling German warplanes. [Democracy Now! interview] The Kochs and their allies have established a Republican Party in which donors, not elected officials, are in charge.
When ‘Your Heart Is a Muscle,’ Empathy Is a Revolutionary Act
US National Public Radio – TRANSCEND Media Service
«Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist» was inspired by a real-life event; in 1999, thousands of demonstrators disrupted a meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle. Badly outnumbered police resorted to using tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets.
HISTORY
This Week in History
Satoshi Ashikaga – TRANSCEND Media Service
Jan 25-31 QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Render others spiritual. Irradiate your spirituality. Treat every moment of your life with divine respect.” – Robert Muller
BIOGRAPHIES
Evolving to Earth Ethics: the Beginnings of Charlie Prewitt – Atom Bomb Chemist, to Educator, to Peace Maker
P.K. Willey, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service
This first article on Dr. Prewitt restricts itself from childhood up to meeting his remarkable wife when he was just 18. In just a few years, he was to begin mandatory work for the US Government on the Manhattan Project, which contributed to the outrageous human, environmental, and political catastrophe of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan on August 9, 1945. Charlie’s outspoken Earth ethical responses to this horrific use of human intelligence and endeavor have continued to this day.
Pitirim Sorokin (21 Jan 1889 – 11 Feb 1968): The Renewal of Humanity
Rene Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service
The two World Wars convinced him that humanity was in a period of transition, that the guideline of earlier times had broken down and had not yet been replaced by a new set of values and motivations. To bring about real renewal, one had to work at the same time on the individual personality, on cultural values, and on the social framework.
The Facts behind the Assassination of Gandhi on 30 Jan 1948
Chunibhai Vaidya – Gandhi Research Foundation
The assassination of Gandhiji was a culmination of decades of systematic brain-washing. Gandhiji had become a thorn in the flesh of the hard core Hindus and in course of time this resentment turned into a phobia. Beginning with the year 1934 over a period of 14 years on as many as six occasions attempts were made to kill Gandhiji.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 Jan 1756 – 5 Dec 1791)
Encyclopædia Britannica– TRANSCEND Media Service
Unlike any other composer in musical history, he wrote in all the musical genres of his day and excelled in every one. His taste, his command of form, and his range of expression have made him seem the most universal of all composers.
ARTS
Dancing for Joy and Friendship
Dr Ravi P Bhatia – TRANSCEND Media Service
Another element is depiction of violence and controlling it by dance. There is violence in all of us – sometimes it is muted and sometimes it comes out in the open. Some dance forms especially of Nagaland depict dancers carrying spears and sticks and making war like sounds to terrorise an enemy. The dance is riveting and it is a means of subsuming the violence that we occasionally feel for some unspecified opponent.
IN OTHER LANGUAGES
(Español) África, ¿es noticia solo si sangra?
Baher Kamal – Inter Press Service-IPS
Las raíces profundas que yacen debajo de la mayoría de los dramas africanos: largos siglos de colonialismo, esclavitud, empobrecimiento, dilapidación de los recursos naturales por corporaciones transnacionales, millonarias ventas de armas a las partes en conflicto, extendido acaparamiento de tierras y el grave impacto del cambio climático, causado lejos de África por los países industrializados, son solo algunos de ellos.
(Português) Sobre insetos perigosos aos humanos
Sônia T. Felipe - ANDA Agência de Notícias de Direitos Animais
Estamos reféns deste verbo matar para dar conta, agora, de tudo o que fizemos com nosso modo de viver dos últimos 50 anos, que foi o de matar algo da casa dos hoje 70 bilhões de animais para consumo humano, todo ano. Estes animais, mortos para consumo humano, são alimentados com a soja e o milho, a alfafa e a aveia, cultivados nos campos glifosatados, nos quais não vemos nenhum sapo proliferar.
(Português) Podem as religiões ajudar a superar a crise ecológica?
Leonardo Boff – TRANSCEND Media Service
Agora o que se pede, é ver de que forma, a partir de seu capital religioso positivo, estas religiões podem chegar a convergências para além das diferenças e ajudar a enfrentar a nova era do antropoceno (o ser humano como o meteoro rasante ameaçador) e a sexta extinção em massa que está já há muito tempo em curso e se acelera cada vez mais.
(Italiano) Ci sono alternative alla guerra?
Angela Dogliotti Marasso – Centro Studi Sereno Regis
La cultura profonda, sedimentata e più lenta a cambiare, porta l’idea che, per far fronte ad un’aggressione o difendere dei diritti violati, solo la violenza sia efficace e dunque inevitabile. E’ la tentazione forte, la reazione istintiva della trappola simmetrica: se dai un pugno a me, io ne do uno a te, così siamo pari e abbiamo fatto “giustizia”.
(Italiano) Venti pii desideri per il 2016: prestare attenzione alle menti
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service
Empiricamente, l’Occidente è sovente sul versante sbagliato. Tuttavia, come ogni cosa empirica, è soggetto alla legge del cambiamento. Gli occidentali non sono schiavi delle mentalità dell’Iliade e di Beowulf che si estendono per l’Europa. La liberazione è attesa da troppo tempo. Prestando attenzione alle menti.
(Italiano) Migliorare la democrazia
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service
La gente può creare e riconquistare con lotte nonviolente un processo decisionale democratico. Rafforzare il livello locale. Riflettere le differenze etniche. Boicottare i deputati comprati. Più referendum. Più decisioni con dialogo-consenso, da continuarsi in coalizioni. Più decentramento. Più diversità. E molta più creatività.
(Français) Gouvernements populaires en Amérique latine: «fin de cycle» ou nouvelle étape politique?
Isabel Rauber, CETRI-Centre Tricontinental – TRANSCEND Media Service
19 janvier 2016 – Quelques intellectuels qui se définissent comme étant de gauche ou de centre gauche, ont affirmé récemment que nous vivons une fin de cycle des gouvernements progressistes, caractérisée par l’épuisement de leurs programmes néo-développementistes – qui incluent l’extractivisme – et leur « inefficace » capacité de gestion.
(Français) Terrorisme – «Culture de l’excuse» : les sociologues répondent à Valls
Sonya Faure , Cécile Daumas et Anastasia Vécrin — Libération
«Expliquer le jihadisme, c’est déjà vouloir un peu excuser.» Samedi [9 jan], le Premier ministre a exprimé, une nouvelle fois, sa défiance envers l’analyse sociale et culturelle de la violence terroriste. Une accusation qui passe mal auprès des intellectuels.
(Italiano) Siria (Prestare attenzione alle menti, II)
Johan Galtung – TRANSCEND Media Service
La Siria ha offerto una scelta povera fra una dittatura di minoranza provvista di tolleranza e una dittatura di maggioranza – la democrazia – sprovvista. Così ha prosperato la violenza, resuscitando vecchi sospetti di guerre per procura. “Bombardiamo la Siria” è stata la panacea, dopo “bombardiamo la Libia”. Che vergogna. Fatela finita.
(Italiano) El presidente de la paz: Una Recensione
Nanni Salio – Centro Studi Sereno Regis
Un piccolo libro, denso di riflessioni, domande, informazioni. Tre capitoli: sulla guerra, sul rapporto Sud-Sud, tra America Latina e Africa, e sull’ecosocialismo. Il tutto, nel ricordo del presidente bolivariano Hugo Chavez e anche di Thomas Sankara.
(Italiano) “Persone comuni che vivono in tempi straordinari”_4
Silvia Berruto – TRANSCEND Media Service
989. E’ il numero delle/dei sottoscrittori della petizione “Il servizio migranti di Aosta non deve chiudere” le cui firme sono state consegnate, con lettera raccomandata con ricevuta di ritorno, in data 14 gennaio 2016, al Presidente della Regione Autonoma Valle d’Aosta.
SHORT VIDEO CLIPS
Man in the Mirror (Music Video of the Week)
Michael Jackson - michaeljacksonVEVO
Music video by Michael Jackson performing Man in the Mirror. © 1987 MJJ Productions Inc.
44,401,244 Views on YouTube (Lyrics below video)
SATIRE
Trump’s Plan to Randomly Shoot People Lacks Details, Random Shooters Say
Andy Borowitz – The New Yorker
“To anyone in the random-shooting world, Trump’s plan fails on so many levels,” a leader of the nation’s random shooters commented.
JOKE OF THE WEEK
Arrested
Copley News Service – TRANSCEND Media Service
What are the charges?
“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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