Solutions-Oriented Peace Journalism
Week 22 // 25 May – 31 May 2020
TRANSCEND Media Service brings to you its own Peace Journalism Perspective plus a digest of the week’s relevant News, Analyses, Papers and Videos — in various languages.
Editorials by Johan Galtung and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated and translated, provided a citation and link to the source, TRANSCEND Media Service — TMS, is included. Please forward our Weekly Digest to your colleagues and friends. Thank you, enjoy your reading.
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PEACE JOURNALISM PERSPECTIVE
EDITORIAL
The Humans and the Viruses: The World Economic Forum and the Coronaviruses
Howard Richards – TRANSCEND Media Service
Let me suggest, first, that there is a plausible explanation at the heart of our failure to live out the best of human nature, and that the current pandemic shows how crucial it is to change it. And, second, that the smartest of the business leaders are realizing that their own fate and the fate of all of us depends on replacing the essence of capitalism with an ethics of solidarity.
TRANSCEND VIDEOS
COVID-19 Dashboard: Live Data Continuously Updated
Avi Schiffmann – TRANSCEND Media Service
Permanently displayed on TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS for the duration of the pandemic. The dashboard shows global, localized, specific data in real time.
FEATURED RESEARCH PAPER
Civil Society Is the Second Pillar of West African Nation States
Robin Edward Poulton, Ph.D. | Virginia Commonwealth University – TRANSCEND Media Service
Experience from many African nations – as well as America, Asia and Europe – provides compelling evidence that civil society plays a fundamental role in social progress and in promoting peace and democratic governance. Civil society has organised democratic governance in West African for millennia, and not simply since colonial rule began. Our political science research shows how civil society has been and remains critical to the evolution of West African Nation States – nearly all of which are recent post-colonial creations – and that a Five Pillar conception of the Nation State conforms more closely to West African realities than the traditional Western concept of Executive + Legislative + Judiciary.
TMS PEACE JOURNALISM
20 Peace and Solutions-oriented News Media Outlets You Never Knew Existed
Taylor O’Connor | Medium – TRANSCEND Media Service
There are alternatives to mainstream news media that can keep you well-informed and feeling inspired: the peace and solutions-oriented media outlets. The challenge is that mainstream news across the political spectrum tend to dominate what we are exposed to on TV and social media. To take control of your media consumption, you have to not only know viable alternatives, but you have to be intentional about the news you consume.
OTHER COMMENTARIES
SPECIAL FEATURE
Swiss Policy Research – TRANSCEND Media Service
20 May 2020 – In response to the very broad international interest in our work, SPR has been renamed into Swiss Policy Research. A new and comprehensive overview of Studies on Covid-19 lethality is now published, including a section on hospitalization rates. A new update on medical and political developments will follow shortly.
Better World Info: Extensive COVID-19 Resource
Dr Stute, MD – TRANSCEND Media Service
I invite all TMS readers to visit our specialized online directory of the novel coronavirus pandemic. This is an outstanding medical resource updated daily by myself. Here you can find reliable information which will help you in your professional and day-to-day life.
TRANSCEND MEMBERS
John Scales Avery – TRANSCEND Media Service
The UN has designated 16 May as Living Together in Peace day. It therefore seems appropriate to mark this day by discussing the reasons why war must be eliminated as a human institution. On our small but beautiful Earth, made small by technology, made beautiful by nature, there is room for one group only: the family of humankind.
COVID: Collective Overpopulation Vitiating Individual Dreams?
Anthony Judge | Laetus in Praesens – TRANSCEND Media Service
Neglected Critical Factor Undermining Global Strategic Viability – The attention of the media and governments worldwide to “COVID” can be seen as unprecedented. It is now a primary preoccupation of international institutions, most obviously the UN and the WHO. The strategic response has been variously framed as a “war.”
Another Bank Bailout under Cover of a Virus
Ellen Brown | Web of Debt – TRANSCEND Media Service
18 May 2020 – Insolvent Wall Street banks have been quietly bailed out again. Banks made risk-free by the government should be public utilities.
World Bee Day: Poisons Mean Extinction for Bees and Humanity
Prof. Vandana Shiva | Navdanya International– TRANSCEND Media Service
To raise awareness of the importance of pollinators, the threats they face and their contribution to sustainable development, the UN designated 20 May as World Bee Day. The choices before humanity are clear, a Poison Free Future to save Bees, Farmers, our Food and Humanity. Or continue to use poisons, threatening our common future by walking blindly to extinction through the arrogance that we can substitute bees with artificial intelligence and robots.
Planetary Transformations: A Progressive Quest
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service
20 May 2020 – Below are three texts: a paper by the widely respected writer and progressive scholar, Val Moghadam, which describes what it might mean to have a left transformative movement of planetary scope; followed by a short explanatory essay by Paul Raskin, who exercises intellectual leadership of the Great Transition Network. The third text is my comment on Moghadam’s paper.
Another Pandemic: Sexual Violence during War
Roy Eidelson – TRANSCEND Media Service
19 May 2020 – The COVID-19 pandemic has brought renewed worldwide attention to gender-based and sexual violence. In particular, women with abusive partners face heightened danger during the mandatory lockdowns that bring unanticipated stresses while limiting freedom of movement and access to outside resources.
The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup: Fighting for Our Humanity, Our Liberty and Our Future
Robert J. Burrowes, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service
On 26 March 2020, the World Intellectual Property Organisation granted Microsoft a world patent. Titled ‘1. WO2020060606 – Cryptocurrency System Using Body Activity Data’, this patent gives Microsoft (that is, Bill Gates) extraordinary power over our lives. It is dramatically changing the meaning of being human. Firstly, it is redefining us as ‘mines’ for data – robbing us of our autonomy, our sovereignty, and control over our bodies and minds.
Racism & Bias at the Court of Arbitration for Sports: The Sun Yang Decision
Rick Sterling – TRANSCEND Media Service
20 May 2020 – Over the past 5 years, the sport’s “anti doping movement” has been distorted into a political tool to attack Russia and now China. This article reveals the bias behind the decision to ban Chinese athlete Sun Yang for eight years. For example, the president of the panel tweeted against a “yellow faced Chinese monster!” and secretly mocked the athlete’s mother in the hearing. I hope the facts presented here help get a new fair hearing for Sun Yang.
Max Müller – A Scholar Extraordinaire
Dr Ravi P Bhatia – TRANSCEND Media Service
Although being German, Müller spent a considerable period of his life in England. He taught at Oxford University and was admired for his knowledge of classical Indian texts including the Upanishads and Vedas. He had access to several scholarly Sanskrit works that the East India Company had brought from India.
SPOTLIGHT
Bill Gates Will Use Your Microchipped Body to Mine Cryptocurrency
Biohackinfo – TRANSCEND Media Service
20 May 2020 – Microsoft has patented a system that uses human biometrics such as body heat and brain-wave activity to mine cryptocurrency. The patent, filed under international patent number WO-2020-060606 and titled ‘Cryptocurrency System Using Body Data Activity’, leverages human body activity as proof-of-work.
Bill Gates, Vaccinations, Microchips and Patent 060606
Barry Hibbs | Medium – TRANSCEND Media Service
19 May 2020 – What is this invention that Microsoft decided to patent? A chip will be inserted into the body to monitor a person’s physical activity in exchange for cryptocurrency. If the conditions are met, the person receives a bonus. A detailed description of the “invention” provides 28 concepts of how the device could be used. It also provides a list of countries for which the invention is intended.
IN FOCUS
Ethics and Governance for Digital Disease Surveillance
Michelle M. Mello and C. Jason Wang | Science Magazine – TRANSCEND Media Service
11 May 2020 – The Question Is Not Whether to Use New Data Sources but How – Digital epidemiology—the use of data generated outside the public health system for disease surveillance—has been in use for more than a quarter century. But several countries have taken digital epidemiology to the next level in responding to COVID-19.
First Iranian Fuel Tanker Reaches Venezuelan Waters without US Interference
Reuters | The Guardian – TRANSCEND Media Service
24 May 2020 – The first of five tankers loaded with gasoline sent from Iran has reached Venezuelan waters, expected to temporarily ease the South American nation’s fuel crunch while defying Trump administration sanctions targeting the two US foes. Iran’s president had earlier warned the US not to try to stop the flotilla sent to ease Venezuela’s fuel shortage.
New Leadership for a New Normal
Andre Sheldon | Engaging Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service
The response to Covid-19 of countless people confirms that people everywhere see the value of solidarity and unity. The opportunity is here for leaders to create a new global peace movement to promote kindness, compassion, trust, respect, and stopping war!
Prostitution, the Sex Trade, and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Melissa Farley | Logos Journal – TRANSCEND Media Service
Spring 2020 – The pandemic reveals the exploitation and violence in all forms of prostitution, including sugar daddy/sugar baby prostitution, cell phone/escort prostitution, massage parlor prostitution, street prostitution, webcam prostitution (Moran & Farley, 2018; Farley, 2016). A San Francisco group mainstreaming prostitution as work admitted, “People who are doing street-based sex work may not be able to stop doing sex work to survive,”
ANGLO AMERICA
What Kind of Country Do We Want?
Marilynne Robinson | New York Review of Books – TRANSCEND Media Service
A narrative has emerged over time that capitalism is the single defining trait of American civilization, the force that has propelled the country not only to unprecedented wealth but also to high levels of personal and political freedom… We are left with the certainty that a civilization can be wholly described by its economy, and that ours is exhaustively and triumphally capitalist.
Venezuela Failed Raid: US Has a History of Using Mercenaries to Undermine Other Regimes
Andrew Thomson | The Conversation – TRANSCEND Media Service
18 May 2020 – US denies backing failed raid to remove Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro – but it has a long history of sponsoring private armies elsewhere.
American Hubris Robust in a Cataclysmic Global Pandemic
Askiah Adam | JUST – TRANSCEND Media Service
22 May 2020 – Few can deny that a perfect storm is brewing and the early foundations for war are being set up by the obvious protagonists. That China has cancelled the dollar peg in its stock exchange transactions opting for the Chinese Yuan is an ominous sign. Washington, meanwhile, is fast creating an anti-China sentiment among its population, blaming China for what President Trump calls the “Wuhan virus” aka Covid-19.
Ann Wright | OpEd News – TRANSCEND Media Service
19 May 2020 – During the COVID-19 pandemic, not only will the U.S. military have the largest maritime military maneuvers in the world, with Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) coming to the waters off Hawaii August 17-31, 2020 bringing 26 nations, 25,000 military personnel, up to 50 ships and submarines and hundreds of aircraft in midst of a worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, but the U.S. Army is having a 6,000-person war game in June 2020 in Poland.
US Withdraws from Open Skies Treaty, Heightening Danger of War with Russia
Clara Weiss | WSWS – TRANSCEND Media Service
22 May 2020 – The treaty, signed in 1992 after the dissolution of the USSR, has been in full force since 2002. It has been ratified by 34 states, including almost all NATO and EU members, Russia and most countries of the former Soviet Union. The US withdrawal from Open Skies, which will take effect within six months, comes amidst growing tensions with Russia.
The Price of America’s Quest for an External Enemy
Morgan Godvin | Al Jazeera – TRANSCEND Media Service
22 May 2020 The US spent so much fighting phantom enemies and creating the myth of good versus evil that it ignored the real threat.
Trump Administration Quietly Adds Foreign Arms Sale to List of “Essential Work”
Taylor Barnes | In These Times – TRANSCEND Media Service
19 May 2020 – Buried on the 18th page of a recently updated federal government memo defining which workers are critical during the Covid-19 pandemic is a new category of essential workers: defense industry personnel employed in foreign arms sales. The original March memos made no mention of the lucrative foreign arms sales that U.S. companies make in the order of $180 billion a year.
Republican Party’s Corona Big Book
Brett O’Donnel | O’Donnell & Associates – TRANSCEND Media Service
17 May 2020 – The book was assembled by Brett O’Donnell, who has worked for and is close to Secretary of State Mike ?Pompeo. It is basically a script for what Republican Senate candidates are to say. O’Donnell currently serves as a message and media strategist for numerous members of congress and for profit and nonprofit corporations. The Republican Party is using the text to deflect their failed COVID-19 leadership. They believe that if you create a set of lies, muddle them in a conspiracy theory, and have every Republican repeat them over and over, they can succeed in framing the political conversation. — Rolf Melheim
REVIEWS
How Does the US Rally Support for Wars That Kill Millions of Innocent People Worldwide?
Robert Fantina | Global Research – TRANSCEND Media Service
21 May 2020 – These wars have killed millions of innocent men, women and children around the world. Yet more often than not they have been based on weak evidence, questionable motives, and outright lies. Why, then, do large portions of the public staunchly support the US troops? Why are so many Americans satisfied with the U.S. bombings of Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other Middle Eastern countries, knowing that this is creating starvation and refugee crises of catastrophic proportions?
BIG BROTHER – SPYING – SURVEILLANCE – WHISTLEBLOWING
Michael Brenner – TRANSCEND Media Service
23 May 2020 – Hacking is back in the headlines. The Chinese are accused of breaking into the computers of unnamed American labs – corporate &/or non-corporate – doing research on a coronavirus vaccine. The operative words are ‘China/Chinese’ and ‘hacking’. The two go together like gin & tonic.
Inside the NSA’s Secret Tool for Mapping Your Social Network
Barton Gellman | Wired – TRANSCEND Media Service
24 May 2020 – In the summer of 2013, I spent my days sifting through the most extensive archive of top-secret files that had ever reached the hands of an American journalist. Edward Snowden had transmitted tens of thousands of classified documents to me, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. He revealed the agency’s phone-record tracking program. But thanks to “precomputed contact chaining,” that database was much more powerful than anyone knew.
Since I Met Edward Snowden, I’ve Never Stopped Watching My Back
Barton Gellman | The Atlantic – TRANSCEND Media Service
Jun 2020 issue – “What time exactly does your clock say?” asked the voice on the telephone, the first words Edward Snowden ever spoke to me aloud. I glanced at my wrist—3:22 p.m. “Good. Meet me exactly at four. I’ll be wearing a backpack.” The rendezvous point Snowden selected on 5 Dec 2013 was a casino hotel called the Korston Club in Moscow. After receiving a trove of documents from the whistleblower, I found myself under surveillance and investigation by the U.S. government.
ASIA-UPDATES ON MYANMAR ROHINGYA GENOCIDE
Yanghee Lee: Champion of Justice for Rohingyas
C R Abrar | The Daily Star [Bangladesh] – TRANSCEND Media Service
19 May 2020 – At a time when the world, including neighbouring Malaysia and Thailand, have shunned the Rohingya (acknowledged as the most persecuted minority in the world), at a time when the Burmese state audaciously tramples the whole corpus of international human rights instruments being aided and abetted by major powers; at a time when those who stand for reason, rule of law and justice feel betrayed by the high and mighty of the world, Yanghee Lee stood firm as a beacon of hope.
EUROPE
Europe Should Brace for Second Wave, Says EU Coronavirus Chief
Daniel Boffey | The Guardian – TRANSCEND Media Service
20 May 2020 – The prospect of a second wave of coronavirus infection across Europe is no longer a distant theory, according to Dr Andrea Ammon, director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. “The question is when and how big, that is the question in my view.”
PALESTINE – ISRAEL
How We Became Refugees: The Day My Grandfather Lost His Village in Palestine
Ramzy Baroud | Politics for the People – TRANSCEND Media Service
15 May 2020 – Starting on March 27, 1948, a beautiful, small Palestinian village called Beit Daras, came under Zionist militias attacks. With little means – a few old rifles and kitchen knives – the Badrasawis fought back, repelling the first raid and the second. The final attack on the peaceful village followed a scorched-earth military strategy, leaving in its wake scores of dead and wounded, and the entirety of the village on the run. Among the thousands of ethnically-cleansed Palestinians in Beit Daras, a family of six, including an infant, salvaged a few old blankets and some supplies and went searching for a safe place, with the hope that they would return home in a few days. Their nearly one hundred descendants are yet to return to Beit Daras, 72 years later.
INSPIRATIONAL
Dietrich Fischer – TRANSCEND Media Service
A very old man was planting mango trees. Someone asked him,
BIOGRAPHIES
Ralph Waldo Emerson (25 May 1803 – 27 Apr 1882)
American Transcendentalism Web – TRANSCEND Media Service
Emerson had become quite famous, a major figure in the American literary landscape, a celebrity which brought both adulation and satire. He had been a profound inspiration for many writers, especially Henry Thoreau and Walt Whitman.
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin (30 May 1814 – 1 Jul 1876)
Alan Ryan | Encyclopædia Britannica – TRANSCEND Media Service
Bakunin formulated no coherent body of doctrine, and his voluminous and vigorous writings were often left incomplete. Anarchist movements owing allegiance to Bakunin flourished in Italy and especially in Spain, where as late as 1936 the anarchists were the strongest revolutionary party. Bakunin died in Bern, Switzerland as chief propagator of 19th-century anarchism, a prominent Russian revolutionary agitator, and a prolific political writer.
Walt Whitman (31 May 1819 – 26 Mar 1892)
Biography – TRANSCEND Media Service
Walt Whitman was an American poet whose verse collection ‘Leaves of Grass’ is a landmark in the history of American literature. Fascinated by this newcomer to the poetry scene, Emerson dispatched writers Henry David Thoreau and Bronson Alcott to Brooklyn to meet Whitman.
POETRY FORMAT
Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D. – TRANSCEND Media Service
U.S. Memorial Day 2020:
War!
Side pitted against other!
Human against human!
Primitive!
Source: https://www.ethicalmarkets.com/tms-weekly-digest-25-may-31-may-2020/