CounterCurrents

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In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org


Obama Renews Threats As Syrian Talks Remain Deadlocked
By Mike Head

http://www.countercurrents.org/head120214.htm

As this week’s second round of talks in Geneva remained at an impasse, US President Barack Obama yesterday renewed talk of possible military intervention against Syria, on the cynical pretext of “humanitarian” concern for the Syrian people


Preserving The Abu Ghraib Culture: The Harrowing Abuse Of Iraqi Women
By Ramzy Baroud

http://www.countercurrents.org/baroud120214.htm

“When they first put the electricity on me, I gasped; my body went rigid and the bag came off my head,” Israa Salah, a detained Iraqi woman told Human Rights Watch (HRW) in her heartrending testimony. Israa (not her real name) was arrested by US and Iraqi forces in 2010. She was tortured to the point of confessing to terrorist charges she didn’t commit. According to HRW’s “No One is Safe” - a 105-page report released on Feb 06 – there are thousands of Iraqi women in jail being subjected to similar practices, held with no charges, beaten and raped


Playing Al-Qaeda Card To The Last Iraqi
By Nicola Nasser

http://www.countercurrents.org/nasser120214.htm

No doubt revolution is brewing and boiling in Iraq against the sectarian government in Baghdad, its U.S. and Iranian supporters as well as against its al-Qaeda sectarian antithesis


On Founders And Keepers Of Occupy Wall Street
By Justin Wedes

http://www.countercurrents.org/wedes120214.htm

Last week, a power struggle within an Occupy collective emerged into the public realm when one member took sole ownership of the @OccupyWallSt twitter handle and began to issue calls to action and reflections on the history of the movement. As the controversy ricochets across our still-vibrant networks, I write here to offer my own perspective on what immediate lessons can be learned from the debacle


The Purposely Confusing World Of Energy Politics
By Richard Heinberg

http://www.countercurrents.org/heinberg120214.htm

As energy issues become more critically important to society’s economic and ecological survival, they become more politically contested; and as a result, they tend to become obscured by a fog of exaggeration, half-truth, omission, and outright prevarication


A Critical History Of The Olympics: Beyond Sochi
By Paul Gottinger

http://www.countercurrents.org/gottinger120214.htm

It's 2014 and once again the Olympics are underway. This time around Sochi, Russia is the host location for the games. In the run up to this Olympics there has been no shortage of criticism in the U.S. media for Russia's human rights abuses in Chechnya and Dagestan, the country's crackdown on civil society, and most visibly, Russia's recent laws criminalizing gays and lesbians. While the U.S. media is right to criticize these very serious human rights abuses, it has continually failed to scrutinize the Olympics when the games take place in a Western country, or in a country of a U.S. ally


Know And Punish US War Crimes
By Robert Barsocchini

http://www.countercurrents.org/barsocchini120214.htm

We need a mass movement in the USA to arrest and prosecute war criminals, so that US politicians and officials have something to be afraid of (namely jail) when they make their decisions. War crimes, genocide, and the like, would then have definite consequences and be sharply reduced


Black History Month, Zimbabwe Black Indigenization And Race, The Struggle Continues
By Tsungai Chipato

http://www.countercurrents.org/chipato120214.htm

This Black History Month keep this in mind, according to the rest of the world; black people and other ethnic minorities are free. Although we are economically impoverished from the legacies of slavery and colonialism we should at least be happy at the fact that we can vote and have seen the day that America had a Black President


How NaMo Has 'Disappeared' Untouchability In Gujarat ?
By Subhash Gatade

http://www.countercurrents.org/gatade120214.htm

You can have a look at a Gujarat government sponsored report titled "Impact of Caste Discrimination and Distinctions on Equal Opportunities: A Study of Gujarat", authored by Centre for Environment Planning and Technology University (CEPT) University scholars led by Prof R Parthasarathy, which calls caste discrimination a matter of "perceptions". In his blog 'True Lies' senior journalist Rajiv Shah has provided detailed critique of this study


On the Suicide Of Dr Khurshid Anwar, Director ISD
By Women Against Sexual Violence and State Repression

http://www.countercurrents.org/wss120214.htm

We are dismayed and deeply concerned at the content and tone of the discussions on Dr Anwar’s death in social media and in various public forums, where aspersions have been cast on the complainant. Questions have also been raised about the role of feminists who have stood by the complainant and upheld the feminist principles evolved in the course of the long and ongoing struggle against sexual violence in our patriarchal and misogynistic society


Pulping Intellectual Freedom: Academics Will Not Bow Down To Vigilantism
By Jamia Teachers' Solidarity Association

http://www.countercurrents.org/jtsa120214.htm

It is an abject shame that Penguin will pulp Prof. Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An Alternative History . That this decision was reached in a deal with the petitioners, with no consultation with the author compounds the folly