CounterCurrents: Climate Crisis Connects Us, Climate Justice Demands Unity, The American Empire And Its Global Control Objectives, Skies Calm Over Gaza As Truce Takes Hold

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In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org


Skies Calm Over Gaza As Truce Takes Hold
By Ma'an News Agency

http://www.countercurrents.org/maan270814.htm

The skies over the Gaza Strip were calm Wednesday as a long-term ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians took hold after 50 days of the deadliest violence in a decade. Millions in and around the war-torn enclave enjoyed a welcome night of peace during which there were no strikes on Gaza, nor Palestinian rockets fired at Israel, the Israeli army said. The conflict, which began on July 8 when Israel began Operation Protective Edge in a bid to stamp out cross-border rocket fire, has claimed the lives of 2,143 Palestinians and 70 on the Israeli side


Israel Lost The war In Gaza but The Struggle For Justice Goes On
By Ali Abunimah

http://www.countercurrents.org/abunimah270814.htm

We have to say never again. Never again must Israel be allowed to massacre Palestinians as it has in Gaza in 2006, 2008-2009, 2012 and 2014 – the years since it decided to turn Gaza into a giant open-air prison. It is crucial to understand that such violence is the price of a “Jewish state” in Palestine. The only way to stop the massacres is to escalate our work for justice. An end to Israeli apartheid and colonization and the founding of a country for all its people – where refugees, no longer excluded by racist laws, return to their land – is the only monument worth building for so many people whose lives were violently stolen


Fearing Political Islam: Why Was Gaza Betrayed
By Ramzy Baroud

http://www.countercurrents.org/baroud270814.htm

Some Arab rulers continue to declare their strong support of Palestine and its cause. ‘Operation Protective Edge,’ however, has exposed beyond a doubt that such solidarity is just a mere show of words; and that, although discretely, some Arabs wish to see Israel crush any semblance of Palestinian resistance, in Gaza and anywhere else


Israel’s Extermination of Whole Families in Gaza Reflects Genocidal Impulse
By Rania Khalek

http://www.countercurrents.org/khalek270814.htm

Eighty-nine families that existed seven weeks ago in Gaza have been exterminated by Israel. On Sunday 24 August an Israeli missile tore through the home of Issam Jouda in Gaza’s Tal al-Zatar neighborhood east of Jabaliya without warning, killing Issam’s wife Rawiya and their four children—Taghrid, Tasnim, Usama and Muhammad. According to the Palestinian health ministry , the Joudas were the eighty-ninth family wiped out in Gaza since the Israeli army started bombarding the besieged coastal enclave on 7 July


Gaza Ceasefire!! The Palestinian Resistance Stands Resolute
And Victorious! Israel Suffers Another Strategic Defeat!
By Feroze Mithiborwala

http://www.countercurrents.org/mithiborwala270814.htm

Even as the Palestinians & the world mourn the martyrs of the Israeli aggression, the Intifada, the global resistance to Zionism & Imperialism has only struck deeper roots across the world as millions now are part of the global struggle to liberate Palestine . . . to liberate the World . . . to liberate all of Humanity


A Voice From Gaza: Living Under The Bombs
By Judith Bello

http://www.countercurrents.org/bello270814.htm

The Afghan Peace Volunteers have a Global Day of Listening call on the 21st Day of every month. Last week, the call focused on a woman named Asma who called in from Gaza. Asma lives with her husband and three young children in central Gaza. During the call, Asma describes the mind-bending stress of living every day in an area under continual attack by bombs and missiles. Even if you have not lost most of your family or been left homeless, every day you know that could be the day, and you have no peace


Temple Mount: A Detonator For World War III
By William Hanna

http://www.countercurrents.org/hanna270814.htm

Bearing in mind the unconscionable ease with which Western leaders — led by an AIPAC-controlled U.S. government — have unleashed illegal and still ongoing wars resulting in the death of millions in the Middle East, you can rest assured that Israel would have even less compunction in doing likewise. These racist humanity-hating fanatics — led by that war criminal maniac Benjamin Netanyahu — would quite happily initiate a nuclear holocaust in order to retain Israel’s grasp on its ill-gotten gains


Climate Crisis Connects Us, Climate Justice Demands Unity
By Margaret Flowers & Kevin Zeese

http://www.countercurrents.org/zeese270814.htm

The truth of that banner can be made real as together we write the future history of humankind. We do not underestimate the forces aligned against the transformation that is a necessity, but nor do we underestimate the power of a mobilized people in times of crisis. This September is another step in the march to a new reality


The World Wide Web Of Living
By Janet Surman

http://www.countercurrents.org/surman270814.htm

The web of life – everything linked and interdependent. From the tiniest particle of soil to the African elephant; from plankton to whales and consumers of sea food; from the rice seeds germinating in Asian paddy fields to the plates on western tables. It's easy to recognise the links in the chain, links which if broken can disrupt the natural order and create problems throughout the web. On a purely physiological level what, to be a part of this web of life, does humankind require?


The European Union And The Twin Civil Wars In Syria/Iraq
By Dr. Peter Custers

http://www.countercurrents.org/custers270814.htm

Is this one of those rare occasions where policymakers self-critically correct a gigantic blunder? Or is it a cold turn-about guided by pure self-interest? On August the 15th, the Foreign Ministers of EU-countries gathered in Brussels and decided that each would henceforth be free to supply arms to Kurdish rebels fighting Sunni extremists of ISIS in the North of Iraq


New Liberation Forces Debate Future Of Post-Apartheid South Africa
By Federico Fuentes

http://www.countercurrents.org/fuentes270814.htm

Around 30 guests from across the globe and 120 shop stewards from the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) met August 7-10 in Johannesburg to discuss the prospects and challenges of building a new, left political alternative to the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the party of now deceased national hero Nelson Mandela


"Police Response In Ferguson Rooted In Systemic Violence And Militarism"
By Brian J. Trautman

http://www.countercurrents.org/trautman270814.htm

The police response to public protests in Ferguson, Missouri in the wake of the deadly August 9 shooting of Michael Brown, Jr., an unarmed eighteen-year-old black man killed by a white police officer, was a prime illustration of the hyper-aggressive nature of policing in America today


Three Days in Ferguson: Observations From The Rust Belt
By Vincent Emanuele

http://www.countercurrents.org/emanuele270814.htm

Events in Ferguson provide a grand opportunity to build genuine solidarity with marginalized communities. It's our job as activists to seize the opportunity, and cultivate new possibilities for social transformation


Obama’s No-Win War On ISIS
By Shamus Cooke

http://www.countercurrents.org/cooke270814.htm

With each new military intervention in the “war on terror” the jihadist movement grows exponentially, born amid the rubble of U.S.-destroyed Iraq, Libya, and Syria, and groomed to maturity by U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and other Gulf States. Such an irrational, never-ending cycle of war cannot last forever. It is already collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions


The American Empire And Its Global Control Objectives
By G. Asgar Mitha

http://www.countercurrents.org/mitha270814.htm

The American Empire is threatened with it's end by the actions of barbarian invasions of ISIS and Israel and the fundings from the Arab monarchies who're so weak they need western protection and who serve western interests in return


The Fall And Rise of Investigative Journalism
By Anya Schiffrin

http://www.countercurrents.org/schiffrin270814.htm

From Asia to Africa to Latin America, Muckrakers Have Corrupt Officials and Corporate Cronies on the Run


Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening
By Robert J. Burrowes

http://www.countercurrents.org/burrowes270814.htm

The most important form of attention that any human individual requires is nisteling. And nisteling is the most important gift we can give another individual to assist their personal journey to Self-awareness. If we nistel to a child, they will learn to nistel to themself


So, I Asked The Russian Ambassador What He Thinks of NATO
By David Swanson

http://www.countercurrents.org/swanson270814.htm

"We were promised," Kislyak said, that NATO would not expand eastward at all upon the reunification of Germany. "And now look." NATO has declared that Ukraine and Georgia will join NATO, Kislyak pointed out, and NATO says this even while a majority of the people in Ukraine say they're opposed. The ambassador used the word "disappointed" a few times. "We'll have to take measures to assure our defense," he said, "but we would have preferred to build on a situation with decreased presence and decreased readiness." Wouldn't we all


U.R. Annanthamurthy: The Death of an Institution
By Atharva Pandit

http://www.countercurrents.org/pandit270814.htm

U.R.Annanthamurthy, one of India’s greatest storytellers and a public intellectual in every right, died on Friday, 22nd of August and as he bid goodbye to all of us, we lost not just a writer who had been a social critic, contemporary activist and a daring intellectual who did not hesitate to criticize even his own way of living, that is, the Brahmin sub-caste, but also someone who felt deeply for the language in which he chose to write, and the language which he felt should reach the global readership


Modi's Sinister Game Plan In Jammu And Kashmir
By Abdul Majid Zargar

http://www.countercurrents.org/zargar270814.htm

So what is the game plan? Once inside the assembly with a simple majority, BJP intends to give State legislature concurrence to a President’s order of abrogating Article 370