CounterCurrents: What Climate Change Asks Of Us: Moral Obligation, Mobilization And Crisis Communication

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In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org

US Escalates Campaign Against North Korea
By Patrick Martin

http://www.countercurrents.org/martin211214.htm

The Obama administration ratcheted up the pressure on the isolated Stalinist regime in North Korea, with the FBI formally accusing North Korea of responsibility for the hacking attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment and Obama declaring that the US government would carry out an unspecified “proportionate response” against Pyongyang at “a time and place of our own choosing.”


What Climate Change Asks Of Us: Moral Obligation, Mobilization And Crisis Communication
By Margaret Klein

http://www.countercurrents.org/klein211214.htm

Climate change is a crisis, and crises alter morality. Climate change is on track to cause the extinction of half the species on earth and, through a combination of droughts, famines, displaced people, and failed states and pandemics, the collapse of civilization within this century. If this horrific destructive force is to be abated, it will be due to the efforts of people who are currently alive. The future of humanity falls to us. This is an unprecedented moral responsibility, and we are by and large failing to meet it


The Peshawar Attack: The Act And The Actor
By Priyanka Dass Saharia

http://www.countercurrents.org/saharia211214.htm

Social media forums were flooded with statuses spewing loathe at the group, lamenting upon the degeneracy of the Pakistani government, the ‘illegitimate', ‘failed' state that it was, inevitably. Painting in broad strokes, various hate messages splashed around political jargon citing bigotry, myopic political visions and one even went up a notch in associating a ‘fetish for terror backed political manoeuvrings' to the event. The message was clear – It was evil. It brings me to mention a famous and much controversial work of moral inquiry through trial reportages by Hannah Arendt, “Eichmann in Jerusalem”, where she illustrated upon the banalisation of evil through discourses of professionalism rather than ideology


Peshawar Taliban Massacre: Global Turning Point Against Religious Fanaticism
By Feroze Mithiborwala

http://www.countercurrents.org/mithiborwala211214.htm

The Peshawar Massacre is a turning point against the forces of religious extremism, terror and the Anglo-Zionist Imperial war-machine. The struggle against these very reactionary forces, will define the course of our collective human history and over the course of the coming decade. The struggle will lead to the rise of the secular, liberal, Left democratic and liberatory spiritual forces across the world


Crucifying Children At The Altar Of Great Power Game
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

http://www.countercurrents.org/ghazali211214.htm

The stunned and shaken people of Pakistan mourned the Peshawar Army Public School massacre of 149 people including 132 children, the government announced new measures to combat terrorism. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced the removal of the ban on the death penalty for terrorist offences which had been in force since 2008. Mr Sharif had lifted the ban last year, but re-imposed it when he launched peace talks with militants


Turkey's Foreign Policy In The 21st Century
By Jon Kofas

http://www.countercurrents.org/kofas211214.htm

If Turkey under Erdogan in the last twelve years had created a more evenly distributed income across all social segments, there would be no need to manipulate the issue of Islam at home and abroad any more than pursuing a foreign policy immersed in contradictions. Trying to replace the Kemalist institutional structure with a corrupt clientist network that would secure the preeminence of the Justice and Development Party has force Erdogan into foreign policy schemes that have backfired and may ultimately bring down his regime by a combination of domestic upheaval, and/or military intervention in the political arena with the support of the US and other governments that see no benefit supporting the current regime


Racist Cops: Only A Symptom Of White Supremacy
By Mickey Z

http://www.countercurrents.org/mickeyz211214.htm

Yes, we must expose Blue Bloc malfeasance and stand in solidarity with those most commonly victimized by police behavior. But if we lose sight of the big picture, well, we've seen that show a few thousand times, haven't we? Law enforcement tactics are merely symptoms. We must stay more focused on the disease... before we run out of time


The Secular Stake: A Burden, Or A Democratic Imperative?
By Sanjay Kumar

http://www.countercurrents.org/skumar211214.htm

Should India remain, or rather become secular, only for minorities' sake? Then, why should the majority be interested in secularism? Only because of their 'good neighbourly' sense, or to avoid civil strife of communal clashes? The tragedy and the farce of Indian secularism is precisely this, that ever since its initial conception and practice during the freedom movement, it has remained hostage to a majority-minority framework, and it has implicitly answered all the above questions in the affirmative. Nothing can be farther away from the real significance of secularism for a modern democracy. There have been many non-democratic secular regimes. Secularism though is a democratic imperative. What everybody, including minority citizens, lose in the absence of secularism are distinct democratic freedoms which only secularism can assure


NC/PDP Alliance-Modi’s Nightmare!
By Mohammad Ashraf

http://www.countercurrents.org/ashraf211214.htm

Do they have the sincerity and the urge to serve the people and heal their wounds? Yes, only to the extent of professing it for their own selfish goals. The last 60 years of uncertainty which have made them go round in circles have not tempered them and made them realise the bleakness of the future. By all accounts both do not seem to have any future in the ultimate disposition of Kashmir. They still have a chance to change it if only they see the writing on the wall. It would be in their own interests to give up their hypocritical stances as well as mutual confrontation and come out openly in support of the true aspirations of the people. This will either make the other umpteen parties professing to be popular saviours of the people totally irrelevant or force them to coalesce like tongue and groove joints in wood to maintain their credibility. Either way it is the common people who will benefit from such an eventuality