CounterCurrents: "Lobbying, Capitalism And The State", US Rebukes Israel While Showering It With Arms And Favors, Everest Region May Experience 99% Glacier Loss

Dear Friend,

If you think the content of this news letter is critical for the dignified living and survival of humanity and other species on earth, please forward it to your friends and spread the word. It's time for humanity to come together as one family! You can subscribe to our news letter here http://www.countercurrents.org/subscribe.htm. You can also follow us on twitter, http://twitter.com/countercurrents and on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/countercurrents

In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org

Rohingya Refugees Abused And Killed In Camps In Malaysia/Thailand
By John Roberts

http://www.countercurrents.org/roberts290515.htm

As delegates from 19 countries gather today in Bangkok for a meeting on “irregular migration in the Indian Ocean,” more evidence has emerged of the horrors facing thousands of Bangladeshis and Rohingya Muslims from Burma fleeing persecution and poverty. All of the countries attending the meeting, in one way or another, bear responsibility for their plight


Beyond The Middle East: The Rohingya Genocide
By Ramzy Baroud

http://www.countercurrents.org/baroud290515.htm

The whole Southeast Asian region is culpable. They have ignored the plight of the Rohingya for years. While tens of thousands of Rohingya are being ethnically cleansed, having their villages torched, forced into concentration camps and some into slavery, Burma is being celebrated by various western and Asian powers as a success story of a military junta-turned democracy


Everest Region May Experience 99% Glacier Loss
By Countercurrents

http://www.countercurrents.org/cc290515.htm

With continued temperature rise, glacier volume in the Everest region could be reduced between 70% and 99% by 2100. If greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions continue to rise, glaciers in the Everest region of the Himalayas could experience dramatic change in the decades to come. A team of researchers in Nepal, France and the Netherlands have found Everest glaciers could be very sensitive to future warming, and that sustained ice loss through the 21st century is likely


US Rebukes Israel While Showering It With Arms And Favors
By Jonathan Cook

http://www.countercurrents.org/cook290515.htm

The lesson drawn by Netanyahu should be clear. Obama may signal verbally his disquiet with the current Israeli government, but he is not about to exact any real price from Israel, even as it shifts ever further to the fanatical right


"Lobbying, Capitalism And The State"
By Jon Kofas

http://www.countercurrents.org/kofas290515.htm

Businesses and foreign governments create coffers and slush funds to elect or reelect politicians, or at least influence their voting on specific issues or to prevent measures from passing because they would cut into their profits. Through political action committees and through loopholes and favors from politicians, lobbyists provide the financing and media influence politicians need to win or stay in office. Most of this is legal, some of it is not and we do not know to what degree, but the lobbying system as a whole is a reflection of how the political economy operates. Lobbying is built into the capitalist system to further strengthen and concentrate capital and maintain the social order


Hil[l]arious US Politics: What We Now Know?
By Farooque Chowdhury

http://www.countercurrents.org/chowdhury290515.htm

A lot about US politics is unknown to ordinary citizens. It’s difficult to understand by commoners. A lot of connections, custom, cast inside and outside of the political arena there make the politics complex to comprehend


Until the Rulers Obey: Voices From Latin American Social Movements
Book Review By Staughton Lynd

http://www.countercurrents.org/lynd290515.htm

The title of this book is drawn from the Zapatistas’ Second Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle: “We will resist until the rulers govern obediently.” The underlying principle is, in Spanish, “mandar obediciendo”: to govern in obedience


Book Review: “Selling Students Short” By Richard Hil –
Neoliberal Corruption Of Corporatised Australian Universities
By Dr Gideon Polya

http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290515.htm

Australian sociologist and academic Dr Richard Hil's “Selling students short” is a devastating account of how 1.3 million Australian university students ( 25% full fee-paying students from overseas) are being grossly deceived, manipulated and ripped off by dishonest, mendacious, anti-intellectual, neoliberal Lib-Lab (Coalition and Labor Right) governments with the active complicity of money-obsessed university bosses who can be seen as grossly over-paid and parasitic refugees from scholarship


Derecognition Of Ambedkar – Periyar Study Circle In IIT Madras Undemocratic
By Ambedkar – Periyar Study Circle

http://www.countercurrents.org/apsc290515.htm

We, Ambedkar – Periyar Study Circle (APSC), an independent student body of IIT Madras (IITM) has been derecognized by the Dean of Students (DoS), on 22.05.2015 stating that we have misused the privileges given by IITM. Action against the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle is undemocratic and unilateral against the interest of common mass for whom the Institute itself is indebted; hence we are not accepting this decision taken by the Institute


Remembering Aruna Shanbaug
By Akshi Chawla

http://www.countercurrents.org/chawla290515.htm

One wonders if Sohanlal had attacked Aruna today, would she have received a better deal, at least in terms of legal justice, or would he have still gotten away. One also wonders, reluctantly, had the sexual assault not left her in the vegetative state, would she have received a similar degree of care and support as a victim of sexual violence, as she otherwise did? Or even more reluctantly, had Aruna not survived the attack and succumbed that very night in 1973, would we still remember her story?


Sri Lanka: Deterioration Of The Legal Intellect (8): Institutions For
Administration Of Justice Are Far More Important Than The Military
By Basil Fernando

http://www.countercurrents.org/fernando290515.htm

The rape and murder of a 17-year-old schoolgirl two weeks ago, has given rise to the biggest protest seen in North in recent times. The police have announced that 9 persons have been arrested and are been investigated. DNA samples have been taken and sent for examination


People’s Countdown To Right Of Shelter Continues
By National Alliance of People’s Movements

http://www.countercurrents.org/napm290515.htm

The people of Mandala – Mankhurd are bravely leading the struggle of India’s homeless, marginalized and oppressed for the fourth continuous day as they demand what is rightfully theirs. While at the same time there is no response from the government to the demands, instead the Satyagrahis facing harassment by police