CounterCurrents: Massive Die-Out Of Saiga Antelopes In Central Asia, Let’s End Chronic Hunger, Oil Giants Brush Up Climate Credentials Ahead Of Paris Summit,

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In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org


US Economy Contracted In First Quarter
By Andre Damon

http://www.countercurrents.org/damon300515.htm

The US economy shrank at an annual rate of 0.7 percent in the first three months of this year, the Commerce Department said Friday. The new figures mark a sharp downward revision compared with the already anemic 0.2 percent first-quarter growth rate estimated by the Commerce Department in April, and an even bigger slide from the previous quarter, which saw a growth of 2.2 percent

Massive Die-Out Of Saiga Antelopes In Central Asia
By Marianne de Nazareth

http://www.countercurrents.org/saiga300515.htm

It's a shocking number, for those who are concerned about species loss. News is out that more than 120,000 saiga antelope, a mind boggling figure, have been confirmed dead in central Kazakhstan, representing more than a third of the global population. This is a major blow for conservation efforts, given that saigas have in the past ten years, only just started to recover from a global population size of less than 50,000 animals following a 95% crash in numbers


Let’s End Chronic Hunger
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram

http://www.countercurrents.org/sundaram300515.htm

The latest State of World Food Insecurity (SOFI) report for 2015 by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Food Programme and International Fund for Agricultural Development estimates almost 795 million people — one in nine people worldwide — remain chronically hungry


Oil Giants Brush Up Climate Credentials Ahead Of Paris Summit
By Ed King

http://www.countercurrents.org/king300515.htm

Eight of the world’s top oil and gas producers have offered an intriguing glimpse into a future of rusting oil rigs and gleaming solar panels. A vision of old and new energy sources, on what looks like a dried out seabed, dominate the front page of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) website, a project launched by BG Group, BP, Eni, Pemex, Saudi Aramco, Shell, Sinopec and Total


13 Giants Control 40% Of World’s Most Valuable Fisheries
But Don’t Assume Responsibility Of Marine Ecosystems
By Countercurrents.org

http://www.countercurrents.org/cc300515A.htm

Just thirteen giant corporations control 19-40% of the largest and most valuable stocks and 11-16% of the global marine catch, finds a new research. This handful of corporations represents 0.5% of 2250 registered fishing and aquaculture companies worldwide


Where Would Jesus Live?
By David Swanson

http://www.countercurrents.org/swanson300515.htm

If Jesus lived in Galilee in recent decades he would live in a world alive with Palestinian traditions clinging to a long-rooted history but struggling through the aftermath of the never-ended ethnic-cleansing operation that spiked in 1948


ISIS Is The Child Of Chaos, Not Religion
By Justin Podur

http://www.countercurrents.org/podur300515.htm

What explains the shocking, video-recorded horrors of ISIS? The right-wing New Atheists look for passages in scriptures that are used to justify the crimes; the criminals themselves claim to be acting in the name of religion. But people who genuinely want to understand would do better to look to other parts of the world where long-running conflicts have led to social collapse


Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: Modern American Revolutionary Book Review
By Staughton Lynd

http://www.countercurrents.org/lynd300515.htm

A number of radical women who espoused anarchism or anarcho-syndicalism when they were young were drawn in later life to uncritical support of international Communism. Alexandra Kollontai, Lucy Parsons, and Dolores Ibarruri (“La Pasionaria”) come to mind. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn can be described in the same way. The “rebel girl” celebrated by Joe Hill’s song, who was the most conspicuous woman among the prominent personalities of the IWW, became a member of the United States Communist Party in 1937 and supported it publicly until her death


Terror Birds or Terror Beings?
By Mickey Z.

http://www.countercurrents.org/mickeyz300515.htm

Terror bird? Tell that to the 23 million chickens killed in the United States for food (sic) every single day. That's 269 dead chickens per second -- brutally slaughtered after a short, nightmarish life imposed upon them by a taxpayer subsidized industry responsible for systematically destroying our landbase and threatening all life on earth. To the vast majority of inhabitants of this planet, we are terror beings


Poets' Talk
With Gary Corseri and José M. Tirado

http://www.countercurrents.org/corseri300515.htm

A conversation between American writer Gary Corseri and Puertorican poet and political writer José M. Tirado


Discrimination In Employment Against Muslims In India
By Abdul Majid Zargar

http://www.countercurrents.org/zargar300515.htm

The denial of Job to a Muslim MBA graduate by a leading Indian Diamond export firm has created some ripples in the Indian media & political class .What is interesting to note is that the operations of this firm are spread over to seventy five countries in the world and earns more than 50% of its profits from Muslim Countries but is not inclined to employ a Muslim. The discrimination against Muslims in the so-called secular India is nothing new to warrant any surprise. It has always been a blot on India’s much touted secular record since inception


The Cancerous Faces of Indian Tobacco
By Sazzad Hussain

http://www.countercurrents.org/hussain300515.htm

Supreme Court of India banned sale of tobacco products in plastic pouches from 1st March 2011. It also asked for the alternative material for packaging them. Some abortive attempts by authorities at the district level failed to succeed because of non-cooperation by the public in not using the plastic/polythene bags. Similarly there should be a ban on printing of photos of Indian men on the tobacco products. Public awareness is the key in addressing this duel challenge of tobacco and the sale of its products in plastic


Will Countries 'Walk The Talk' To End The Tobacco Epidemic?
By Bobby Ramakant

http://www.countercurrents.org/ramakant300515.htm

Despite unprecedented pressure from tobacco industry to delay, dilute or thwart progress on a range of tobacco control measures globally, considerable achievements have been made by governments over the past years to protect public health. The global tobacco treaty, which was the first corporate-accountability and public health internationally binding treaty of the World Health Organization (WHO), is one major leap forward to move the world towards ending game of tobacco