CounterCurrents: Peace Lessons, Are Big Banks Using Derivatives To Suppress Bullion Prices?, The Pope Francis Encyclical And Its Economics

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


China Share Rout Hits Global Markets 
By Nick Beams

http://www.countercurrents.org/beams090715.htm

Chinese financial authorities have banned major shareholders, corporate executives and directors from selling their shares in listed companies for a period of six months. The ban is the latest in a series of increasingly desperate moves to try to halt the crash of the Chinese stock market, amid indications it is beginning to impact on the rest of the world. The move was announced in the wake of a further decline in share prices yesterday, which saw the key Shanghai Composite Index close down by 5.9 percent, after losing as much as 8 percent during the course of the day. The Shenzen index also lost 2.5 percent. For more than a week, the government and financial authorities have unveiled a series of measures to try to boost markets, but all have failed


Are Big Banks Using Derivatives To Suppress Bullion Prices? 
By Paul Craig Roberts & Dave Kranzler

http://www.countercurrents.org/roberts090715.htm

We have explained on a number of occasions how the Federal Reserves’ agents, the bullion banks (principally JPMorganChase, HSBC, and Scotia) sell uncovered shorts (“naked shorts”) on the Comex (gold futures market) in order to drive down an otherwise rising price of gold. By dumping so many uncovered short contracts into the futures market, an artificial increase in “paper gold” is created, and this increase in supply drives down the price


The Pope Francis Encyclical And Its Economics 
By Brent Blackwelder

http://www.countercurrents.org/blackwelder090715.htm

The Encyclical Letter of Pope Francis is attracting extraordinary attention for its message on global warming, deforestation, loss of biological diversity, and other pressing environmental issues. What is less well known is the extensive critique of the global economy found in his 184-page Encyclical. This blog highlights some of the significant points that Pope Francis makes about the need for systemic economic change


Peace Lessons 
By David Swanson

http://www.countercurrents.org/lessons090715.htm

I just read what may be the best introduction to peace studies I’ve ever seen. It’s called Peace Lessons, and is a new book by Timothy Braatz. It’s not too fast or too slow, neither obscure nor boring. It does not drive the reader away from activism toward meditation and “inner peace,” but begins with and maintains a focus on activism and effective strategy for revolutionary change in the world on the scale that is needed. As you may be gathering, I’ve read some similar books about which I had major complaints


Wikipedia As Propaganda Not History — MH17 As An Example 
By Eric Zuesse


http://www.countercurrents.org/zuesse090715.htm

Wikipedia's English-language article about the 17 July 2014 shoot-down of the MH17 Malaysian airliner is a shameless propaganda-piece by the U.S. Government and its agents. Its (at present) 320 footnote-sources don't include any of the many reports (virtually all in the foreign press) that present evidence the Ukrainian government shot down this airliner. Among the important issues that aren't even raised, are: why was the Ukrainian government given veto-power over any final report which will be issued by the official four-nation MH17 investigating team: Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, and Ukraine? Why was Ukraine even included in this team to investigate a crime in which one of the two main suspects is the Ukrainian government itself?


Dirty Energy vs. Clean Power : The Past Battles The Future At Seneca Lake  
By Ellen Cantarow

http://www.countercurrents.org/cantarow090715.htm

There's a battle brewing between the burgeoning clean-energy future embraced by this region and the dirty energy sources on which this planet has been running since the Industrial Revolution. Over the last six years,Crestwood Midstream Partners, a Texas-based corporation, has been pushing to build a gas storage and transportation hub for the entire northeastern United States at Seneca Lake


President Bernie Sanders: What Would It Mean? 
By John Spritzler

http://www.countercurrents.org/spritzler090715.htm

If there ever is a President Bernie Sanders, all of the evidence indicates that within a few years the people who voted for him will be as angry at him and regretful of being decieved by him as people who voted for Barack Obama are today angry at him and regretful of being deceived by him. Because the fundamental role of the federal government will continue to be to serve the Billionaire class, its policies will continue to anger most people, despite the presence of a Bernie Sanders in the Oval Office. The choice for Americans will remain what it has always been: either suffer to live as wage slaves in a dictatorship of the rich that gives a bit more one day only to take it back the next, or make an egalitarian revolution to live as free and equal citizens in a genuine democracy


Pakistan In Search Of Political Change 
By Mahboob A. Khawaja

http://www.countercurrents.org/khawaja090715.htm

It is hard to expect the National Assembly as is to act against Sharif, only to reaffirm its irrelevance and incompetence being a stooge of the rulers and unable to provide workable democratic option for change - when facts of life warrant a change, the responsible institutions must respond to facilitate change to safeguard the national interests, freedom and integrity of the country