CounterCurrents: U.S. vs. Iraq: 25 Years And Counting, Obama's “Safe Zone” In Syria Will Inflame The War Zone, Paradise Burning: Why We All Need To Learn The Word “Anthropogenic”, Obama And The Sheep Dog Syndrome

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Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org


U.S. vs. Iraq: 25 Years And Counting 
By Mickey Z.

http://www.countercurrents.org/mickeyz310715.htm

While Aug. 6, of course, marks the 70th anniversary of the nuking of Hiroshima, it also marks a quarter-century since the U.S. war against Iraq was initially launched. For most people -- particularly willfully ignorant anti-war activists -- the starting date for the war in Iraq is March 19, 2003. However, to accept that date is to put far too much blame on one party and one president. A more accurate and useful starting date is Aug. 6, 1990 when -- at the behest of the United States -- the United Nations Security Council imposed murderous sanctions upon the people of Iraq


Retributive Justice Is Injustice, Your Lordships 
By Samar

http://www.countercurrents.org/samar310715.htm

Yakub Memon is dead and gone. It is just that his death has brought the debate on capital punishment back on the table and it is time the civil society makes a final push for its abolishment. If it fails, there will, from time to time, be dramatic midnight hearings that make the system look superficially like a just one. And the legal murders following pretentious hearings will not stop


Execution To Satisfy The ‘Hurt Ego’Of A Divided Society 
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat

http://www.countercurrents.org/rawat310715.htm

Seriously speaking one has to understand whether retribution has ever helped any one or not. In the criminal justice system focus is too much on the ‘accused’ but no effort is made to help the ‘victims’. It is the victims who suffer and have to endure the pain for life but for the power it is the shortest route that once you ‘punish’ the ‘accused’ justice is done and case is closed. Ordinary people will not ask so many questions as an atmosphere is created around the accused hence forgetting their own pain they too feel once retribution is done, justice is done


Obama's “Safe Zone” In Syria Will Inflame The War Zone 
By Shamus Cooke

http://www.countercurrents.org/cooke310715.htm

The road to war is paved with a thousand lies. A fresh fib was tossed on the lie-cluttered war path to Syria, when it was announced that the U.S. and Turkey would create a “safe zone” inside of Syria — supposedly to be aimed against ISIS. This “safe zone” is a major escalation of war, but it was described in soft tones by the media. In reality a “safe zone” is a “no-fly zone,” meaning that a nation is planning to implement military air superiority inside the boundaries of another nation. It's long recognized by the international community and U.S. military personnel as a major act of war. In a war zone an area is made “safe” by destroying anything in it or around that appears threatening


Revolting World 
By Robert J. Burrowes

http://www.countercurrents.org/burrowes310715.htm

There is much that is revolting about the current world and Andre Vltchek, Christopher Black and Peter Koenig are well placed to document it, which they have done in their new book 'The World Order and Revolution! Essays from the Resistance'


Paradise Burning: Why We All Need To Learn The Word “Anthropogenic” 
By Subhankar Banerjee

http://www.countercurrents.org/banerjee310715.htm

The wettest rainforest in the continental United States had gone up in flames and the smoke was so thick, so blanketing, that you could see it miles away. Deep in Washington's Olympic National Park, the aptly named Paradise Fire, undaunted by the dampness of it all, was eating the forest alive and destroying an ecological Eden. In this season of drought across the West, there have been far bigger blazes but none quite so symbolic or offering quite such grim news. It isn't the size of the fire (though it is the largest in the park's history), nor its intensity. It's something else entirely -- the fact that it shouldn't have been burning at all. When fire can eat a rainforest in a relatively cool climate, you know the Earth is beginning to burn. And here's the thing: the Olympic Peninsula is my home. Its destruction is my personal nightmare and I couldn't stay away


Roaring Nature: A Call For Personal Change 
By Mir Faizan Anwar

http://www.countercurrents.org/anwar310715.htm

Everything that surrounds us has purposeful balance. From tiny organisms that go unnoticed to giant mammals, microflora to mighty trees, deep oceans to towering mountains, there is a manner and framework. Space with unimaginable celestial bodies, the sun and the moon have perfection. In this puzzling universe, humans curiously have a significant position, top among creatures’ list, the cream and jugular vein. However, this wayward human has openly defied nature, looted its resources and left it screaming. It looks difficult to come out of bars and cages of greediness unless we introspect and understand the purpose of life


Obama And The Sheep Dog Syndrome 
By Thomas C. Mountain

http://www.countercurrents.org/mountain310715.htm

Barack Hussain Obama represents a text book case of the Sheep Dog Syndrome, as in a well trained dog used to control the American Sheeple, leading them either to a sheering or worse case, the slaughter


Poverty And Child Brain Damage 
By Thomas Riggins

http://www.countercurrents.org/riggins310715.htm

When it comes to how USA treat children, it's telling to find out that UNICEF ranks the U.S. at 34 out of 35 industrialized countries (we beat out Romania but eight other former east European socialist countries take better care of their children than we do)


A Juvenile Response By Elected Representatives 
By Emarine Kharbhih

http://www.countercurrents.org/kharbhih310715.htm

There is little substance to the Juvenile Justice (Amendment) Bill, 2014. With little sense of direction, the Bill seems to have been made under political pressure and public outcry in order to calm the outrage and maintain the ideological balance of power in politics. The functions of the Juvenile Justice Board and the Child Welfare Committee is evidently low on performance, with 175 million children in India still marginalised, 144 million deemed to be destitute, 25 million orphaned, and 40,000 juveniles in conflict with law, living in institutes. The government needs to reflect on its own shadow and understand that the Bill should be more proactive rather just being a well-articulated piece of legislation


What About Innovating Beyond The Growth Trap? 
A Challenge To The Ecofiscal Commission’s Growth Fixation 
By James Magnus-Johnston

http://www.countercurrents.org/johnston310715.htm

A new voice has emerged recently in Canada called the “Ecofiscal Commission,” which could have the funding, clout, and determination to steer the country in a more promising direction. The group includes high-profile economists, former political leaders, and high-powered financiers. They define “ecofiscal policy” as something that “corrects market price signals to encourage the economic activities we do want (job creation, investment, and innovation) while reducing those we don’t want (greenhouse gas emissions and the pollution of our land, air, and water).” There seems to be a semblance of steady state thinking among this otherwise rather conventional lot


How #AllLivesMatter And #BlackLivesMatter Can Devalue Life 
By Sam Husseini

http://www.countercurrents.org/husseini310715.htm

It may be possible to honor the noblest possible intent in #BlackLivesMatter: That we should rush to aid those lives that are disregarded by many. Likewise for #AllLivesMatter: We should be universal and apply the principle of veneration of the value of life truly to all. Both impulses in their best form would argue to seriously scrutinize the U.S. government's role as global rogue cop -- a "cop" more dangerous than the most violent, racist police operating in the U.S. today


Viet Nam A Half Century Later 
By David Swanson

http://www.countercurrents.org/swanson310715.htm

Nine leaders of the U.S. antiwar movement of the 1960s have put their current thoughts down in a forthcoming book called The People Make the Peace: Lessons from the Vietnam Antiwar Movement. Those contributing to this book, and who recently returned to Vietnam together, are Rennie Davis, Judy Gumbo, Alex Hing, Doug Hostetter, Jay Craven, Becca Wilson, John McAuliff, Myra MacPherson, and Nancy Kurshan. Their insights into the war, the Vietnamese culture, and U.S. culture, and the peace movement are priceless


Darker Horizons Ahead: Rethinking The War On ‘IS’ 
By Ramzy Baroud

http://www.countercurrents.org/baroud310715.htm

As much of the Middle East sinks deeper into division between competing political camps, the so-called ‘Islamic State’ (‘IS’) continues its unhindered march towards a twisted version of a Muslim caliphate. Many thousands have lost their lives, some in the most torturous ways, so that ‘IS’ may realize its nightmarish dream


The 1965 War: An Army Wife Remembers 
By Asha Vombatkere

http://www.countercurrents.org/vombatkere310715.htm

I realize that I am one of the really fortunate wives who got her husband back intact, and we have just celebrated our Golden Wedding Annversary. For me, it is a time to pay homage to all the brave soldiers who laid down their lives for their country, and to those wives and mothers who carried on bravely after those dearest to them had left forever


Kerala Rise Up In Defense Of Teesta Setalvad
By Countercurrents.org

http://www.countercurrents.org/cc310715.htm

Solidarity Youth Movement of Kerala held a protest rally in front of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) office in Kochi against the blatant misuse of power against human rights defenders Teesta Setalvad , her husband Javed Anand and others


The Politics Of Panopticism In Kashmir 
By Ghulam Mohammad Khan

http://www.countercurrents.org/khan310715.htm

To understand the amount of truth and practicality of the Foucauldian assertion, an analysis of the anatomy of social and political system in Kashmir would be considerably a better option. If Kashmir be the ‘enclosed, segmented space’, the nature of its political power, historically a hegemonic institution of social oppression would be it’s, what Foucault calls ‘disciplinary mechanism’. Every Kashmiri unwittingly participates in this mechanism, which had over the period of time produced a powerful discourse of knowledge of its own in the form of laws, of policies and manifestoes


Kodaikanal Won't: Chennai-Born Rapper Takes On 
Unilever For Mercury Contamination 
By Countercurrents.org

http://www.countercurrents.org/cc310715A.htm

Written by Chennai-born rapper Sofia Ashraf and set to Nicki Minaj's “Anaconda,” the video takes an undisguised jab at Unilever for its failure to clean up mercury contamination or compensate workers affected by its thermometer factory in Kodaikanal


Hidden Agenda Behind Amendment To Statistical ACT 
By Abdul Majid Zargar

http://www.countercurrents.org/zargar310715.htm

New Delhi has proposed to amend the Collection of Statistics Act, 2008 (hereinafter referred to as Central Act )so as to enable it to bring within it’s ambit the State of Jammu and Kashmir. If the amendment goes through, New-Delhi will be able to collect & process data relating to statistical subjects falling in the Union List as applicable to Jammu and Kashmir State under the Constitutional (Application to J&K ) Order 1954