CounterCurrents: How Yarmouk Came About: Israel’s Unabashed Role in The Syrian Refugee Crisis, Polls Show Syrians Overwhelmingly Blame U.S. For ISIS

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Binu Mathew
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www.countercurrents.org


Massive Earthquake Triggers Tsunami In Chile
By Countercurrents.org

http://www.countercurrents.org/cc170915.htm

A powerful earthquake has hit central Chile. The 8.3-magnitude tremor was centred off the coast, about 232kmnorth-west of the capital Santiago. The Weather.com reported that "The gauge in Coquimbo, Chile, recorded three tsunami waves of at least 4 meters (13 feet) each, including a maximum tsunami wave height 15.1 feet above normal tide levels. Several other Chilean coastal cities have recorded tsunami waves as well, though none nearly as dramatic as those in Coquimbo."


What Is Wrong With A Zero Interest Rate? 
By Herman Daly

http://www.countercurrents.org/daly170915.htm

The stock market took a dip, so the Fed will likely continue to keep the interest rate at zero, in conformity with its goal of supporting asset prices by quantitative easing. What is wrong with a zero interest rate? Doesn’t it boost investment, growth, and employment?


UN Urges Sri Lanka War Crimes Court 
By The Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice

http://www.countercurrents.org/slc170915.htm

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released its long awaited report into human rights violations in Sri Lanka 2002-2011. It calls for a war crimes court


Sri Lankans Disabled By War, Forgotten In Peace 
By Amantha Perera

http://www.countercurrents.org/perera170915.htm

Sri Lanka’s decades-long civil war ended six years ago, but it’s not over for many victims who suffered permanent injuries during the conflict. Government soldiers can receive assistance packages for injuries sustained in service, including the continuation of salaries for those able to work at desk jobs, or long-term care in military-run facilities for those severely disabled. But there is no programme to help civilians and former Tamil Tigers who remain permanently affected by injuries during the war


Polls Show Syrians Overwhelmingly Blame U.S. For ISIS 
By Eric Zuesse

http://www.countercurrents.org/zuesse170915.htm

The British polling organization ORB International, an affiliate of WIN/Gallup International, repeatedly finds in Syria that, throughout the country, Syrians oppose ISIS by about 80%, and (in the latest such poll) also finds that 82% of Syrians blame the U.S. for ISIS


Benign State Violence vs. Barbaric Terrorism 
By Matt Peppe

http://www.countercurrents.org/peppe170915.htm

One day in the not too distant future, the skies across the world may be full of drones from every country dispensing justice from Miami to Mumbai via Hellfire Missiles, relegating the rule of law and its method of trial by jury to the ash heap of history. And it will not be because of terrorist groups like ISIS that governments and the media are so forceful to condemn, but because of governments themselves and their lapdogs in the media who refuse to apply the same standards when judging violence to states that have their own Air Forces


How Yarmouk Came About: Israel’s Unabashed Role in The Syrian Refugee Crisis 
By Ramzy Baroud

http://www.countercurrents.org/baroud170915.htm

Over 3,000 Palestinians were killed, tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees fled Syria, thousands more became internally displaced and the hopeless journey away from the homeland continued on its horrific course. Yarmouk - a refugee camp of over 200,000 inhabitants, most of whom are registered refugees with the UN agency, UNRWA - was reduced to less than 20,000. Much of the camp stood in total ruins. Hundreds of its residents either starved to death or were killed in the war. The rest fled to other parts of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Europe


Monsanto's ‘Hand of God': Planned Obsolescence of The Indian Farmer 
By Colin Todhunter

http://www.countercurrents.org/todhunter170915.htm

While the West tries to impose its neoliberal agenda of cutting subsidies to agriculture and dismantling price support mechanisms and the public distribution system that if effectively run would allow Indian farmers to receive a decent stable income, farmers are unsurprisingly leaving the sector in droves as agriculture becomes economically non-viable. Forcing farmers to leave the land is a deliberate strategy. Just like it is a deliberate strategy to give massive handouts to industry and corporate concerns who are not delivering on jobs. It's all about priorities. And farmers are not a priority. They are being driven from farming, while all the advantages are being given to a failing corporate-industrial sector


Rape And Diplomacy In India 
By Zeeshan Hyder

http://www.countercurrents.org/hyder170915.htm

They came from the wrecked homes of Nepal, desperate for money. One was a divorcee, who lived with her two daughters and was the breadwinner of her family working as a laborer in Nepal. Another had lost her house to the catastrophic Earthquake in April this year and had come to Delhi to support her husband, who is fighting with cancer. Both came to Delhi in search of jobs, rather ‘respectable jobs’ but they had been sent by their recruiting agency to the new employer, Majed Ashoor, a Saudi Arabian, who enjoys a diplomatic status in India, who repeatedly raped them


The Proverbial“Red Rag”! 
By Mohammad Ashraf

http://www.countercurrents.org/ashraf170915.htm

The invoking of the cow slaughter ban through public interest litigation in the state high court appears to be a deliberate proverbial red rag to provoke the Kashmiris!


School Education In J & K Needs Urgent Reform 
By Masood Ali Mir

http://www.countercurrents.org/mir170915.htm

In order to have better results and to be purely and perfectly authentic to its purpose for which it has been created, there is a dear need of attention and reforms in certain areas of school education department if not the whole reformation and restructuring. To be up to the expectations of students, teachers, parents and the society of 21st century, the department has to re- adjust itself otherwise it will become irrelevant and obsolete. To be relevant it needs the immediate reforms in certain areas


The Failure of Development Programmes In India 
By Moin Qazi

http://www.countercurrents.org/qazi170915.htm

It is time we respect the wisdom of the villages .Panchayat Raj is just one of the ways of involving and empowering the grassroots to participate in the development agenda .The people are keen to climb their way out of the poverty tap .They don’t want handout ,they want handup