CounterCurrents: Kissinger To Kurds: F*ck ‘em If They Can’t Take A Joke!, Saudi Executions: Some Possible Consequences, America's Vampire Aristocracy ,

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Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org


Outrage Over Mass Execution In Saudi Arabia 
By Bill Van Auken

http://www.countercurrents.org/auken040116.htm

Washington’s closest ally in the Arab world, the dictatorial monarchy of Saudi Arabia, ushered in the New Year with a torrent of blood, simultaneously executing 47 prisoners. This wave of state murders unfolded at 12 separate prisons across the kingdom. At eight of them, the condemned were beheaded, while at four others they were cut down by firing squads. The headless corpses were then crucified and left hanging in public as a hideous warning to any who would even contemplate opposing the absolute power of the ruling royal family


Saudi Executions: Some Possible Consequences 
By Chandra Muzaffar

http://www.countercurrents.org/muzaffar040116.htm

The execution of 47 people by the Saudi authorities on the 2nd of January 2016 reinforces my deeply held conviction that the death penalty should be abolished. No State should have the power to impose the death penalty on anyone. It is a right that can be abused and misused so easily. As of now, 140 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice. In Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, the number of people put to death by the State has seen a big increase, from 90 in 2014 to 157 in 2015. Another country in West Asia which had also executed a huge number of people in 2015 is the Islamic Republic of Iran: 694 between 1 January and 15 July


America's Vampire Aristocracy 
By Eric Zuesse

http://www.countercurrents.org/zuesse040116.htm

On January 2nd, America's NBC News bannered “Arab Spring Cleric Nimr al-Nimr Among 47 Executed by Saudi Arabia,” and, one-third of the way into their report, showed this tweet:“Saudi execution of Nimr al-Nimr along w/ al Qaeda members is straight from Assad's playbook - lumping nonviolent activists with terrorists. Even when Sunni-Islamic extremists, the Sauds, perpetrate mass-murder, in Saudi Arabia and not only in Yemen and in Syria, the U.S. ‘news' media find some way to smear their audience's minds with the demon, “Bashar al-Assad,” as if Assad actually had anything to do with it

The Judiciary And The Human-Right Violations Of ‘Democratic’ States 
By Sukumaran C. V.

http://www.countercurrents.org/sukumaran040116.htm

How can expressing one’s opinion on the Court’s denial of bail to a person with 90 per cent disability be ‘interfering in the administration of justice’? Who is lowering down the image of the judiciary—the judges who deny bail to a completely disabled person even when India is party to international covenants on disability rights, and Indian law expressly forbids the incarceration of a person who is disabled as an undertrial for a prolonged period or writers like Arundhati Roy? And what is the selfish motive of Arundhati Roy?


Progress Can Kill: Survival Report Reveals World’s Highest Suicide Rate
By Survival International

http://www.countercurrents.org/pr040116.htm

A new report published by Survival International reveals that the appalling suicide rate among the indigenous Guarani Kaiowá people of southern Brazil is the highest in the world. The rate of self-inflicted deaths within the tribe is 34 times the Brazilian national average, and statistically the highest among any society anywhere on earth. The report, “Progress can Kill”, exposes the devastating consequences of loss of land and autonomy on tribal peoples. As well as the shockingly high suicide rates among tribes, it also reveals high rates of alcoholism, obesity, depression and other health problems


Visits And Conversations In A Kabul Winter 
By Kathy Kelly

http://www.countercurrents.org/kelly040116.htm

Aaron helps build a “flower house” to shelter new seeds. He forges links with people who might otherwise be forgotten, and urges us to sit down with each other and talk. These are small seeds, and we shelter and nurture them in our hope to find future generations ready to abandon the violence of economic and environmental exploitation, --young people convinced that war is futile, whose empathy for neighbors in need steadies and energizes them


Kissinger To Kurds: F*ck ‘em If They Can’t Take A Joke! 
By Mickey Z.

http://www.countercurrents.org/mickeyz040116.htm

When asked to explain America’s duplicity towards the Kurds, Kissinger delivered a one-liner that effectively sums up the perpetual purpose of phallocentric, necrophilic U.S. foreign policy: “Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.” Let’s keep this in mind as we peruse this year’s corporate media headlines and listen to the latest candidate-criminals pontificate about their “plans” for tackling the “crisis in the Middle East.”


Pharming 
By John Scales Avery

http://www.countercurrents.org/avery040116.htm

A major global public health crisis may soon be produced by the wholesale use of antibiotics in the food of healthy farm animals. The resistance factors produced by shoveling antibiotics into animal food produces resistance factors (plasmids) which can easily be transferred to human pathogens. A related problem is the excessive use of pesticides and artificial fossil-fuel-derived fertilizers in agriculture. Pharming is not a joke. It is a serious threat


Black And Blonde 
By Linh Dinh

http://www.countercurrents.org/dinh040116.htm

All of the anti-cop graffiti I’ve seen in Germany are written in English, by the way. This is only appropriate since many of these radicals’ firmest and most up-to-date beliefs have also been imported from the USA. Even the slogans are often the same, i.e., “NO MAN IS ILLEGAL.” Believing themselves so progressive, they’re actually just puppets of the empire. No Arminiuses, they’re bit players in Rome’s master scheme. Media masturbated, they’re preparing their own kind for rape


Comrade, Why Can’t You Say We Had Ambedkar…? 
By T Venkateshwarlu

http://www.countercurrents.org/venkateshwarlu040116.htm

In four day Communist Party of India (Marxist) plenum in Kolkata recognized ‘Social oppression’ is the key area to organize the people and identified two main problems of people that ‘Economic exploitation’ and ‘Social oppression’. It is a good change to recognize social oppression as a key problem of people but it stopped short of recognising its own failure in understanding India's caste phenomenon


The Faultlines In Our Battle Against Poverty 
By Moin Qazi

http://www.countercurrents.org/qazi040116.htm

Tackling poverty requires an approach that must start with the people themselves and encourage the initiative, creativity and drive from below. The strategy must be at the core of any transformatory exercise if the results are to be lasting and enduring. I had the privilege of watching the village women acquire a sense of dignity once they were given tools for self-sufficiency. And I learned, maybe most importantly, to listen with my heart and not just my head. Are poor clients last in the long list of our objectives?


Leave Kashmiris Alone! 
By Mohammad Ashraf

http://www.countercurrents.org/ashraf040116.htm

Indo-Pak bonhomie is welcome but it would be successful only if both countries decide to leave Kashmiris alone by declaring Kashmir as neutral territory!

Nature Will Strike Back, Says Poet-Activist Sugathakumari

http://www.countercurrents.org/sugathakumari040116.htm