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Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org
Justice For Rohith Vemula Protesters Brutally Beaten Up By Police And Hindutva Goons Near RSS Office In New Delhi
By Countercurrents.org
http://www.countercurrents.org/cc310116.htm
Hundreds of Students who were protesting against the institutional murder of dalit sholar Rohith Vemula were brutally lathicharged by the police and hindutva goons near the RSS office in New Delhi yesterday. Students from several colleges and universtities in Delhi marched to the RSS office demanding justice for Rohith, on his 27th birth day. Students were stopped near the RSS office and police and hinudtva goons brutally assaulted them, injuring several students. Even the media persons covering the event were not spared. They too were attacked and cameras damaged
On Rohith’s Birthday, Taking Forward The Lessons From His Note, And From His Life!
By Pranay Patil
http://www.countercurrents.org/patil310116.htm
From Eklavya to Rohith Vemula, thousands of students have been victims of subjugation by the virtue of their immediate identity. The stars in Rohith’s eyes might have been put to the rest, but his words will live on, and haunt us. The system might have silenced him, but it failed to imagine the power of science, the power of dreams to transcend boundaries. Hundreds and thousands of students across the country now own the cause that Rohith believed in. They share his dream, the same dream that Dr. Ambedkar, Periyar, Savitri Bai Phule, Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj and other propagators of social justice lived for. They will carry the same stars that he had, march on towards the world he longed to see, and carry on the fight, until victory!
2016 Space Odyssey
By Cynthia Stephen
http://www.countercurrents.org/stephen310116.htm
A poem on Rohith Vemula’s death
What Is Happening In Libya And Why Nobody Talks About It?
By Shubhda Chaudhary
http://www.countercurrents.org/chaudhary310116.htm
The revolution has failed in Libya for sure, but what about the future, what about the solution? The western countries are hardly interested in a non ambiguous plan of action along with the UN. So, will be mutely be spectators as Libya’s case worsens and it implodes?
Politically overshadowed, Libya, in spite of its tumultuous irony with Arab Spring hardly marks advent into limelight. With a government that barely exists, Washington is preparing to take “decisive military action” in Libya against the alarming growth of ISIS.
“Action in Libya is needed before Libya becomes a sanctuary for ISIL (another name for ISIS), before they become extremely hard to dislodge,” said US Defense Official. A team of six British RAF officers and MI6 operatives flew to an airbase near the eastern Libyan city of Tobruk, which is under control by internationally recognized militia forces. In November, a US F-16 fighter jet struck the eastern town of Derna, killing Abu Nabil, also known as Wissam Najm Abd Zayd al-Zubaydi, the local ISIS leader.
In October 2011, the U.S., France and Britain launched attacks that led to the overthrow of the Libyan leader Gadaffi. The majority of Libyans are demonstrably worse off today than they were under Gaddafi, notwithstanding his personality cult and authoritarian rule. The slaughter is getting worse by the month and is engulfing the entire country. There is an ongoing civil war between the Council of Deputies in Tobruk and its supporters, the New General National Congress in Tripoli and its supporters, and various jihadists and tribal elements controlling parts of the country. While foreign pressure builds to tackle a threat from Islamic State militants, Libya’s internationally recognized parliament, based in the east, has rejected a main article in the U.N. accord as well as a proposed list of ministers.
It now has two governments and parliaments, with the internationally recognized authorities based in the east and a militia-backed authority in the capital Tripoli. In December, Libya’s warring factions signed a UN-backed peace deal designed to establish a unity government that could lead a military push against Isis. However, earlier this week Libya’s internationally recognized parliament rejected the proposed new government.
Noted journalist Patrick Cockburn had rightly stated ‘Human rights organisations have had a much better record in Libya than the media since the start of the uprising in 2011. They discovered that there was no evidence for several highly publicised atrocities supposedly carried out by Gaddafi's forces that were used to fuel popular support for the air war in the US, Britain, France and elsewhere.’
Libya is imploding. Its oil exports have fallen from 1.4 million barrels a day in 2011 to 235,000 barrels a day. Militias hold 8,000 people in prisons, many of whom say they have been tortured. Some 40,000 people from the town of Tawergha south of Misrata were driven from their homes which have been destroyed.
Unfortunately, the militias are getting stronger not weaker. Libya is a land of regional, tribal, ethnic warlords who are often simply well-armed racketeers exploiting their power and the absence of an adequate police force. Nobody is safe.
Libya represents a classic case of the failure of Arab Spring. Even though pro-democracy outbursts took place in 2011, after the death of Gadaffi, Libya has descended into a political morass. The foreign intervention of US, France and Britain in Libya with the imposition of a ‘No Fly Zone’, camouflaging the Western vested interests of implementing neo-conservative regime have failed in Libya as it did earlier in Iraq.
There are few hard-line questions though that makes Libya a difference.
Firstly, the media blackout regarding the political condition in Libya is making it very difficult to meticulously decipher what is happening in the country. Whether the media blackout is deliberate or just because Libya is unsafe for journalists, still can be debated.
Secondly, media is flooded with the news and narratives about the refugees from Syria but why no one talks about Libyan refugees. What happened to them, amidst the tribal and ethnic tension that is catapulting the state into a condition of complete failure?
Thirdly, there are numerous militants being recruited from Libya into ISIS. The main question here is how they are getting arms and financed. There is hardly any concrete evidence regarding it.
The revolution has failed in Libya for sure, but what about the future, what about the solution? The western countries are hardly interested in a non ambiguous plan of action along with the UN.
So, will be mutely be spectators as Libya’s case worsens and it implodes?
Shubhda Chaudhary is a PhD scholar in International Relations at Jawaharlal Nehru University. She specialises in West Asian politics and works with think-tanks in Abu Dhabi and South Africa. Email id: shubhda.chaudhary@gmail.com
What 'Who Took Johnny' Can Teach Us About Filmmaking,
'Sex' Trafficking, And Missing Children
By Mickey Z.
http://www.countercurrents.org/mickeyz310116.htm
There are currently almost 90,000 unsolved missing person cases in the department of justice database, and it's clear that even with all of the advancements in technology and public awareness, the problem of missing and exploited children has only gotten worse since Johnny disappeared over 30 years ago. Understandably with such an ugly issue, people would rather skip-over reading about these stories or change the channel of a news report, pretending the problem doesn't exist, rather than confront the brutality of the exploitation and trafficking of children in USA
Where Is The West's Compassion And Condemnation
Following Terror Attacks In Middle East?
By Eva Bartlett
http://www.countercurrents.org/bartlett310116.htm
The list of terror attacks in Syria, and neighbouring Lebanon and Iraq, is an endless and long list. Yet, while the vast majority of the victims are civilians, their deaths do not merit the same front-page coverage as similar acts do in the West; the terror attacks do not merit the same statements of condemnation and outpouring of sorrow issued by Western leaders when terrorism strikes elsewhere
The West Is Reduced To Looting Itself
By Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.countercurrents.org/pcr310116.htm
With the entire Third World now exploited to the limits possible, the West has turned to looting its own. Ireland has been looted, and the looting of Greece and Portugal is so severe that it has forced large numbers of young women into prostitution. But this doesn’t bother the Western conscience. What has happened to Greece and Portugal is underway in Spain and Italy. The peoples are powerless because their governments do not represent them
Free University Education Via Accredited Remote Learning – All Education Should Be Free For All
By Dr Gideon Polya
http://www.countercurrents.org/polya310116.htm
Education is a basic human right and all education should be free. Free university education has been adopted by about 20 variously rich or poor countries for all or a substantial proportion of their university students. However the Anglosphere countries (the UK, the US, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand) ) are peculiar in imposing a huge and unjust education debt on university students as well as imposing a huge and inescapable Carbon Debt on young people through disproportionately huge greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution. However Accredited Remote Learning (ARL) via Free Universities (FUs) (e.g. an Australian Free University) can circumvent this pro-One Percenter, neoliberal perversion
The Times Endorses Hillary: Heinous Non-Surprise
By Steve Breyman
http://www.countercurrents.org/breyman310116.htm
The latest example of disgusting normal is the New York Times’ endorsement of Hillary Clinton—it’s fourth across the years. The Times apparently believes Hillary is more electable than Bernie, despite polls showing that Sanders matches up as well against the Republican field as does Clinton. The timing of the endorsement is telling, coming right before the Iowa caucuses (just like it’s endorsement of Clinton in 2008). The editorial board must be nervous that someone besides their preferred candidate wins in Iowa, again
What is it about some radicals’ (including this one’s) problem with the inevitable, the predictable? Given our accurate worldview—the world is run for the rich and powerful, by the rich and powerful—we ought not be perturbed when the rich and powerful do what’s in their perceived interest. Is it because the expected is so loathsome? Could it be we still harbor some jot of hope that right makes might?
The latest example of disgusting normal is the New York Times’ endorsement of Hillary Clinton—it’s fourth across the years (twice for US Senate, and for the Democratic nomination in 2008). What makes it so vile is the editorial board’s feigned “confidence and enthusiasm” on behalf of “one of the most broadly and deeply qualified presidential candidates in modern history.”
Clinton’s broad and deep qualifications, and the record she carved while earning them,make up one half of what’s wrong with her as prospective president. The Times cites her Senate experience, her stint as secretary of state, and “her experience on the national stage as first lady with her brilliant and flawed husband, President Bill Clinton,” but says little about her ‘accomplishments’ in these roles.
We learn nothing from the endorsement about her ingrained corruption, her pay to play existence, including service on Wal-Mart and other corporate boards, her repellent speaking fees, or her role in soliciting large foreign contributions for the Clinton Foundation.
The Times breezes past her militarism and jingoism, her readiness to invade anywhere at anytime “but we have no doubt that Mrs. Clinton would use American military power effectively and with infinitely more care and wisdom than any of the leading Republican contenders.” There’s very little if any distance between the Republicans and Clinton on defense and foreign policy, including the former’s grotesque promises to kill even more innocents in the War on Terror. Unable to cite a single example of the “effective” use of American military power from the past seventy years, the paper must keep it vague.
The editorial forgets and thus forgives Clinton’s awful record in Haiti, her demonization of Chavez in Venezuela, and her central role in the Honduran coup.Instead, the paper coos, “As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton worked tirelessly, and with important successes, for the nation’s benefit. She was the secretary President Obama needed and wanted: someone who knew leaders around the world, who brought star power as well as expertise to the table.”
There’s no mention of Clinton’s support for nuclear weapons modernization or her critical role in ginning up the new cold war with Russia. The paper apologized for its own role in enabling George Bush’s invasion of Iraq; it ignores Hillary’s. As Senator and Secretary of State, Clinton favored force over negotiation at every juncture, but you wouldn’t learn this from the Times endorsement.The paper lauds Clinton’s lecture to Arab leaders to neoliberalize their economies and polities, “before the Arab Spring,” as if she weren’t a personal friend of Hosni Mubarak’s who helped him hang on longer—resulting in the deaths of hundreds of nonviolent protesters—than he would’ve without her and Obama’s support.
The endorsement misses Clinton’s role in spreading lies about Gaddafi regime atrocities, propaganda indispensable for NATO’s campaign of regime change. We’re not reminded of her cold-blooded quip—“We came, we saw, he died”—upon the occasion of the despot’s murder at the hands of a street mob. The horrors of post-Gaddafi Libya are conveniently ignored.
The Times acknowledges that “certainly, the Israeli-Palestinian crisis deepened during her tenure,” but quickly adds,“she did not cause that.” Not singlehandedly, of course, but her unwillingness to stand up to Netanyahu, her continued and unwavering defense of Israel in international bodies, and her failure to threaten an aid cut off, surely helped to sustain the occupation.
Clinton’s current policy prescriptions make up the second half of the case for why she’d be at least as bad a president as Barack Obama. Clinton was and is a cheerleader for assassination by drone. She voted for the Patriot Act, and its reauthorization, and remains a supporter of mass surveillance. She’s as vindictive and wrong headed about whistleblowers, including Edward Snowden, as Obama. She’s ready to go to war in Syria, a bridge too far even for the Times: “We are not convinced that a no-fly zone is the right approach in Syria.”
The paper defends Clinton’s proposals for tweaks to the inadequate Dodd-Frank, and lauds her milquetoast proposals for “controls on high-frequency trading and stronger curbs on bank speculation in derivatives” as if their enough to defend Main Street from Wall Street.
The editorial writers likely cramped up with their stretch defending Hillary’s “pledge to support the well-being and rights of working Americans.” Where was Clinton as labor unions shriveled following sustained attack from business lobbies, offshoring of manufacturing jobs, and the anti-labor policies of recent presidents including those of “her brilliant and flawed husband”? Seen her at a Fight for $15 rally? Opportunistic labor leaders may endorse Hillary, but the rank and file is hardly enthused.
Like the candidate herself, the Times highlights her feminist icon status, as if reproductive rights and verbal support for equal pay were all American women need. The paper is satisfied by her underwhelming proposals for paid family leave, child care and work schedule stabilization. The contradictions between her brand of feminism and the substance of her corporate Democrat economic policies—including eager backing for “free trade agreements”—go unaddressed.The Times explains her recent reversal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a corporate domination scheme for which she robustly campaigned as Secretary of State, as “a refreshing willingness to learn.”
The editorial finds in Clinton a “steeliness that will serve her well in negotiating with a difficult Congress on critically important issues like climate change.” It ignores that she waited to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline until it was going down to defeat. There’s nothing about her years-long sales pitch for fracking overseas. The deluge of oil money flowing to the Clinton Foundation is skipped. Her support for offshore drilling and lack of leadership on climate change go unraised. At best, Hillary Clinton’s energy and environmental policies would look like Barack Obama’s third term. At worst, they’d look like Bill Clinton’s.
The Times case against Bernie is the same thin gruel dished up by the Washington Post, and the growing chorus of liberal attacks on the Vermonter as he catches on with publics in early primary states. He lacks experience (after serving as a mayor, member of Congress, and US Senator), exhibits insufficient “breadth of policy ideas” (while his program puts everybody but Jill Stein’s to shame), and lacks realism (the editorial flags his calls for dismantling too big to fail banks and for Medicare for All).
Like the Clinton campaign,the editorial writers gun control-bait a guy with a D- rating from the NRA, and suggest Hillary is the better women’s advocate because she came out against the Hyde Amendment before Sanders did.
The Times apparently believes Hillary is more electable than Bernie, despite polls showing that Sanders matches up as well against the Republican field as does Clinton. The timing of the endorsement is telling, coming right before the Iowa caucuses (just like it’s endorsement of Clinton in 2008). The editorial board must be nervous that someone besides their preferred candidate wins in Iowa, again.
Steve Breyman was a William C. Foster Visiting Scholar Fellow in the Clinton State Department, and serves as an advisor to Jill Stein, candidate for the Green Party presidential nomination. Reach him at breyms@rpi.edu
By Gaither Stewart
http://www.countercurrents.org/stewart310116.htm
The worldwide influence of the Roman Catholic Church emanates from the Holy See,which is the Church’s central government headed by the Pope and physically located within the territory of the Vatican State inside the city of Rome with a population of 821. The Holy See has diplomatic relations with world nations which maintain two separate embassies in Rome: one to Italy and one to the Holy See. Now why the hell, one wonders, should Argentina or the USA, China or Gabon maintain diplomatic relations with a church? Likewise the Holy See has its embassies around the world, the nunciatures, while from day to day the Roman Church insists on meddling in Italy’s and world affairs. Today the Roman Catholic is effectively blocking new legislationon on same sex marriages and concommitant rights in Italy and other countries. One of the first demonstrative acts of each new pope is a triumphant cortege through the streets of “Italy”, just across the Tiber River from the Vatican
Hindutva Politics And Islamist Politics Are Two Sides Of The Same Coin - Part II
By Shamsul Islam
http://www.countercurrents.org/islam310116.htm
The Hindutva cronies like RSS and Hindu Mahasabha make a brazen claim that they that they were the only ones who opposed the divisive, communal and two-nation politics of the anti-national Muslim League led by MA Jinnah and played great role in the freedom struggle. There cannot be a worst lie than this and only Hindutva gang can fabricate such lies. The pre-Independence political happenings and documents from the archives of the Hindutva organizations tell us a shameful story of Hindutva organizations aligning with the Muslim League which stood for the Partition of our country
Shame! We Are Turning Our Rivers Into Sewers
By Marianne Furtado de Nazareth
http://www.countercurrents.org/nazareth310116.htm
Like anywhere in India, Madurai district is dotted with hundreds of small and large water tanks that are networked with its main river Vaigai and minor river Kruthumal with the help of many distributor channels. However the wisdom of the city forefathers, has been lost in the greed of a growing population and urbanization. Valuable water collection tank beds have been built upon and the river itself is used like a sewer and so, the city now struggles for a decent supply of fresh water
Monsanto’s Roundup Kills And Damages More Than Weeds
By Shepherd Bliss
http://www.countercurrents.org/bliss310116.htm
Protests against Monsanto’s Roundup, with its poisonous, weed-killing glyphosate, have spread around the globe. An arm of the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a probable cause of cancer in 2015. California’s Environmental Protection Agency (CA EPA) recently decided to label it as such. Environmental groups and activists in Northern California, a region known for its wines, advocate a moratorium on this herbicide as health concerns mount. Roundup is the world’s most widely used pesticide
Lala of Lahore And Lion of Punjab: Lala Lajpat Rai
By Ravi Nitesh
http://www.countercurrents.org/nitesh310116.htm
As, Lala Lajpat Rai is famous as "Lion of Punjab", I find that he has so strong connection with Lahore that we can call him as Lala of Lahore as well. Present India and Pakistan are actually the same piece of land for which Lala ji and others sacrificed their life. But, it is unfortunate that the two countries have developed many conflicts by the time. It must be remembered that those who fought against British rule were actually belonged to India and Pakistan both and they fought for all the people who were living in British India. Now, it is turn of present generation to move together, to make these sacrifices meaningful. Keeping it in mind will be important in terms of the motivation that it can provide, for working genuinely towards common betterment with the true sense and emotions of love
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