CounterCurrents:Middle East Tensions Escalate In Wake Of Saudi Mass Beheadings, Kosovo: NATO’s Success Story?, Playing The Government’s Game: When It Comes To Violence, We All Lose

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www.countercurrents.org

Middle East Tensions Escalate In Wake Of Saudi Mass Beheadings 
By Bill Van Auken

http://www.countercurrents.org/auken050116.htm

Tensions within the war-ravaged Middle East have escalated sharply in the wake of Saudi Arabia’s January 2 mass executions of 47 prisoners, including a prominent Shia cleric who had criticized the ruling monarchy and its suppression of the country’s Shia minority population. Saudi Arabia cut all diplomatic ties with Iran on Sunday, using angry protests against the beheading of the Shia cleric, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, as the pretext. On Monday, the Saudi monarchy followed up its severing of diplomatic links with the announcement that it is also banning all flights to and from Iran and also cutting trade ties. The Saudi actions were followed Monday by Bahrain and Sudan severing diplomatic ties with Iran as well. Another Sunni gulf oil sheikdom, the United Arab Emirates, downgraded its diplomatic relations with Tehran, but stopped short of severing all ties with Iran


America's Now-Aggressive War Against Russia 
By Eric Zuesse

http://www.countercurrents.org/zuesse050116.htm

America's aristocracy is determined to take over Russia. Ever since the end of the Soviet Union and of its communism, the Cold War has become replaced by an increasingly hot war in which the U.S. and its allies are expanding NATO right up to Russia's borders, and imposing against Russia what the U.S. refused to accept being imposed upon itself during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis: nuclear checkmate! 


Kosovo: NATO’s Success Story? 
By Dan Glazebrook

http://www.countercurrents.org/glazebrook050116.htm

The ‘lesson’ of Kosovo, then, is not that “airpower works” or any other such nonsense. The real lesson is what it reveals about NATO’s formula for the destruction of independent regional powers - relying on a combination of aerial bombardment alongside the empowerment of local sectarian death squads, who come to dominate the political scene in the aftermath, obliterating the rule of law and guaranteeing a dysfunctional state incapable of providing either dignity or security to its citizens. This was the same formula that was used on Libya in 2011 and currently being attempted in Syria today


Playing The Government’s Game: When It Comes To Violence, We All Lose 
By John W. Whitehead

http://www.countercurrents.org/whitehead050116.htm

This is exactly what those who drafted the U.S. Constitution feared: that laws and law enforcers would be used as tools by a despotic government to wage war against the citizenry. That is exactly what we are witnessing today: a war against the American citizenry. Is it any wonder then that Americans are starting to resist?


On Women, Coding And Capabilities 
By Mateo Pimentel

http://www.countercurrents.org/pimentel050116.htm

In advanced industrial societies where coding reigns supreme, the social relations of science and technology have largely restructured the “historical positions” of women. Some have categorized such “women’s places” in advanced capitalist societies as the home, market, work place, state, school, hospital and church. One more task is thus to identify “women’s places” in coding and other software engineering spheres in order to reveal how power structures and social life are further plagued by a lack of equal worth


Dress Codes: Culture or Patriarchy? 
By Nikita Azad

http://www.countercurrents.org/azad050116.htm

On January 1, 2016, many pilgrims had gone to various temples in Tamil Nadu to seek blessings from god for the next year, where women were turned back, and sent home for wearing western clothes, jeans, or shorts. It happened because in December the Madras High Court ordered temple authorities in Tamil Nadu state to refuse entry to anyone wearing jeans, bermuda shorts, skirts, short-sleeves or tight leggings to "enhance spiritual ambiance"


No Hope Of Justice For Indian Farmers 
By Moin Qazi

http://www.countercurrents.org/qazi050116.htm

India’s economy may be soaring, but agriculture remains its Achilles’ heel, the source of livelihood for hundreds of millions of people but a fraction of the nation’s total economy and a symbol of its abiding difficulties. In what some see as an ominous trend, food production, once India’s great pride, has failed to keep pace with the nation’s population growth in the last decade. The cries of Indian farmers can hardly be neglected by the leaders of a country where two-thirds of people still live in the countryside


Lodha Committee Report Cleans The Dirt Of Corruption In BCCI 
By Dr. Vivek Kumar Srivastava

http://www.countercurrents.org/vks050116.htm

Lodha committee report is not a report solely on the BCCI but it also indicates that all is not well in the Indian politics. The penetrating efforts of Indian politicians in the glamorous world of cricket represented by BCCI and state bodies are not good for any one. Politicians must learn this message from the report


Vizhinjam Port Project Is A Huge Scam: S.P. Udayakumar

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