CounterCurrents: While The Arctic Superheats, Pipeline Wars Continue, America Cannot Be Great Again

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Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org

Rape And Sexual Violence Against Adivasi Women Continue In Chhattisgarh
By Women Against Sexual Violence And State Repression (WSS)

http://www.countercurrents.org/wss210316.htm

Security forces continue to unleash indescribable sexual violence against Adivasi women, including rape and molestation, in the name of anti-naxal combing operation in Chatisgarh. We are publishing two fact finding reports done by Women Against Sexual Violence And State Repression (WSS) in two different parts of Chhattisgarh. "Nendra held captive by State Forces" describes loot and plunder, sexual violence, rapes, and physical assault between the 11th and 14th of January 2016 in Nendra, a village in the Usur Block of Bijapur District. The second report "The Violent Truth of Anti-Naxal Operations in South Chhattisgarh (The case of villages on the border of Sukma and Dantewada) " follows the same pattern of violence but describes a bizarre incident when women's "breasts were squeezed and nipples pinched with the assumption that if they were not lactating mothers, they would be Naxalites. When a woman was not lactating, she was taunted saying that they could help her conceive"


Does Bharat Mata Approve Of Beef Lynchings?
By Samar

http://www.countercurrents.org/samar210316.htm

The picture showing two Muslims – one of them a teenaged boy – hanging by a tree in Latehar, Jharkhand is going to haunt the Republic for a long time. Nothing indicts the failure of a criminal justice system like a lynch mob. Whether they may seem to reflect righteous anger or not, whether they operate by design or default, lynch mobs prove that the State has lost sole control over coercive power, the cornerstone of maintaining law and order


While The Arctic Superheats, Pipeline Wars Continue 
By John Scales Avery

http://www.countercurrents.org/avery210316.htm

It is disturbing to see how little effect the the earth's present critical climate emergency has on the behaviour of politicians and the mass media. Recent data show that the earth is heating much faster than expected, and that this is most pronounced in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. An extremely dangerous methane hydrate feedback loop could be initiated by melting permafrost and by the warming Arctic seas. This feedback loop could lead to uncontrollable and catastrophic climate change. But although the use of fossil fuels must stop within one or two decades if a planetary disaster is to be avoided, pipline wars continue as usual


America Cannot Be Great Again 
By Linh Dinh

http://www.countercurrents.org/dinh210316.htm

Our ruling elites know the global economy is keeling, and that’s why they’re preparing for war. When there’s less to go around, only the most vicious will eat. Most Americans don’t realize they’ve been living way beyond their means for decades. With record debts, the US is in fact the poorest country on earth, but this is not evident since we have a global goon squad called the United States military. Keeping nearly the entire world in line, we can demand goods with our fiat money. Even Bernie Sanders knows this, and that’s why he’s basically a support-the-troops and anti-Russia kind of guy


The Crusade In Favour Of GMO: Falsehoods And Vilification Will Not Fool The Public 
By Colin Todhunter

http://www.countercurrents.org/todhunter210316.htm

The smear campaigns engaged in by pro-GMO economic neoliberal crusaders are intended to denigrate all criticism of GMOs in the eyes of the public, from wherever it comes. By attacking KRTK, Entine doesn’t destroy or undermine the logic and facts upon which critics of GM base their arguments, including those of Rachel Parent. If anything, this type of hit piece, laced with the usual misrepresentations about the efficacy, safety and reality of GM, indicates a certain desperation and demonstrates a failure to convince the public about the need for GM


White Feminists/Black Blobs 
By Mara Ahmed

http://www.countercurrents.org/ma210316.htm

The struggle against patriarchy, that’s what I kept coming back to - how it is twofold for women who belong to disenfranchised communities. On the one hand we must contend with white men in suits, with long histories of imperial profiteering, sitting calmly in boardrooms, instituting laws that control the Maghrebian woman’s body. We have white women who in their haste to diagnose oppression, marginalize further by dehumanizing and isolating what is not in line with their ideas of female emancipation. Then we have the struggle within our own communities, where patriarchy, conservative tradition, and autocratic political structures have brewed a lethal mix. These factors are not disconnected from history and global politics of course. Saudi Arabia is a particularly good example of how the West remains complicit in the repression of Arab self-expression. Close military ties between the United States and the Saudi regime ensure just that


Nation And Its Violences 
By Sanjay Kumar

http://www.countercurrents.org/skumar210316.htm

Democratic politics would play into Hindutva's plans if it tries to prove itself to be a better example of nationalist politics. Democracy does not exist for the nation, nation exists for democracy. The importance of someone like Kanhaiya Kumar lies precisely in this. His narrative, centered around the slogan of azadi presents an alternate framework, which is quotidian, resonates with the everyday experiences of Indians, and is sufficiently suffused with political values to give them subjective resources to fight for a better life. India desperately needs many more of such narratives. Otherwise, history shows that societies which get sucked into the black hole of fascism, get out of it only after wholesale disasters


Book Review - Hindu Hriday Samrat 
By Suraj Kumar Thube

http://www.countercurrents.org/thube210316.htm

There is normally a sense that a biography of a towering personality, especially after his or her death, suddenly generates some sort of excitement among a section of readers . It happens to gain much traction if it is to be a politician for some reason. Sujata Anandan's captivating new book titled " Hindu Hriday Samrat" on the enigma that was Balasaheb Thackeray, falls in that list. With a wealth of experience of tracking the rise and fall of the Shiv Sena over the years, the writer does a fine job of reproducing certain key incidents and events of Bal Thackeray's life and the overall impact it had on shaping "Mumbai's" identity in general


The Lynch Mob Of Latehar
By Peoples Union For Democratic Rights

http://www.countercurrents.org/pudr210316.htm

In the early hours of 18th March 2016, Mohammad Majloom Ansari (35) and Inayahtullah Khan (12) were found hanging from a tree in the Balumath forest area in Latehar, Jharkhand. Residents of Balugoan and Nawada villages, Ansari and young Khan were on their way to the weekly cattle fair with their eight buffaloes when they were stopped, thrashed, strangled and hanged by a lynch mob. So far the police has arrested 5 men and is on the lookout for three others. It has also clamped S.144 IPC in Balumath in a bid to quell communal tensions. Surprisingly, till now, the police has been reluctant to question the Latehar Gau Raksha Samiti even though one of the accused, Mithilesh Prasad Sahu, is a known member of the organization


People’s Movements In India And Bangladesh Join Hands To Save Sunderbans, 
Support Extended To The Struggle Against Rampal Coal Power Project In Bangladesh
By National Alliance of People’s Movements

http://www.countercurrents.org/napm210316.htm

In yet another major initiative strengthening people-to-people cooperation between South Asian nations, people’s movements in India joined hands with their Bangladesh counterparts to save the Sunderbans. This was declared in Delhi by a delegation of 11 senior activists who took part in the Long March organized by National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and started from Bangladesh’s capital city Dhaka on March 10 to Kathakhali Morh, Bagherhat district, Bangladesh – a distance of 250 kms from the capital