CounterCurrents: Palestine And Zioinism The Whole Truth, 2016 World Press Freedom Index:Leaders Paranoid About Journalists, Earth Is Our Mother, Nature Is Our Partner

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In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org

2016 World Press Freedom Index:Leaders Paranoid About Journalists
By Reporters Without Borders 

http://www.countercurrents.org/rwb210416.htm

Seen as a benchmark throughout the world, the Index ranks 180 countries according to the freedom allowed journalists. It also includes indicators of the level of media freedom violations in each region. These show that Europe (with 19.8 points) still has the freest media, followed distantly by Africa (36.9), which for the first time overtook the Americas (37.1), a region where violence against journalists is on the rise. Asia (43.8) and Eastern Europe/Central Asia (48.4) follow, while North Africa/Middle East (50.8) is still the region where journalists are most subjected to constraints of every kind


Civilians Under Fire As Islamic State Seizes Yarmouk 
By Maureen Clare Murphy

http://www.countercurrents.org/murphy210416.htm

Thousands of civilians in Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus are once again in immediate danger as fierce fighting between rival groups has trapped families in their homes, preventing access to food and water. The Palestine Liberation Organization’s envoy to Syria said Tuesday night that Islamic State militants were in control of 70 percent of the camp and were beheading and raping residents


Earth Is Our Mother, Nature Is Our Partner 
By Pratap Antony

http://www.countercurrents.org/antony210416.htm

It is a wonderful world we live in. Or it was. Or it could have been. And it still could be. It is up to us to make the world we live in a wonderful world. Its very simple really. All we need to do to make this happen is to stop assuming that we are in-charge. We, humans, have to come to the realisation that we are not superior to anything else on Earth. Earth and its resources are not at our beck and call. Earth and everything on our planet is not meant to serve our needs. We have to serve Earth


Creating The Future 
By John Scales Avery

http://www.countercurrents.org/avery210416.htm

I strongly believe that we must not allow ourselves the luxury of fatalism, especially today, when our future is darkened by the twin threats of catastrophic climate change and thermonuclear war. We must accept our responsibility for both the near future and the distant future. We must do all that is within our power to make our world one in which our children and their descendants can survive. We must save the environment. We must save plants and animals from extinction


Palestine And Zioinism The Whole Truth 
By Alan Hart

http://www.countercurrents.org/hart210416.htm

Very, very few Jews have any biological/ancestral connection the ancient Hebrews. The Jews are peoples (not a people) from many different homelands; and back in time many converted to Judaism long after the relatively brief rule of the ancient Hebrews, the Israelites. What I am saying boils down to this. The notion that there are two peoples with a valid claim to Palestine is rubbish


At 80, Failed Abbas Is Probed, Derided And Scapegoated 
By Ramzy Baroud

http://www.countercurrents.org/baroud210416.htm

Since Arafat’s death in 2004, and his advent to power through a questionable democratic process in 2005, Abbas has worked laboriously to co-exist with the Israeli Occupation but failed to co-exist with his own Palestinian rivals. True, it has been a decade of unmitigated Palestinian leadership failure, but it certainly took more than Abbas to manage that political fiasco. Now, at 80, Abbas seems to have become a scapegoat for a whole class of Palestinians which has worked to manage the Occupation and benefit from it


The Act Of Seeking Forgiveness, One Sorry At A Time 
By B.F. Firos

http://www.countercurrents.org/firos210416.htm

British queen, in whose name all the horrible sins were committed all over the world, and her political progeny owes a series of apologies to India over the truckloads of colonial atrocities. The Indian list of apology-worthy events is pretty long. Expecting a sorry for Gujarat genocide from the globe-trotting Modi will be asking for the moon! May be that Rs 15 lakhs deposit he promised to every citizen's bank account can happen. Never an apology. If Rahul Gandhi can offer sincere apologies to the Sikhs for the 1984 anti-Sikh killings, not an utterance of stilted or insincere words, that can indeed take the burden of guilt off the party’s shoulder


Development: A Noose Around Keralite's Neck 
By K.P. Sasi

http://www.countercurrents.org/sasi210416.htm

The total debts of the state is1,35,440.4 crores. If we go by an assumption that an average family in Kerala has four members, then the debt of every family in Kerala is an amount of Rs. 1,59,340 (One Lakh Fifty Nine Thousand Three Hundred and Forty) plus interests on this amount. Most of the farmers who committed suicide so far in India had suffered a debt of only less than 1.5 lakhs (One Hundred and Fifty Thousand rupees). Kerala is on the verge of a collective suicide!


#FreeHandwaraGirl
Petition Campaign

http://www.countercurrents.org/pc210416.htm

Since 12 April, the 16 year old Handwara girl has been effectively in continuous illegal police custody.Her access to her family and legal team has not only been prevented but also controlled by the state authorities. The continued detention of the minor girl and her family members violates their civil liberty and basic rights too. The continued police detention also means a threat to her physical and psychological well being


The Need To Protest Rapes By Fathers 
By Meenakshi Gogoi

http://www.countercurrents.org/gogoi210416.htm

Some of the recent news reports of rapes by fathers are here. A Navi Mumbai school girl wrote a letter to her teacher about being raped by her father many times and the mother did do nothing to help her, an 18 year old girl filmed a video to prove rape by her father in U.P, another rape case where the father raped her daughter to stop her from seeing her boyfriend and in Telengana’s Ranga Reddy district last year


The “Kneeling” Touch! 
By Mohammad Ashraf

http://www.countercurrents.org/ashraf210416.htm

Instead of applying the much touted “Healing Touch” to the suffering people, the PDP has gone for the “Kneeling Touch” to BJP and RSS with disastrous results for the Kashmiris!


Odisha’s Land Degrading At A Rate Of More Than 1,95,000 Hectare Per Year!
By Water Initiatives Odisha

http://www.countercurrents.org/wio210416.htm

In 2006, Odisha’s leading water and environment watchdog Water Inititaives Odisha (WIO) had warned that many parts of Odisha are already showing symptoms of desertification. The state is ‘developing’ from a drought prone to desert prone region. Desertification is a process of productivity loss of lands. When severe, it leads to permanent damages to land