CounterCurrents: Federal Judges In Hawaii And Maryland Block Trump’s Muslim Ban 2.0

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Federal Judges In Hawaii And Maryland Block Trump’s Muslim Ban 2.0
by Abdus Sattar Ghazali 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/16/muslim-ban-2-0-is-blocked-by-federal-judge-in-hawaii/

Federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland have blocked President Donald Trump’s Muslim Ban 2.0. In their ruling both judges cited Trump’s statements about Muslims during the presidential campaign.




Trump’s Abolition Of ObamaCare Will Kill 43,000 Americans Over 2 Trump Terms
by Dr Gideon Polya 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/16/trumps-abolition-of-obamacare-will-kill-43000-americans-over-2-trump-terms/

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the ObamaCare-replacing, Trump Republican American Health Care Act would mean 14 million more uninsured Americans in 2018 and 24 million by 2026. Lack of health insurance kills about 45,000 Americans each year (Harvard Medical School) and Trump’s removal of millions of Americans from Health Cover will kill 43,000 Americans over 2 Trump terms versus an expected 30 terrorism deaths. Wake up America – this is not keeping America safe.





Stop Protecting The Criminality Of The Global Pesticides Industry
by Colin Todhunter 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/17/stop-protecting-the-criminality-of-the-global-pesticides-industry/

The agrichemicals industry wallows like an overblown hog in a cesspool of corruption. With its snout firmly embedded in the trough of corporate profit to the detriment of all else, it is most likely responsible for more death and disease than the combined efforts of the tobacco companies ever were. It indulges in criminality that hides behind corporate public relations, media misrepresentations and the subversion of respectable-sounding agencies which masquerade as public institutions.






‘On Contact’ With Chris Hedges
by Jeff Berg 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/17/on-contact-with-chris-hedges/

So where is one to go for real news about the issues affecting real people? Well just today I ran in to an answer to that question. ‘On Contact’ with Chris Hedges is that rarest of rarities. I.e. An evidenced based electronic news program.






Disengage From The Spectacle
by Richard Heinberg 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/16/disengage-from-the-spectacle/

I’ve invested as much attention in the outrage-of-the-day distraction machine as anyone, spending scores of hours reading news reports and analyses, and I’ve written at least a half-dozen essays about our current tweeter-in-chief. And I’m here to tell you that full immersion in the news cycle is just not healthy.






Three Reasons Why Keystone XL May Never Get Built
by James Wilt 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/16/three-reasons-why-keystone-xl-may-never-get-built/

Almost a full decade since first applying for a presidential permit, TransCanada looks set to finally receive go-ahead in the U.S. for its massive $8-billion Keystone XL pipeline. But here’s the thing: U.S. approval, while a great leap forward for TransCanada, doesn’t guarantee the Keystone XL pipeline will ever be built.






Re-imagining Value: Insights From The Care Economy, Commons, Cyberspace And Nature
by David Bollier 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/16/re-imagining-value-insights-from-the-care-economy-commons-cyberspace-and-nature/

The conventional economic definition of “value” has a significant rhetorical advantage over other notions of value/s.  It can be encapsulated in numbers, manipulated mathematically and ascribed to individuals, giving it a tidy precision.  Value defined as price also has an operational simplicity even though it flattens the messy realities of actual human life and ecosystems.  It purports to precisely quantify and calculate “value” into a single plane of commensurable, tradeable units, as mediated by price.






Religiosity
by Sally Dugman 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/16/religiosity/

I couldn’t believe my eyes while flipping TV channels. There on one station are two guys smacking each other upside their heads. All that I could see was them inflicting injury and life-long damage onto each other via teeth loss, broken noses, concussions, skull cracks and so on. Meanwhile the audience is cheering as these two fellows slam each other apart in their heads. Then one falls down unconscious due to much damage to his brain. What the hell?!?






‘Web of Weirdness’: US And Israeli Codependent Relationship Is Not Just About Money
by Dr Ramzy Baroud 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/16/web-of-weirdness-us-and-israeli-codependent-relationship-is-not-just-about-money/

“We must look back twenty-five years to realize how far Israel has fallen in world support,” wrote famed Jewish scholar, Harvard sociologist, Nathan Glazer in 1976. In the last forty years since Glazer wrote his piece, which was uncovered and transmitted by Philip Weiss, Israel’s global support has fallen much further. The country that once appealed to both United States’ capitalism and the Soviet Union’s socialism is now militarily powerful but, otherwise, politically isolated on the international stage.






What Kind of Woman IS This?
by Sally Dugman 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/16/what-kind-of-woman-is-this/

I’ll be frank. I do not like everyone. For example I strongly dislike Josef Mengele, a Nazi medical doctor who tied a Jew’s legs together while she was giving birth so as to see the medical results. I also do not like Marjorie M. She was the wealthiest woman in the world when I was a child.






Acts of Abomination: A Familiar Sound
by Richard Oxman 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/16/the-indian-claims-commission-acts-of-abomination/

The Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946 was considered a liberal reform. At last a mechanism existed “to settle finally any and all legal, equitable, and moral obligations that the U.S. might owe to the Indians.” It sounded good, as many “liberal” efforts often do, but — as usual — there were some serious wrinkles. Those inclined to want to believe that the U.S. is essentially a good force in the world, of course, didn’t bother for half-a-century to even discuss the unconscionable creases in what unfolded. And to this day, still don’t do anything about the abomination.






The “New India”!
by Mohammad Ashraf 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/16/the-new-india/

The recent state elections show that the “New India” would probably be the realisation of the Golwalkar’s dream!





Prime Minister Modi’s Soliloquy
by Radha Surya 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/17/prime-minister-modis-soliloquy/

Enough of these negative thinking. I have a 56″ chest. I am Indian Idol. I am unstoppable. If needed I can follow the example of Erdogan bhai. Right now with sufficient hype, spin and perception management I can overcome the odds and continue advancing from pinnacle to pinnacle.

CounterCurrents: Southeast Asia “Forgets” About Western Terror, Russian Moves In Syria Highlight General US Hypocrisy, At UN Syria Fails To Call For Nuremberg Prosecution Of US And Allies Funding/Organizing Terrorist Invasion, Ruminations Of An Afghan Girl Burning To Death In A Hospital Bed

Dear Friend,

If you think the content of this news letter is critical for the dignified living and survival of humanity and other species on earth, please forward it to your friends and spread the word. It's time for humanity to come together as one family! You can subscribe to our news letter here http://www.countercurrents.org/subscribe.htm. You can also follow us on twitter, http://twitter.com/countercurrents and on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/countercurrents

In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org


Are We “Proud Enough” Of Kshama Sawant? 
By Romi Mahajan

http://www.countercurrents.org/mahajan041015.htm

The people of Indian origin (PIO) who most other PIOs cite as sources of pride are either business people, mainstream political actors, or sports stars. A few authors and engineers can be thrown in but in small doses only. Are we “proud enough” of Kshama Sawant? She is an avowed Socialist and is a vocal and intelligent member of the Seattle City Council. She is an articulate advocate for the people who Capitalism has left behind


Ruminations Of An Afghan Girl Burning To Death In A Hospital Bed 
By David Swanson

http://www.countercurrents.org/swanson041015.htm

I know that I'm not supposed to be bitter, and yet that somehow makes it harder not to be. When my father and sister and two cousins were blown into little pieces last year, it was the action of some distant office worker pushing a switch on a remote-controlled airplane. And I'm supposed to believe that they meant well. And this is supposed to make it better. But somehow it makes it worse


At UN Syria Fails To Call For Nuremberg Prosecution Of 
US And Allies Funding/Organizing Terrorist Invasion 
By Jay Janson

http://www.countercurrents.org/janson041015.htm

Years from now when the East resumes world leadership after five centuries of savage European racist domination and the UN is free of colonial powers control, people will look back in astonishment to UN debates in which nations bombed and invaded by the US and NATO were unable call for justice under the Nuremberg Principles of international law. Syria allowing the US to get away genocide in 2015 one example


Russian Moves In Syria Highlight General US Hypocrisy 
By Robert Barsocchini

http://www.countercurrents.org/barsocchini041015.htm

One has to wonder whether Moscow planners intend, as one of the effects of their current anti-terrorist (using US parlance) operations in Syria, to highlight US hypocrisy. Intentional or not, this aspect of the Russian campaign has been stunning


Southeast Asia “Forgets” About Western Terror 
By Andre Vltchek

http://www.countercurrents.org/vltchek041015.htm

The Vietnamese people, especially the young ones, know very little about the horrific acts committed by the West in their neighboring countries. At most they know about the crimes committed by France and the US in their own country – in Vietnam, nothing or almost nothing about the victims of the West-sponsored monsters like Marcos and Suharto. Nothing about Cambodia – nothing about who was really responsible for those 2 millions of lost lives. The “Secret Wars” remain secret


Freedom For Omid Kokabee 
By Dr. Ludwig Watzal

http://www.countercurrents.org/watzal041015.htm

The Islamic Republic of Iran pretends that it's adheres to superior moral values than, for example, the United States of America, especially what the incarceration of alleged Islamic terrorist at Guantanamo Bay prison is concerned, who have been incarcerated since 2001 without trail. To live up to the Islamic value system, the government of Iran should release Omid Kokabee immediately


BJP’s Latest Antibiotic Tablet For Kerala 
By B.F. Firos

http://www.countercurrents.org/firos041015.htm

If there is one place which has kept the Hindu right at a safe distance for such an annoyingly long time period, it is Kerala. The RSS and its political face BJP has not yet been able to make any ripples in the placid social waters of the state, though its power-hungry leaders have been salivating at the prospect of penetrating into this constituency for the past so many years. Attempts are being done to turn the tides of this renaissance. Standing at the vanguard of this regressive bid is Vellappally Nateshan, the general secretary of SNDP Yogam – a socio-cultural movement founded by the 20th century social reformer Sree Narayana Guru – which endeavored to emancipate the Ezhava community from the abyss of the oppressive Hindu caste hierarchy


Some Suggestions For The Revival Of The Indian Left 
By Abdul Muheet Chowdhary

http://www.countercurrents.org/chowdhury041015.htm

The Left still has a very strong place in the hearts of the Indian people, who long for government which is truly secular, pro-poor and most importantly wants to work hard for the development of the country. The victory of the AAP should serve as an inspiration to the Left in this regard and with the right steps hopefully they will once again retain their rightful place as an influential and major political force in India

CounterCurrents: Monsanto’s Sealed Documents Reveal The Truth Behind Roundup’s Toxicological Dangers, Our Refugee Future

Dear Friend,

If you think the content of this news letter is critical for the dignified living and survival of humanity and other species on earth, please forward it to your friends and spread the word. It's time for humanity to come together as one family! You can subscribe to our news letter here http://www.countercurrents.org/subscribe.htm. You can also follow us on twitter,http://twitter.com/countercurrents and on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/countercurrents

In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org


Wars, Refugees And The Complete Lack Of Leadership Everywhere 
By Alan Hart

http://www.countercurrents.org/hart160915.htm

Containing and hopefully defeating perverted, violent Islamic fundamentalism was as much a priority for Russia as it was (ought to have been) for America and Western Europe, my speculation is that Putin's response would have been positive. The prospect of it being positive would have been improved if Obama had also said to Putin that the U.S. was not seeking to use the crisis to end Russia's influence in Syria. In other words... If Obama had demonstrated real leadership in such a way, I think the countdown to catastrophe for Syria, the region and possibly the whole world could have been stopped


An End To American – And Global Oligarchy 
By David Anderson

http://www.countercurrents.org/anderson160915.htm

All the evidence points to the fact that the wealthy “elite” in America – and the wealthy “elite” in the rest of the world, want to keep it this way and then ultimately grab the final prize; total control over all society to assure genomic perpetuation so that for generations to come their offspring will be able to find themselves ensconced safely in the finest prep schools and universities and in guarded estates and multimillion dollar city apartments, and be able to continue to buy, as this generation is now doing, the politicians, media interests, think tanks and university trusteeships. But it will not continue. A look at world history, revolution after revolution, shows that it never has


Our Refugee Future 
By Linh Dinh

http://www.countercurrents.org/dinh160915.htm

The West violates borders, then cringes when its own are ignored. Of course, no one wants to see his society turned upside down. This upheaval could be arrested if only the West would stop wrecking other peoples' homelands, but this won't happen. On a planet of exploding populations, dwindling resources and contracting economies, war will only become more pervasive. Many players, Western or otherwise, will instigate it in all corners of this exhausted earth. Massive refugee flows will be the wave of our near future. The mess in Europe is only a preview, so you better get used to it, and you should also consider the likelihood that you yourself will become a desperate escapee who must risk death to start all over in a strange land


33 Years After The Sabra-Shatila Massacre Takfiri 
Calls For “Intifada!” Waft From Lebanon’s Camps 
By Franklin Lamb

http://www.countercurrents.org/lamb160915.htm

There is not a lot of hope in Lebanon’s Palestinian camps this week as foreigners arrive in solidarity, as many do annually; and pay tribute to the more than 3000 victims of the September 1982 Israeli facilitated Sabra-Shatila Massacre


Blaming Africans 
By Thomas C. Mountain

http://www.countercurrents.org/mountain160915.htm

Blaming Africans is what its all about, whether in revising the history of the Rwandan genocide and absolving French crimes against humanity to the ongoing conflict in South Sudan, to further its national interests the USA or the French will provoke murder and mayhem, tribal violence in all its horrifying stereotypes. The west blaming Africans for western crimes is in vogue once again


Monsanto’s Sealed Documents Reveal The Truth 
Behind Roundup’s Toxicological Dangers 
By Richard Gale & Gary Null

http://www.countercurrents.org/null160915.htm

The year 2015 hasn’t been kind to Monsanto. In March, the World Health Organization declared that the company’s flagship product, its herbicide glyphosate or Roundup, is a probable human carcinogen. Increasingly, national health ministries are taking a hard second look at glyphosate’s health and environmental dangers and efforts are underway to ban the herbicide.[1] To protect its citizens, last year the Netherlands, Bermuda and Sri Lanka have either banned or imposed strict limits on Roundup. Last June, France banned its use in gardens. Brazil, Germany and Argentina are considering legislative bans. And this month, California’s environmental protection agency launched plans to label Roundup as a carcinogen


Obama's Geopolitical Strategy For Containing China  
By Alfred W. McCoy

http://www.countercurrents.org/mccoy160915.htm

In ways that have eluded Washington pundits and policymakers, President Barack Obama is deploying a subtle geopolitical strategy that, if successful, might give Washington a fighting chance to extend its global hegemony deep into the twenty-first century. After six years of silent, sometimes secret preparations, the Obama White House has recently unveiled some bold diplomatic initiatives whose sum is nothing less than a tri-continental strategy to check Beijing's rise. As these moves unfold, Obama is revealing himself as one of those rare grandmasters who appear every generation or two with an ability to go beyond mere foreign policy and play that ruthless global game called geopolitics


“Don’t Owe. Won’t Pay.” Everything You’ve Been Told About Debt Is Wrong 
By Charles Eisenstein

http://www.countercurrents.org/eisentein160915.htm

Positive money refers to money created directly without debt by the government, which can be given directly to debtors for debt repayment or used to purchase debts from creditors and then cancel them. Negative-interest currency (which I describe in depth in Sacred Economics) entails a liquidity fee on bank reserves, essentially taxing wealth at its source. It enables zero-interest lending, reduces wealth concentration, and allows a financial system to function in the absence of growth


How Our Energy Problem Leads To A Debt Collapse Problem 
By Gail Tverberg

http://www.countercurrents.org/tverberg160915.htm

Usually, we don’t stop to think about how the whole economy works together. A major reason is that we have been lacking data to see long-term relationships. In this post, I show some longer-term time series relating to energy growth, GDP growth, and debt growth–going back to 1820 in some cases–that help us understand our situation better


Subversion Against Cuba Continues Uninterrupted Amidst Normalization 
By Matt Peppe

http://www.countercurrents.org/peppe160915.htm

It is clear that the U.S. continues to act towards Cuba with utter disregard for mutual respect and sovereign equality despite the formalities uncritically accepted by mainstream media as true normalization. By looking beyond the face value of the words of American officials, one can't help but recognize that relations are anything but normal. Until the U.S. government recognizes that normal cannot include sanctioning, illegally occupying, and spending tens of millions of dollars on subversion and interference in another country's internal affairs, "normalization" remains nothing more than a vacuous abstraction


On The Continuing Assault On Rationalists And Free Speech 
By Parvin Sultana

http://www.countercurrents.org/sultana160915.htm

The rising intolerance is scuttling every voice of dissent. Academicians, scholars and educationists are being targeted for their views and ideas. Be it the rationalists who were murdered, the activists who continue to be threatened, the writers like Wendy Doniger and Perumal Murugan whose books were pulled off the market, democracy has failed them every time


Women: The Invisible Burden Carriers 
By Moin Qazi

http://www.countercurrents.org/qazi160915.htm

It is an image of resilience: women bending over rice fields, women bending over to lift sacks, bending over to tend children, bending over to draw water from wells, bending over a patch of embroidery, bending over all the time. A woman’s work is never done. The most vivid image of village women is that of a woman as a daily wage farm labour, or on a family plot, legs straight, her body forming a V as hour after hour she is bent over double, hoeing, sowing, weeding, day in and day out, under clear skies and hot sun. Sometimes this work is done with a baby on her back and the only rest might be when the infant cries in hunger and mother finds a place at the edge of the field to nurse her child


Stop Raising The Dam Height of Sardar Sarovar Project 
And Rehabilitate The Affected People Urgently
By Narmada Bachao Andolan

http://www.countercurrents.org/nba160915.htm

Petition campaign. Please sign the petition


Dalit Consumer, With A Purchasing Power, Has Arrived 
By Ravikiran Shinde

http://www.countercurrents.org/shinde160915.htm

Peaceful Dalit protesters had forced largest circulated Marathi newspaper Lokmat to issue 'clarification' for its highly prejudiced and offensive editorial of 31st August against caste based-quota. The paper had to backtrack it’s stand, after decision of Dalits to boycott the newspaper.The Dalits had demonstrated their buying power while democratically protesting malicious article as part of a smear campaign


Eroding Civil Rights! Is India's Democracy In Danger? 
By George Abraham

http://www.countercurrents.org/abraham160915.htm

As the Indian entrepreneurs in the Silicone Valley are gearing up to give a grand reception to the Prime Minister, I hope they would also be cognizant of the fact that the freedom they enjoy here in the United States should empower them to enhance freedom elsewhere. As Mahatma Gandhi once said "Commerce (Business) without morality (ethics) and science without humanity could prove to be detrimental to everyone's long term interests!”