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Toyota

Since the Dilly, Dally, Delay & Stall Law Firms are adding their billable hours, the Toyota U.S.A. and Route 44 Toyota posts have been separated here:

Route 44 Toyota Sold Me A Lemon



Showing posts with label Palestinian Hunger Strike. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Palestinian Hunger Strike. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

CounterCurrents: India At A Crossroads




Dear Friend,

On the day the new restrictions on cattle trade, which is an unofficial 'beef ban' I wrote that it is going to be a greater social engineering than 'demonetisation'.  People's resentment at the new order has taken unexpected turn and South Indians have started a campaign for 'Dravida Nadu' which comprises of the Dravidian language speaking states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra and Telegana. The ruler's in India should be aware that they can't make rules that deprives people of their right to choose food and denying their livelihoods. They also have to understand that India is actually an multicultural and multi linguistic. All these diversities are held together by a thin  thread of  mutual trust, which can break at any moment. The Hindutva fanatics ruling India is doing exactly the same. Only time can tell, which way India will go. 

If you don't mind, and 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/news-letter/. 

In Solidarity

Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org




The Merkley-Sanders Climate Bill Isn’t a Launchpad. It’s Quicksand
by Stan Cox 


With the Trump administration poised to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, a climate bill cosponsored by U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley and Bernie Sanders and known as the “100 by ’50 Act” is sure to be back in the news. In April, Sanders called the bill, S.987, an important step in the fight against greenhouse warming. The leading climate advocacy group 350.org sees it as a Washington record-breaker, “the most ambitious piece of climate legislation Congress has ever seen.” Well, maybe it does actually clear that decidedly low bar. But it is also far too little, too late to prevent climate catastrophe.





Trump, Israel And Saudi Arabia: Targeting Iran
by Dr Chandra Muzaffar 


In the wake of President Donald Trump’s visit to West Asia, is there even a faint glimmer of hope for peace in the most conflict-ridden region of the world? Or, has his visit to Saudi Arabia and Israel from the 20th to the 23rd of May 2017 only strained the region’s undercurrents of friction and tension?  Some reflections on areas of conflict in West Asia may throw a bit of light.





Human Rights Defender Thirumurugan Gandhi Arrested


Human Rights defender Thirumurugan Gandhi has been arrested under the notorious Goonda Act by the Tamil Nadu police, for being part of the Candle Light Vigil that was held in Marina Beach on 21st May, in remembrance of the Genocidal War against Tamils in Sri Lanka which killed at least 150,000 Tamil civilians. There was a police action against the protest march on 21st. Thirumurugan Gandhi and many others were taken into custody. Today they were charged under Goonda Act and arrested.





With All Chips Down, Modi Tries Selling A Swadeshi Nuclear Dream To India
by Anuj Wankhede 


The recent announcement that India will build 10 new Nuclear reactors took observers by surprise. In technical terms, India will set up ten new pressurized heavy water reactors (PHWRs) which are indigenous. Purely from a scientific point of view, this is utter nonsense because of India’s complete lack of experience with this type of reactor. But this article is not about PHWR technology. It is about why this announcement was made and more importantly why now.





Two Sides Of The Palestinian Coin: Hunger Strike/Gaza
by Richard Falk 


The Palestinian hunger strike protesting Israeli prison conditions was suspended on May 27th after 40 days, at a time when many of the 1000 or so strikers were experiencing serious deteriorations of health, most were by then hospitalized, and the holy period of Ramadan about to commence creating continuity between the daytime fasting of the faithful and the prior desperate protest of the strikers. What was perhaps most notable about this extraordinary gesture of a mass prolonged hunger strike was that it was treated as hardly worthy of notice by the world media or even by the United Nations, which ironically is regularly attacked by diplomats and the media in the West for being overly preoccupied with Israeli wrongdoing.





Barging Through NATO: Donald Trump In Europe
by Dr Binoy Kampmark 


From his big white bird did the President descend upon his dreading European hosts, looking much like natives waiting to be slaughtered or ravished.  As Donald Trump pushed his way through NATO members (the Montenegrin prime minister, for one, felt his forceful shove), representatives shot glances of discomfort and bemusement. In a refreshing blast of brutishness, the Ugly American, made flesh in the incarnation of Trump, was explaining, even hectoring Washington’s allies.





Take Torture Off Agenda
by Kristin Christman


According to President Donald Trump, people who are tortured deserve it. Trump’s initial draft executive order in January revealed his passion for reopening U.S. black site prisons, loading Guantanamo with prisoners, and rewriting the Army Field Manual to redefine allowable interrogation techniques.





At The Mercy Of Rain Gods
by Moin Qazi  


India also needs to revive its traditional water harvesting practices.    The idea behind watershed development is simple: If people cut fewer trees, increase plant cover on the land, and build a well-planned series of dams and earthen terraces to divert and slow the downhill flow of rainwater, the soil has more time to absorb moisture. The terracing and new vegetation also control erosion, which keeps nutrient-rich topsoil from washing or blowing away, and this in turn boosts the productivity of agricultural land.




Beef Poem
by Chandramohan S 


My harvest of poems
will be winnowed.
if done deftly,
the lighter shallow poems
blow away in the wind
while the heavier, meatier poems,
fall back onto the tray,
to become the fire in my belly
like beef.







Sunday, May 28, 2017

CounterCurrents: Palestinian Hunger Strike Ends, Prisoners Declare Victory





Dear Friend,

If you don't mind, and 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/news-letter/. 

In Solidarity

Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org




Palestinian Hunger Strike Ends, Prisoners Declare Victory
by Ali Abunimah 


After 40 days without food, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners have suspended their hunger strike in Israeli jails. The end of the strike came after 20 hours of intense negotiations between the strike’s leaders, including imprisoned Fatah figure Marwan Barghouti, and the Israel Prison Service, according to a statement issued Saturday morning by the prisoners solidarity committee.





Getting Sensible And Realistic About Maladaptive Behaviors
by Sally Dugman 


First off, the human population is already over 7.5 billion people and rapidly rising so as to likely become 11-15.8 billion by century’s end, according to UN population assessments. Yet should we use more land for crops and animal factory farms to subsume the additional number of humans? Shouldn’t we leave the rest to support other species, which are right now in the beginning of the sixth great extinction, an event that minimally means 70% to 75% of all types of life killed off on our planet?





The President Has Taken Your Wives; Now You Must Eat Your God
by Ritchie Savage 


From healthcare (reduction), to budget (removal), to foreign policy (bombs), President Trump is so thoroughly committed to sacrificing so many of us citizens of the world for our own good (or more likely, the coffers of him and his “friends”), I truly believe that he should make the ultimate sacrifice of himself to us at the end of his term(s). Hence, I hereby propose that we amend the Constitution to cannibalize the President of the United States in a sacrificial ceremony at the end of their presidency.




Every GI Who Invaded Vietnam, Iraq, etc. Was A Criminal By International Law & US Army’s Own Law  
by Jay Janson 


Memorial Day will someday mean a double mourning, a mourning for the violent deaths suffered by of millions of American military and a much more agonizing mourning for the deaths, maiming, destruction and suffering these Americans in uniform brought to millions of innocent men, women and children by committing crimes against humanity in their own beloved countries for the lies of their government and media.





The Renewal Of The British Left
by Milos Kovic 


Should we expect changes from the Left? Bernie Sanders called his astonished followers to vote for the candidate of the military-industrial complex, Hillary Clinton. In the UK elections that will take place on June 9th, the Labour party will however, as the most powerful opposition party, be led by Jeremy Corbin





And The Minds of Children Closed
by Richard Oxman


Schools are still shills for our collective addiction to belief in technological fixes as a decent approach to addressing climate change issues. That’s one reason to home school, among many. But my informal survey of home schooling parents nationwide has revealed that virtually no one is teaching youth that only a no-growth vision of economics can possibly give us a shot at planetary survival. And so it goes, the three-way marriage between education, technology and the proverbial bottom line. Bottom of the barrel is more like it.




Lynching
by Godfrey D'Lima  


a gruesome truth we dare not speak
of violence with its bloody taunt
such terror stories seldom haunt
in lands where casteist pyres reek










Tuesday, May 2, 2017

CounterCurrents: The Prisoners’ Revolt: The Real Reasons Behind The Palestinian Hunger Strike, Reign of Idiots





Dear Friend,

If you don't mind, and 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/news-letter/. 

In Solidarity

Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org




The Trade Dreams of Boris Johnson
by Dr Binoy Kampmark 


As Foreign Secretary, looking every bit a whimsical, witty loon who just might set the party on fire at any given moment, he is on electioneering duty for Prime Minister Theresa May.    He has already demonstrated school-boy maturity by observing that Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is no more than a “mutton-headed old mugwump”.





The Prisoners’ Revolt: The Real Reasons Behind The Palestinian Hunger Strike
by Dr Ramzy Baroud 


It is a revolt within Fatah against their disengaged leadership, and a frantic attempt by all Palestinians to demonstrate their ability to destabilize the Israeli-American-PA matrix of control that has extended for many years.





Australian ABC And UK BBC Fake News Through Lying By Omission
by Dr Gideon Polya 


The UK BBC and the Australian ABC (Australia’s equivalent of the BBC) pride themselves on superiority over the Yellow Press as typified by the sex and scandal tabloids of the Murdoch media. However, as analysed below, both the Oz ABC and the UK BBC betray their audiences with fake news through lying by omission over horrendous Australian, British and US Alliance war crimes and over the acute seriousness of the worsening climate emergency and  worsening climate genocide.





Remembering Karl Marx  
by Swapnil Dhanraj 


While most of the European thinkers and philosophers are famous, not all of them are as relevant as Karl Marx who is often referred to as the father of revolution. As a student of social sciences it was a privilege for me to study Karl Marx during early days of my graduation and at doctoral level. The present piece of writing is an attempt to pay my tribute to Marx on his 199th birthday (5th May 2017)





Reign of Idiots
by Chris Hedges


The idiots take over in the final days of crumbling civilizations. Idiot generals wage endless, unwinnable wars that bankrupt the nation. Idiot economists call for reducing taxes for the rich and cutting social service programs for the poor, and project economic growth on the basis of myth. Idiot industrialists poison the water, the soil and the air, slash jobs and depress wages. Idiot bankers gamble on self-created financial bubbles and impose crippling debt peonage on the citizens. Idiot journalists and public intellectuals pretend despotism is democracy





Unfortunate Set of Circumstances
by Milan Djurasovic 


A story





Who’s Afraid Of Aadhaar UID?
by Pratap Antony 


It is up to us to stand up for ourselves, protect ourselves and fight corruption by opposing politicians from controlling us. We must not succumb to fear, the patriarch thought, Aadhaar innocently enters our private lives and gives us a false sense of protection, but in reality, it is a perpetual point of persecution intruding on our privacy while we are being profiled and kept under surveillance.





Statement on Suicide of Sagar in IISER, Kolkata


Sagar Mandal, a student from a poor family and rural background, is the latest in the case of suicides by students of the elite science and technology institutes in India, and the first in the IISER system. It is lamentable that what we have witnessed in the IITs has begun to be replicated in the IISERs, which are new science education and research institutes set up with much fanfare by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, government of India.





Where Farmers Are Taking Lives, Women Refuse To Die
by Moin Qazi 


In women like Amma  could sense the determination the women have  to keep to hold themselves  together for their  children’s sake to put together their lives as  best as they  could. They have  used the  courage of womanhood  to reinvent themselves and    acquired skills that they  need to survive to stand in as both father and mother for  their children  when they would miss a father the most to take care of and support cantankerous aging in-laws who were often hostile to her and critical of them.





Doctor And Predator
by Sheshu Babu 


Welcome to the nation!
‘ Doctor President’ Erdogan!
Let dictatorship and despotism
Integrate fanaticism with fascism!