Dear Friend,
Hurricane Ida made landfall Sunday as the second most powerful storm to hit the state of Louisiana in its recorded history, bringing widespread flooding from heavy rains and storm surge. High winds, blowing debris and falling trees damaged buildings and knocked out power to one million customers in Louisiana and over 120,000 in Mississippi.
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In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
Countercurrents.org
Sixteen years after Katrina: Hurricane Ida devastates southern Louisiana
by Niles Niemuth
Hurricane Ida made landfall Sunday as the second most powerful storm to hit the state of Louisiana in its recorded history, bringing widespread flooding from heavy rains and storm surge. High winds, blowing debris and falling trees damaged buildings and knocked out power to one million customers in Louisiana and over 120,000 in Mississippi.
Afghanistan: The First Mistake
by William T. Hathaway
Establishment journalists and politicians are despairingly asking: Why did we fail in our well-meaning efforts to help the Afghan people? What were our mistakes? But they ignore their first mistake: creating the Taliban.
A Vengeful American Empire Has Been Humiliated in Afghanistan
by Chris Hedges
The Americans, like the
British and the Soviets before them, dug their own graveyard in Afghanistan.
US-China relations at crossroads
by M K Bhadrakumar
The Biden Administration, in dire straits over Afghanistan, is pursuing China for help. There have been two phone calls to Chinese State Councilor and FM Wang Yi from US Secretary of state Antony Blinken since August 16 alone. The taciturn readouts from Washington would have us believe that these conversations related exclusively to Afghan developments. But Beijing insists that they devolved upon the China-US bilateral relationship as whole. Beijing copiously shared the details of what transpired!
As Our Bodies and Planetary Systems Become “Inflamed,” How Do We Heal?
by Sonali Kolhatkar
In their new book, authors Rupa Marya and Raj Patel explore how capitalism and
colonialism have caused sickness and how Indigenous knowledge can offer healing.
We Can’t Prevent Future Nuclear Wars Unless We Imagine Them Today
by Marina Favaro & Sara Z. Kutchesfahani
Nuclear policy makers talk a lot about the uncertainty surrounding tomorrow’s strategic environment. It’s time to start seeing this as an opportunity to employ tools that help us think in a more creative and more robust manner about the future role of nuclear weapons. Foresight will better serve nuclear policies, no matter what future is ahead of us.
Educating for the Prime Directive
by Eliza Daley
Our education system is incapable of producing critical and original thinkers and may be primarily responsible for muting the natural curiosity and analytical capabilities of our species
11 Pro-Apartheid Western
Countries Boycott 2021 UN Anti-racism Durban IV Conference
by Dr Gideon Polya
As exampled by Apartheid Israel, racism is utterly wrong, cruel and unjust because people have no say in where and to whom they are born. Accordingly decent countries support the latest UN Anti-racism Conference (Durban IV) to be held in New York in September 2021. However, so far 11 pro-Apartheid Israel and hence pro-Apartheid and deeply racist Western countries have boycotted the conference out of fear that it would call out the genocidal racism of Israeli Apartheid.
Combating Hate in a Plural Society: Scattered attacks on Muslims
by Dr Ram Puniyani
A couple of days ago in Mathura. A dosa stall, Srinath Dosa outfit in Vikas market was vandalized by the followers of sectarian
ideology. They threatened the owner, Irfan, as to how dare he keep the Hindu name for his eatery and asked him to move out of the Vikas market where he is located. Other more frightening acts against Muslims have been proliferating recently. In Rajasthan, Sikar a 52 year old rickashw driver was thrashed, asked to shout Jai Shri Ram and warned that he will not be spared till he leaves for Pakistan. In Indore, Taslim Ali, a bangle seller was beaten black and blue and questioned as to why he has come in a Hindu area to sell his bangles. Another E Rickshaw driver was beaten by the Hindutva mob as his young daughter kept crying, clinging to him, and pleading to the mob to spare her father. In Ajmer a Muslim beggar sitting with his two sons was confronted and asked to leave to Pakistan as he was beaten.
Rajasthan Rising: Movement of young girls challenging patriarchy
by Neha Saigal & Saumya Shrivastava
Last year, the Covid 19 pandemic had caused severe distress among those vulnerable, especially young girls with no access to schools or online learning. As per a study by Development Solutions and IDS Jaipur last year, only 11% girls could access online classes during the Covid lockdown in Rajasthan. Ten young girls from the most marginalized households of Sapotara block in Karauli district took a very courageous decision, to start a collective of girls that would be a support system for each other during these challenging times. Their purpose, to increase awareness among their community on the wrongs of rampant discrimination and amplify the demand of access to free and equitable education for every girl in the State
In Odisha, community radio connects Adivasis with COVID-19 information
by Tazeen Qureshy
In Odisha, community radio stations like Dhimsa are leading the fight against COVID-19 by bridging the communication gap between government and Adivasi communities. Odisha is a land of over 62 tribes, which live in remote and inaccessible areas of the state and have their own dialects for communication, making information sharing a challenge.
Voices from the Covid Battlefield – Episode Six
by Dr Biswaroop Chatterjee
Here we talk to Dr Biswaroop Chatterjee, a doctor with a specialisation in medical microbiology. More importantly Dr Chatterjee has a vast amount of experience of working in rural India and very low resource settings.
Agrarian Crisis and the Longest Farmers’ Protest in Indian History
by Navsharan SinghO
“The farmers not only know how to farm, but they also know how to protect their fields,” said a farm leader from Punjab at the protest site on the outskirts of Delhi, where protesting farmers have been camping since last November. “We will fight over and over again and generation upon generation, but we will not let our land go,” a slogan at the camp site reads. The farmers are protesting the three new farm laws adopted in Parliament in September 2020, which, taken together, open markets to corporate farming, retreat from public procurement of food grains, and open the door to large agribusiness companies.
Resurrecting The Memories of “The Kid” in the centenary year
by Harsh Thakor
This year in January we commemorated the centenary of Charlie Chaplin’s1st motion film
‘The Kid.’ No doubt such a film would be outdated today, in the days of high tech,artificial intelligence, mechanisation or automation. However it still has significance when the forces of globalization are tightening their noose in every sphere of life and putting a stranglehold on all democratic culture. The film in many ways symbolized the oppression or alienation in capitalist society.
