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While ostensibly touring the Middle East to discuss a joint US-Russian proposal for peace talks between the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and Western-backed “rebels,” Secretary of State John Kerry met with US allies to prepare for region-wide war

Syria As A Game-Changer: US Political Impotence In The Middle East
By Ramzy Baroud

In an article published May 15, 2013, American historical social scientist Immanuel Wallerstein wrote, “Nothing illustrates more the limitations of Western power than the internal controversy its elites are having in public about what the United States in particular and western European states should be doing about the civil war in Syria.” Those limitations are palpable in both language and action. A political and military vacuum created by past US failures and forced retreats after the Iraq war made it possible for countries like Russia to reemerge on the scene as an effective player

How Lebanon’s Palestinians Are Being Pulled Into Syrian War
By Franklin Lamb

In Syria, the largest Palestinian refugee camp, Yarmouk (approximately 125,000 residents), and the second largest of the 14 camps, Khan al-Sheeh (approximately 45,000 before the crisis which has swelled its population by 26,000 mainly from Yarmouk camp) have become virtual war zones with large sections of the camps being overrun by gunmen fighting in support of the “Free Syrian ‘Army.” All but two of the camps in Syria have been infiltrated by opposition forces and consequently have been targeted by government forces seeking to destroy the rebels

Deaths Of The “No-State” Palestinians Are Proportional To Life Of The Two State Solution
By Dan Lieberman

Because its continued mention drowns out discussion on other relevant resolutions, the two-state solution will not disappear until after the Palestinian community fades into history

Will The International Energy Agency's Oil Forecast Be Wrong Again?
By Kurt Cobb

The famous Danish physicist Niels Bohr once humorously observed, "Predictions are very difficult, especially about the future." And so, as the world considers yet another rosy oil supply forecast, this time from the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), it is worth reviewing the agency's record

A Global Goal On Gender Equality, Women’s Rights And Women’s Empowerment
By Lakshmi Puri

By failing to address the structural causes of discrimination and violence against women and girls, progress towards equality has been stalled, writes Puri

A Ruling Class vs. Revolutionary Response To Prostitution
By John Spritzler

In communities where people made sex with strangers on demand illegal it would be illegal. We may disagree about which kind of community we'd like to live in, but I hope we agree we wouldn't want to live in one in which, like today, the powers-that-be tell certain people, "You must provide sex for strangers on demand or else you will starve."

Traditional Cultures Can Show Developed World How To Preserve Food
By Marianne de Nazareth

In industrialized regions, almost half of the total food squandered, around 300 million tonnes annually, occurs because producers, retailers and consumers discard food that is still fit for consumption,more than the net food production of Sub-Saharan Africa and enough to feed the world’s hungry. These figures demonstrate just how much room there is for individual consumers to take the lead from their forebears and change the way they buy, store and consume food

Remembering Asghar Ali Engineer: Goodbye Asgharsaab
By Subhash Gatade

Newspapers informed us that Asgharsaab was interned not in the cemetery of the Bohras but in that of the Sunni Muslims. It was just another proof that the undeclared social boycott of a great fighter for communal harmony and a renowned scholar of Islam continued even after his death

Abusing Prisoners Decreases Public Safety
By Angola 3 News

An interview with author and former prisoner Shawn Griffith

Inclusive Education: The Need Of The Hour
By Anayika Chopra

This article was written by Anayika Chopra as part of her Sociology Master's thesis titled "Inclusion of Autistic Children in Mainstream Education: Identifying Issues, Exploring Possibilities". The analyses of the article is based on part of the research conducted in Delhi

22 May ,2013

Israel, US Threatens War With Syria As Sectarian Fighting Spreads Across Region
By Alex Lantier

Israeli and Syrian forces exchanged fire across the cease-fire line in the Golan Heights yesterday, amid rising US and Israeli threats of intervention in the US-led sectarian proxy war in Syria, which is rapidly spreading throughout the region

In Bahrain, An Uprising Unabated
By Husain Abdulla

More than two years after peaceful demonstrators took to the streets to demand reforms, Bahrain’s uprising has not abated. Activists and opposition groups continue to demand the basic human rights and political reforms promised to them by their government. Rather than meet the opposition’s calls for reform, the government of Bahrain has responded by subjecting citizens to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, interrogation, torture, and abuse

NASA Scientists On 400 ppm CO2
By Countercurrents.org

The global concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere -- the primary driver of recent climate change -- has reached 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in recorded history, according to data from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii . The following scientists at NASA were asked what passing 400 ppm means to them:

Angelina Jolie, Corporate Science, And “Prevention”
By Mickey Z

While I support Angelina Jolie’s right to do what she pleases with her body, I can’t help but imagine how incredibly valuable it could’ve been if someone as high-profile as she were not raising “public awareness of the genetic testing she used, as well as concerns about insurance coverage for this kind of testing.” Imagine if she instead called a press conference to raise public awareness of the role corporate power plays in creating epidemics of preventable diseases

So Many Of My Friends Coming Down With Cancer
By Frosty Wooldridge

In the past 10 months, nine of my friends contracted cancer in many of its various forms: kidney, stomach, breast, prostate, colorectal, bladder, Hodgkin’s, liver, ovarian and skin cancers. All of them struggle for their lives as you read this column

37 Ways Of Tackling Australian Educational Apartheid And Social Inequity
By Dr Gideon Polya

Before one dollar is spent on Gonski-style education "reforms", there are many urgent educational procedural reforms that should be introduced that will either not actually cost anything or cost very little but will dramatically address Educational Apartheid, functional illiteracy and functional innumeracy. Below is a list of 37 zero- or low-cost things that can and should be done now to radically improve pre-tertiary education in Australia

The Confused Pashtun
By Iqbal Ahmed Khan

Imran Khan’s Pakistani Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party is taking over the provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) bordering Afghanistan. At this point it is necessary to dispel a couple of myths that already seem to have accompanied the victory. But such an exercise must necessarily begin with an explanation of the reasons for the defeat of the former provincial ruling party, the Pashtun nationalist, Awami National Party (ANP). What this article will argue is that on the one hand, the PTI is filling in a vacuum left behind by a collapsing Pashtun nationalism. And on the other, it will attempt to get rid of a few misconceptions about the PTI’s victory and the Taliban that will arise as a result of the PTI’s gains in KPK

The Koodankulam Mystery : Indian Officials’ Exodus
By People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy

It is beyond any doubt that there has been massive theft, financial irregularities, corruption and wastefulness in the Koodankulam nuclear power project (KKNPP). In this day and age of scientific corruption, asking the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) for the income and assets details of some of the senior leaders of the Indian nuclear establishment would be useless as they would vehemently defend themselves with the help of their political patrons and they all would protect each other. We would rather point out the intriguing change of guard that took place at Koodankulam and in the Indian nuclear establishment last year and request you to draw your own conclusions

21 May ,2013

Bangladeshi Police Attack Garment Workers’ Protest
By K. Ratnayake

Police fired rubber bullets on tens of thousands of protesting Bangladeshi garment workers in the Ashulia industrial belt near Dhaka yesterday, injuring at least fifty. Workers were protesting to demand higher wages and safe working conditions. They were also demanding the death penalty for the owner of the Rana Plaza clothing factory that collapsed on April 24, killing 1,127 garment workers, according to official figures

Let Your Life Be A Friction To Stop The Machine

Hope From The Margins
By Gustavo Esteva

These notes offer a quick glance to ways, in the south of Mexico, in which people are regenerating the society from the bottom up. It is a new kind of revolution without leaders or vanguards, which goes beyond development and globalization. It is about displacing the economy from the center of social life, reclaiming a communal way of being, encouraging radical pluralism, and advancing towards real democracy

What Kind Of Example Is Canada Setting?
By Brent Blackwelder

Many have tried to influence Harper to do what’s best for the environment and the economy over the long run. If the saying is true that, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink,” then maybe it’s time to put Harper out to political pasture. Although with the policies he’s been supporting, he might have a tough time finding drinkable water in that pasture

Standing Up To The ‘Land Grabbing' Foresters In Mozambique
By Hazel Healy

Forestry companies want to carve up Mozambique 's northern highlands. Peasants and their allies are working to hold them accountable. Following is an investigation

On the Road To Damascus
By Antonio C. S Rosa

I participated, May 1-11, 2013 in the Mussalaha International Peace Delegation to Lebanon-Syria alongside fellow TRANSCEND member Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire, from Ireland , and 15 others from eight countries. Keenly aware of my responsibility, especially to my newly made Syrian and Lebanese friends left behind, I shall try to report, describe, make sense of what I saw, heard and experienced; also offer views and insights based on interviews. However, this report will take more than one article

Tales In A Kabul Restaurant
By Kathy Kelly

Last night, at a restaurant in Kabul, I and two friends from the Afghan Peace Volunteers met with five Pashtun men from Afghanistan’s northern and eastern provinces. The men had agreed to tell us about their experiences living in areas affected by regular drone attacks, aerial bombings and night raids. Each of them noted that they also fear Taliban threats and attacks. “What can we do,” they asked, “when both sides are targeting us?”

Chemical Weapons Abuser Deplores Use Of Chemical Weapons
By Jason Hirthler

The administration’s behavior on chemical weapons is morally absurd

Jump Off The Treadmill Of Defeat!
By John Spritzler

Jumping off the treadmill of defeat means building a revolutionary movement--revolutionary in the sense that it has the revolutionary goal of creating a much better kind of society, one in which there are no rich and no poor because everybody who works according to ability

America's Greatest Challenge
By Timothy Gatto

It is our duty as citizen’s to educate those who are currently ignorant in the present situation. There is no free lunch when it comes to this. Either we will rise to the occasion or give away our freedom and prosperity to those who will take it from us. This is the challenge we as Americans face

Another Kenyan Stolen Election
By Thomas C. Mountain

That the fix was in was confirmed when the Godfather himself, son of a Kenyan, Barack Obama, called Uhuru Kenyatta, indicted for “Crimes Against Humanity” by those minions of Pax Americana, the International Criminal Court, to congratulate him for successfully conducting another Kenyan stolen election

Mountbatten - Jinnah Talks On Kashmir
By Abdul Majid Zargar

In a glittering function held to commemorate the 25th year of existential journey of Daily Greater Kashmir, A. G. Noorani stirred a fresh controversy by blaming Jinnah to ignore a proposal from Mountbatten in November 47 negotiations which would have awarded Kashmir to Pakistan in lieu of its forsaking claim on Junagarh & Hyderabad

20 May ,2013

European Powers Fund Al Qaeda Looting Of Syrian Oil
By Johannes Stern

According to a report yesterday in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, the European Union (EU) is directly funding US-backed Sunni Islamist terrorist groups fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. These groups are looting oil in parts of eastern Syria that they control and then re-selling it to EU countries at rock-bottom prices

Climate Crisis: Disaster Looms
By Countercurrents.org

Citing a new study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience The Guardian, reported , global warming would lead to catastrophe across large swaths of the Earth, causing droughts, storms, floods and heatwaves, and drastic effects on agricultural productivity leading to secondary effects such as mass migration. Alexander Otto, at the University of Oxford, lead author of the research, told the Guardian most of the climate change models used by scientists were "pretty accurate"

The Case For Hope, Continued
By Rebecca Solnit

There are so many pieces of the potential solution to this puzzle, and some of them are for you to put together. Whether they will multiply or ever add up to enough we don’t yet know. We need more: more people, more transformations, more ways to conquer and dismantle the oil companies, more of a vision of what is at stake, more of the great force that is civil society. Will we get it? I don’t know. Neither do you. Anything could happen

Nepal, Climate Change And Brick Factories
By Stephen Bailey

You need a bit of height to appreciate the size of a brick factory. You need to get close to appreciate the human cost. From a hill over Duwakot you can see people labouring in the grey mud beneath the towering chimney. Down in the factory you can see the weather beaten faces, deformed hands, and grueling work in terrible conditions. There are factories like this all over Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley, which has become an air pollution disaster zone

Book Review: Dr. Muhammad Qasim–The Victim Of Political Vendetta
By Abdul Majid Zargar

Dr. Qasim Faktoo’s incarceration is one such gory story. His details of long detention are revealed in a recently released book titled Dr. Muhammad Qasim–the victim of political Vendetta