CounterCurrents Newsletter 28 March, 2009 – CC Needs Your Support

Hello,

The result of yesterday’s financial appeal was a thorough failure. Just one person signed up to our subscription programme! I know we are in the middle of a financial meltdown, and many of you are going through a very difficult life. I hate to ask you but I have no choice other than turning to you. As you know we dont seek advertisement or institutional donations. I want to keep CC truly an alternative voice. But we have expenses to keep the site going. After CC has been hacked recently I moved the site to a secure server. I have to pay $ 300 a month for hosting and bandwidth expenses. We raise funds only twice a year. Now, we have to raise at least $2000. For that at least 40 of you have to contribute. Countercurrents needs your support, NOW! www.countercurrents.org/subscription.htm

In Solidarity
Binu

Number Of Chronically Hungry Tops One Billion
By Javier Blas
www.countercurrents.org/blas27039.htm
The number of chronically hungry in the world’s low-income countries has passed the one billion mark for the first time – with high food prices leaving the poor most vulnerable to a worsening financial crisis

Goodbye, Homo Economicus
By Anatole Kaletsky
www.countercurrents.org/kaletsky280309.htm
Not only have economists failed to guide the world out of the financial crisis, they were also primarily responsible for leading us into it. Either economics has to be abandoned as an academic discipline – or it must undergo an intellectual revolution, writes Anatole Kaletsky

Obama Announces Escalation Of War In Afghanistan, Pakistan
By Alex Lantier
www.countercurrents.org/lantier280309.htm
President Barack Obama on Friday announced a major escalation of the US war in Afghanistan and its further extension into Pakistan

The Worsening U.S. Failure
By Emily Spence
www.countercurrents.org/spence280309.htm
In light of overall environmental degradation, ever larger human population, ongoing major resource depletion, over-consumption of products that have been overproduced by too small a work force to involve full employment and climate change effects all increasing in their impacts, it seems likely that the worldwide economy will never completely recover and expand. Certainly cutbacks in both economic and population growth are absolutely necessary to curtail further ruin of the natural world on which all life ultimately depends for its continued survival

When The Lights Go Out
By Jim Taylor
www.countercurrents.org/taylor280309.htm
Earth Hour is a symbolic act. And as every world religion knows, symbols have enormous power — whether or not they produce measurable results

From Populist Rage To Revolution
By Joel S. Hirschhorn
www.countercurrents.org/hirschhorn280309.htm
Americans clearly are capable of being outraged. Missing, however, is a sustained, vibrant demand for deep reforms of our political and government system. You hear a lot about populist rage these days, especially connected to the AIG bonus debacle. But populist rage as a reflection of class conflict and anger about our economic meltdown does not necessarily make a political revolution. The saddest thing about Obama winning the presidency was that his change message drained what might have been sufficient national energy for true revolutionary political reforms

Tax The Rich? No, We Haven’t Taxed The Little Leaguers Yet
By Paul Buchheit
www.countercurrents.org/buchheit280309.htm
Don’t penalize success. But don’t skew the gains of productivity toward the rich, either. Great economists like Adam Smith, John Kenneth Galbraith, and John Maynard Keynes recognized that reasonable limits must be in place to curb abuses of the capitalist system. A progressive income tax is the best way to do this, no matter how much yelling we hear from the top

The U.S. Has ‘No Moral Standing’ To Criticize Iran: Zunes
By Kourosh Ziabari
www.countercurrents.org/ziabari280309.htm
This article investigates the double standards of U.S. foreign policy about Iran and its nuclear program, and its support for the war in the Middle East

Return Of The Pink Panties: Flimsy Opposition To Indian Fundamentalism
By Farzana Versey
www.countercurrents.org/versey280309.htm
On Valentine’s Day, there was the usual noise about it being against Indian culture. The liberals woke up. They decided to send lingerie to the fanatic. The pink panty became a metaphor for rebellion, thus reducing the very real threat of fundamentalism to a farce

Brand Advani: Perils Of Rebranding!
By Subhash Gatade
www.countercurrents.org/gatade280309.htm
It is for the first time in his nearly five year old tenure as PM that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a stinging attack on L. K. Advani – PM in waiting as far as the Sangh Parivar is concerned. Prime Minister was candid enough to remind about the “prominent role” played by Mr Advani in the Babri Masjid demolition, or how he presided over Gujarat riots and failed to prevent terror attacks on Parliament and Red Fort as Home Minister

Maya Kodnani: Conceiving And Aborting Career In Misdeeds
By Mustafa Khan
www.countercurrents.org/khan280309.htm
On February 21, 2009 the Gujarat Government submitted in the High court an affidavit in which it says “in spite of being an MLA, Kodnani was a leader of the mob instigating them to commit the crimes and in fact even fired from her pistol”. If the government of Narendra Modi said that to the High Court why did it not ask her to resign there and then? With her arrest on March 27 it is morally imperative that the Modi government should either resign or the Centre impose its rule in the state

New Tasks Ahead Of The Restored Judges
By Mehroz Siraj Sadruddin
www.countercurrents.org/sadruddin280309.htm
The people of Pakistan have surely lost faith in politicians and the generals. However, considering the widespread support that the lawyer’s movement was able to garner, the judiciary should now play a leading role in restoring the confidence of the people. This can only be done when the courts start to dispense speedy justice on matters of immense public importance

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