Dear Friend,
Text of a Key Note Address Delivered at The Ambedkar-King Study Circle USA Conference 2019, at Cupertino, California, on October 7, 2019 by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd
An Open Letter to Cardinal George Alencherry of Syro Malabar Church of Kerala, by K.P Sasi on the accusations of Love Jihad
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In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
Countercurrents.org
Ambedkar And Martin Luther King: The Giant Epoch Makers
by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd
Text of a
Key Note Address Delivered at The Ambedkar-King Study Circle USA Conference 2019, at Cupertino, California, on October 7, 2019 by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd
I Am A ‘Love Jihadi’ – An Open Letter to Cardinal George Alencherry of Syro Malabar Church of Kerala
by K P Sasi
This open letter is not meant to question your integrity, faith or your role as a Christian leader, since you are a much bigger person than me. This letter is only an appeal not to enjoy the walk through the blood of other communities. This letter is only meant to remind you the words on harmony articulated by the spiritual texts in Christian tradition: `How wonderful…for God’s people to live together in harmony.’ Psalm 133.1 If you deal with proper Christian understanding of this passage, as a true follower of Jesus Christ who spilled blood on this sacred earth for justice,
peace and harmony of not only Christians but humanity in general, then I am sure, it would provide hope for all persecuted sections to merge with each other for their search for truth, to build a society together without violence on each other, where children of different colours and identities can sing and dance together, around the coffins of fascism in this country.
It is all about the corporations
by Alan Grayson
Listening to “America’s Lawyer,” you’re forced to recognize that corporations push dangerous drugs and defective products on us, and filthify (neologism!!) our air, water, land and food. (In that sense, “American Lawyer” is an extension of Mike Papantonio’s popular progressive radio show “Ring of Fire,” which has been exposing corporate malfeasance since 2003.)
Amazon Onslaught
by Robert Hunziker
This month Brazil’s
President Jair Bolsonaro proposed a new bill promoting mining, expanded agriculture, and energy production on indigenous lands in the Amazon. Accordingly, private developers as well as private hedge funds will occupy and develop land that’s been home to indigenous people for thousands of years.
This month Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro proposed a new bill promoting mining, expanded agriculture, and energy production on indigenous lands in the Amazon. Accordingly, private developers as well as private hedge funds will occupy and develop land that’s been home to indigenous people for thousands of years.
Meantime during Bolsonaro’s first full year in office, deforestation increased by 85%. More on this eye-popping number follows.
Of recent, there have been several deeply disturbing developments in the Amazon.Less than two months ago the world’s leading Amazonian scientists, Thomas Lovejoy (George Mason University) and Carlos Nobre (University of Sao Paulo) issued a harsh warning to the people of the world: “Today, we stand exactly in a moment of destiny: The tipping point is here, it is now.” (Source: Amazon Tipping Point: Last Chance for Action, Science Advances, Vol. 5, no. 12, December 20, 2019).
Tipping points are final acts in nature, meaning points of no return for ecosystems, as functionality turns sour. Regarding the vastness of the Amazonian rainforest, its functionality is so worldly powerful that loss is incomprehensible and likely indicative of an impending final act for civilized, as well as uncivilized, life on the planet.
Nevertheless, recklessly flirting with extreme potent danger, the “tipping point warning” by leading scientists is brushed aside by Bolsonaro’s government, as the Amazon rainforest suffers direct attack on all fronts; it’s like an Anti-Climate Change Crusade, meaning,clearing the planet of all life forms, except for humans, but that can only last for so long before “thudding humans” start reverberating throughout the planet.
Already, the belated impact of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming over the decades has only now started clobbering the Amazon with three 100-year droughts, back-to-back-to-back every 5 years. It’s unprecedented, never happened before, until excessive levels of CO2 accumulated in the atmosphere.
According to NASA, serious,likely permanent, damaging episodes of drought in 2005, 2010, and 2015 have literally changed the Amazon, losing its special “carbon sink status.”As such, the Amazon’sbsphere of influence in variousbregions throughout the rainforest transformsbfrom preserving humanity via its powerful “carbon sink” capabilitiesbto morphing into a shameful “carbon emitter,” same as coal-fired power plants spewing CO2, but not as sooty.
Unprecedented 100/year droughts occurring every five years sends a clear resounding signal to the world that something is horribly wrong.
Consider: According to NASA, the timing between drought sequences has impeded regrowth. The rainforest just doesn’t react like it used to. It does not have enough time between droughts to heal itself and regrow. Throughout all of recorded history, this has never been witnessed before. The implications are downright dreadful. (Source: NASA Finds Amazon Drought Leaves Long Legacy of Damage, NASA Earth Science News Team, August 9, 2018)
Meanwhile and regrettably, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, deforestation of the Amazon surged by 85% in 2019. Wall Street brokers would kill for a stock that increased by 85% in one year, and they would not blink an eye over a bloody mess, if necessary, to achieve such spectacular results, which, in a sense, is equivalent to the 85% Amazonian deforestation scenario. Which will likely get worse in 2020.
Not only that, killing indigenous tribal people is on the rise as private adventurers take Bolsonaro’s right wing sentiments to heart, intruding into the Amazon. They’re armed for self-defense as well as to assault new lands. One never knows when a barefooted half-naked man carrying a thin wooden spear may appear from within the bush on his sacred homeland.
As if the situation couldn’t get much worse, the outlook for 2020 is simply awful! According to MapBiomas, a Brazilian organization in collaboration with universities, NGOs, and technology companies that monitor deforestation: “It would be expected that it will be worse than last year unless something really big happens in the next two or three months to avoid the high season of deforestation that starts in May (2020), according to Tasso Azevedo, coordinator of a group called MapBiomas.” (Source: Victoria Klesty, Amazon Deforestation Could Speed Up In 2020: Expert, Reuters January 15, 2020)
What’s worse than 85% deforestation? Is it 100% or maybe more now that Bolsonaro is so anxious to open up the Amazon to the deep-seated impulses of neoliberal-neocolonial capitalism (1) privatize (2) extract (3) monetize, as quickly as humanly possible, no questions asked.
Going forward, and assuming the Bolsonaro Amazon Extraction Scheme works as planned and passes muster in the hallowed halls of The National Congress of Brazil (Brasilia), it likely puts at risk essential life-sourcing features of the Amazon: Without its wondrous strength and power to generate (1) hydrologic systems (rivers across the sky as far north as Iowa),(2) absorb and store carbon (CO2) and (3) miraculous life-giving endless supply of oxygen, civilization would cease to exist beyond scattered tribes, here and there.
In all, it’s obvious where the Amazonian affair is headed, especially giving consideration to“civilization ceasing to exist beyond scattered tribes, here and there.”
Fortuitously, the infrastructure is already in place for that new world order. There are 305 Brazilian tribes, population 900,000, already in place to teach civilized society how to act and behave and live within natural ecosystems that fundamentally support the planet with vital life-giving resources… for free!
Postscript:An excellent new film by Scientists Warning.TV (Stuart Scott, Executive Director)“Rollbacks – An Assault Against Life on Earth” is an exposé ofTrump’s attack on theenvironment. The link:
Robert Hunziker, MA, economic history DePaul University, awarded membership in Pi Gamma Mu International Academic Honor Society in Social Sciences is a freelance writer and environmental journalist who has over 200 articles published, including several translated into foreign languages, appearing in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide. He has been interviewed on numerous FM radio programs, as well as television.
Traditional Indigenous And White Man’s Conflicting Rules Of Law: A Coming To Terms That Hasn’t Been Resolved Since First Contact
by Irwin Jerome
The controversy now erupting throughout Canada over the issue of the construction of the Coastal Oil/Gas Pipeline & TransMountain Oil Pipeline is an old one that once again reveals a fundamental unresolved impasse that has existed since first contact in the New World between the opposing philosophies and rules of law of the New World’s traditional indigenous peoples and all the
colonizers of the Old World, Europeans or otherwise, who since have arrived on the shores of what traditional peoples otherwise variously still refer to as Turtle Island, Gondwana, Azatlan and still many other ancient names.
A bold step forward in Mexico City for international socialist regroupment
by Stephen Durham
In December, Bob Price and I traveled to Mexico City with Nancy Kato to represent the U.S. and Australian sections of Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) in a series of formal and informal international gatherings that culminated in a two-day meeting of the Committee for Revolutionary International Regroupment (CRIR). Partido Obrero Socialista (POS) of Mexico hosted the get-togethers.
Dying to work at Amazon
by Muffy Sunde
The second largest private employer in the U.S., owned
by the richest man on earth, Amazon promises an enormous variety of products at ever increasing delivery speeds. To do this, the company delivers giant sweatshops with spiraling workplace injuries in a twilight zone where labor saving devices like robots actually increase injuries. Their only purpose is to incessantly speed up workers.
“I’m still too young to feel like I’m 90 years old,” Candace Dixon told the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR). Dixon lost her job when two month’s work at Amazon’s new “fulfillment center” in Eastvale, California, left her permanently disabled, with bulging discs, a back sprain, joint inflammation and chronic pain. Unable to work, she worries about losing her home.
The Center’s investigation showed that the rate of serious injury at Amazon warehouses is twice the national average. At the Eastvale facility, the rate is more than four times higher.
The second largest private employer in the U.S., owned by the richest man on earth, Amazon promises an enormous variety of products at ever increasing delivery speeds. To do this, the company delivers giant sweatshops with spiraling workplace injuries in a twilight zone where labor saving devices like robots actually increase injuries. Their only purpose is to incessantly speed up workers.
The collusion of elected officials and government agencies mandated to protect workers’ health and safety has fueled Amazon’s meteoric rise. But recently, worker and community organizing has publicized and, in some cases, stalled some of the behemoth’s worst abuses.
Work Hard, Have Fun, Be Happy. This Orwellian mantra is on a plaque greeting workers who enter the Amazon warehouse in Shakopee, Minnesota. It illustrates the divide between workplace reality and the smiley logo on Amazon packaging. The goal, always, is to lower the amount of time a worker spends finding and packaging any product for shipment, called their “rate.” Robots do much of the fetching of products and deliver them to the packing line. But, instead of making jobs easier, they make work more repetitive and cause more injuries.
An employee who once walked regularly, now stands at a conveyor belt for eight to twelve hours a day lifting packages into boxes. The required “rate” to place a package is every eleven seconds. Bathroom breaks increase your rate. Asking for help on heavy packages or being scolded by your boss increases your rate. This in facilities often without air conditioning or consistent access to water.
Workers who miss the rate are warned, then fired — even if they are off goal by fractions of a second. Management maintains that workers are monitored by machines, reminded by machines when they slow down, and fired by the machine, not the company’s managers. This is better?
The Eastvale warehouse is new and one of the most automated. No surprise that its serious injury rate is so much higher than even Amazon’s older warehouses.
Amazon touts its generous pay and benefits. In reality, despite announcing it would pay $15 an hour nationally by the end of 2019, wages barely meet state or local mandated minimums. Most new employees are permanent temps who have no vacation, guaranteed hours or health insurance. Most time off is unpaid. Workers who take an hour to see a doctor will have it deducted from available unpaid time off. An employee who takes more than twenty hours off in a quarter is fired.
A worker at the Sacramento delivery center took unpaid time off when her mother-in-law was on life support. She requested and was granted three days
bereavement leave when her relative died. But she returned to work to learn that she had overdrawn her unpaid leave account by one hour and was fired.
Blaming the victim. Amazon was named one of the “Dirty Dozen” of the most dangerous employers in the U.S. in 2018 and 2019 by the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health. The report cited six worker deaths in the half year between November 2018 and April 2019.
Phillip Lee Terry was crushed to death by a forklift in 2017 at Amazon’s Plainfield, Indiana, fulfillment center. Indiana OSHA inspector John Stallone discovered Terry had never received safety training that could have prevented the accident. Indiana OSHA issued four citations and fined Amazon $28,000. But Indiana was competing to be the company’s second headquarters.
So, safety inspector Stallone had to listen to a call from his boss to Amazon telling how to shift the blame onto the deceased worker. Then he was confronted by the state’s labor commissioner and the governor and told to back off or resign. He resigned, saying the situation was, “like being at a card table and having a dealer teach you how to count cards.”
A year later the state deleted all safety citations and fines and agreed with Amazon that the death was due to “unpreventable employee misconduct.”
Billy Foister worked in an Amazon warehouse in Etna, Ohio. He went to its in-house medical clinic, Amcare, complaining of chest pains. He was given fluids and sent back to work by med techs required to be supervised by a doctor. He wasn’t seen by a doctor, which the clinics don’t have.
Less than a week later he had a heart attack on the job and lay on the floor for 20 minutes before a co-worker saw him and called 911. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.
His family and coworkers maintain that surveillance is so widespread that it is impossible that management didn’t see a 6-foot-3-inch man lying on the floor.
Amazon claims they responded “within minutes” and that he didn’t die at work, but at the hospital.
Pushback is spreading. In welcome news, some unions and many community-based groups are saying “enough.” After the announcment that Long Island City, New York, was chosen as one of two new headquarters, the Retail Workers and Teamsters unions insisted that Amazon be neutral in unionization drives. The company refused and walked away from $3 billion in state tax giveaways.
Amazonians United, a workers’ group in several cities across the country, have picketed, organized Prime Day strikes, and won jobs back for workers targeted for taking time off — like the woman in Sacramento. Many regions now have labor/community organizations that fight unjust firings, expose phony health clinics, and publicize abuses.
Organized labor needs to weigh in on this struggle in a big way. These community/worker alliances could grow stronger and take on more than individual battles to negotiate productivity, guarantee independent injury protections, and win union drives.
Contact Muffy Sunde at FSnews@mindspring.com.
Originally published by Socialism.com
Defending political freedoms: Incidents in Israel and Scandinavia raise alarm bells
by Dr James M Dorsey
Incidents this week in Israel and Scandinavia ring alarm bells. They highlight how the rise of civilizationalist leaders in democracies empower anti-liberal and anti-democratic forces. They also illustrate the contradictory choices made by on the one hand an institution that stands for academic freedom and freedom of expression and on the other a commercial entity whose business is pre-empted on being all things to all people.
Buddhist Leader Calls for Nuclear Weapons Free Security
by Ramesh Jaura
An eminent Buddhist philosopher and nuclear disarmament advocate has tabled four critical initiatives to “contribute to the creation of a sustainable global society where all can live with dignity and a sense of security”. The initiatives cover four major areas: building support for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW); multilateral negotiations for nuclear disarmament; climate change and disaster risk reduction (DRR); and education for children in crisis.
Role of Public Intellectuals in Civil Society Protest
by Badre Alam Khan
Although the ongoing nation-wide protests against the CAA-NRC-NPR are leaderless so far, for being neither guided nor controlled by any political ideology. The sinister design
of the Hindutva forces, however, trying to equate the Shaheen Bagh protest with the Arab spring, as per the Organizer, a RSS mouthpiece, this point has also brought out in its latest issue, Feb 2020. This narrative of the RSS is also supported by the state-controlled media that needs to be countered by civil society intellectuals as reminded by both Gramsci and Dr. Babasaheb long ago.
Perceived Roles Of Hinduism And Islam Reversed
by Sandeep Pandey
On January 26, Republic Day, 2020, while protests simmered against Citizenship Amendment Act and National Regiser of citizens throughout India, a dozen North American cities also witnessed historic protests. Indian Embassies have been witness to protests in the past. But this time it was different.
A take on Pro-CAA gang
by An Indian Citizen
Those supporting the CAA have the following
questions against anti-CAA protestors
Politicians won’t save us
by Vikas Dhiman
Monobina Gupta is right, Kejriwal shouldn’t be expected to fight an ideological battle. In fact, no electoral politician should be expected to fight ideological battles—at least not overtly and definitely not within a few months before the elections.
Humanity Means Being Humane
by Pratap Antony
Humanity means *“the quality of being humane, benevolent”, it also means being kind, compassionate, understanding, sympathetic, empathetic, gentle and generous.
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