Syria’s “White Helmets”: Fiction and Reality
By Ahmad Salah, October 14 2016
A young man, wearing a white helmet and a distinctive yellow-and-blue badge on his arm, digs for four hours in the rubble of a destroyed building in Idlib Province in northwest Syria. Finally, he sees what he’s looking for: an infant. He takes her to an ambulance like she is his own child. This is how the Western media portray the volunteers of Syria Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets. But what does the reality look like?
By Elena Sharoykina, October 14 2016
For decades Colombia has been some kind of battlefield where the USA try to restrain anti-US tendencies in South America. Washington has been fighting the ideas of neo-marxism, guevarism and Liberation theology, which inspire FARC rebels, as well as other left-wing fractions. However, it’s not widely known that in jungles of Colombia there is another war front – the ecological one.
Kashmir: ‘Pivoting’ Toward War between India and Pakistan?
By Junaid S. Ahmad, October 14 2016
This past summer witnessed yet another people’s uprising in one of the longest running military occupations in modern times: the Indian occupation of Kashmir. The callous indifference to decades-old Indian atrocities against the people of Kashmir, including well-documented incidences of torture, disappearances, ‘encounter killings,’ rapes, and outright massacres, ought to put the international community to shame. This, after all, is a ‘conflict’ – a euphemism for a military occupation – that the UN and international law has clearly adjudicated on many decades ago, but Indian recalcitrance, Pakistani fumbling, and international criminal neglect have let the blood of Kashmiris spill uninterruptedly.
Dr. Walter Rodney: Revolutionary Intellectual, Socialist, Pan-Africanist and Historian
By Dr. Ajamu Nangwaya, October 14 2016
Dr. Walter Rodney was a revolutionary intellectual, socialist, Pan-Africanist and organizer who made a significant contribution to the Caribbean Radical Tradition[2] that seeks to create just, liberated and egalitarian societies in the Caribbean region. October 2016 marks the 48th anniversaries of the expulsion of Rodney from Jamaica and the subsequent Rodney Rebellion that took place as a reaction to his banning and the general exploitation of the African-Jamaican masses by the neocolonial regime.
Hope Moves In Shadowy And Offbeat Places: Bob Dylan, Death, And The Creative Spirit
By Edward Curtin, October 14 2016
Despite the mute despair and apathy that fill the air, hope is needed to carry on and resist these destructive forces. Sometimes in such a dark time the eye begins to see and the ear hears hope in unexpected places. Doing so necessitates a bit of a sideways move to discover pockets of resistance hiding in the shadows. There are torches of illumination in the underworld, but we need to come to our senses to get there.
