CounterCurrents: Demonetisation: A Life or Death Battle

Dear Friend,

My friend's son had an accident the other day. I met him in the hospital. The accident was very bad. He had a head injury. The battle was between life and death. He had to be taken to a specailist hospital some 100 KM away. Although, my friend was a businessman, at that moment he had no cash with him. Going to the bank and standing in the queue was not an option. He tried to borrow money from the entire village. No body had cash. Fortunately, a small enterprise owner in the nearby village who had saved some money for his wife's delivery lent him the money and the boy's life was saved. 

Dear friends, a life or death battle is going on India, especially in rural India. It's a battle not just to save lives, but also for the dignity of lives. At least dignity in death. It is also a battle for our democracy. I see lethargy and apathy all around me.    Is there any outrage? Is there any anger? Or am I over reacting? Am I becoming paranoid?  I think it's time we left everything we are doing right now and fight the 'demon' of demonisation. This demon has no political affiliations. It will devour the hard core hindutva supporters too. It's high time they too realised that. 

Vandana Shiva sees demonetisation as the advent of digital dictatorship. She writes, "imposing the digital economy through a “cash ban” is a form of technological dictatorship, in the hands of the world’s billionaires."

Well, hope is not dead yet. At least some people are fighting. The heroic resisters at Standing Rock! 

Irwin Jerome places the struggle at the historic context and examines how it will shape the environment, climate change movements. 

Mara Ahmed writes a beautiful diary of her journey to Standing Rock. 

Ambassador K. P. Fabian takes nuanced view of the cease-fire in Syria. 

And also more stories from around the world. 

If you don't mind, and if you think the content of this news letter is critical for the dignified living and survival of humanity and other species on earth, please forward it to your friends and spread the word. It's time for humanity to come together as one family! You can subscribe to our news letter here http://www.countercurrents.org/news-letter/. 

In Solidarity

Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org




Demonetisation: Beware Of Digital Dictatorship
by Vandana Shiva 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/03/demonetisation-beware-of-digital-dictatorship/

It already is one digital dictatorship. And we need to be asking far more questions than we are asking. We have blindly elevated means — which should be democratically chosen — into an end unto themselves. Money and tools are means, they need to be utilised with wisdom and responsibility to higher ends such as the protection of nature, the wellbeing of all and the common good.





The Standing Rock DAPL Protest: 2016’s Arduous Journey Back To The Future
by Irwin Jerome 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/03/the-standing-rock-dapl-protest-2016s-arduous-journey-back-to-the-future/

Before the Standing Rock Sioux’s historic protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline (NODAPL) fades from the world’s collective memory – and the next tumultuous phase begins for the world to continue to address Climate Change and how to more quickly convert from fossil fuels to renewable energies – it’s essential to pause and reconsider what exactly happened during the closing months of 2016 that the Sioux peoples NODAPL Protest raged and what this arduous historical journey Back to the Future signifies for us all.






Standing Rock: A Template For Resistance
by Mara Ahmed 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/03/standing-rock-a-template-for-resistance/

After 38 hours of being on the move, driving straight from Bismarck to Rochester, contending with three different snowstorms, and maneuvering scantily plowed roads and closed highways, we got back home to New York. The trip itself became an important lesson for us. It taught us that sharing everything and living by consensus decision-making can be hard. It requires patience and frequent negotiation, but it can be done. Maybe it’s a model that’s less clean-cut, more time consuming, and seemingly less efficient, in corporate parlance, but in the end we were richer for it and more equally served by it. Isn’t that what democracy should be all about?






The State Of The State Of Syria
by K. P. Fabian 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/03/the-state-of-the-state-of-syria/

2017 might turn out better for Syria than 2016, partly because Washington might adopt a more consistent policy on Syria and is likely to stop demonizing Putin and start working with him, and partly because the ‘moderates’, ‘softened up’ by the recent military successes of Assad, may prove to be less adamant.





What Should Parents Do?
by Rachel Olivia O'Connor 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/03/what-should-parents-do/

Home school, perhaps. Certainly, proactively supplementing what a child is learning seems to be in order, whether one’s children are attending a public or charter school. Do everything possible to deter offspring from becoming part of the wars we’re waging? Maybe making regular use of alternative news sources would be a good idea too.






Great Bahujan Revolutionary Woman Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule
by Tata Sivaih

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/03/great-bahujan-revolutionary-women-krantijyoti-savitribai-phule/

We salute Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule on her 186th Birth anniversary (3 Jan 1831 – 10 Mar 1897).






Caste Question In India: As I understand It
by Nivedita Dwivedi  

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/03/caste-question-in-india-as-i-understand-it/

My writing below follows from a complete understanding and acknowledgement of my privileged social background and the knowledge that anything I put forward on the question of caste will always lack the authoritative voice and backing of personal experience. However, this lack of the authoritative dimension of personal experience is not something that I ever had any control on, and hence, I refuse to surrender my right of voicing an opinion on this subject for this reason alone, or for my opinion to be delegitimized on this sole account