CounterCurrents: Global Warming: We Are Living In Dangerous Times

Dear Friend,

When Countercurrents.org started 15 years ago CO2 level in the atmosphere was 372 ppm. In the last 15 years it increased only at the rate of less than 2 ppm/year. This year we are seeing a jump of 3.5 ppm over the past year. United Nations climate change secretariat tweeted “January Mauna Loa record shows atmospheric CO2 concentration accelerating, now at 406 ppm and +3.5 ppm over last year”. No, we don’t have an El Nino effect as an excuse this year. Have we crossed the threshold? Tipping point? Point of no return?

On 26th January India celebrated 28th Republic Day. The day witnessed a strange thing, Chennai Mariana beech, which was teeming with tens of thousands of people days ago, saw a flag hoisting ceremony devoid of audience! Where did those thousands go? Why didn't they turn up on that important day? Satya Sagar's article "Slumdog Republic" answers all these questions in detail. 

These are the days of "post truth'' "fake news" "torture" etc. President Donald Trump justified "torture'' saying "it works". Juan Cole who teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan draws lessons from recent memory and tells us that what "works" in torture may not be good for the tortured and torturer. Take Iraq for instance, what did we get from all elaborate torture techniques? To put it simply, Millions of death, refugees, a country destroyed and devastated, a region detroyed beyond repair. Is that what we want? Do we want truth or "fake truth"?

In Trumpland there walked a tall man decades ago who dreamed a dream of human dignity, peace, justice and harmony. It would be    a good time to listen to that speech once again. Romi Mahajan takes us to that “Speech” annotated by Gary Younge.

And also more stories from around the world. 

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In Solidarity

Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org





Global Warming: We Are Living In Dangerous Times

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/28/global-warming-we-are-living-in-dangerous-times/

When Countercurrents.org started 15 years ago CO2 level in the atmosphere was 372 ppm. In the last 15 years it increased only at the rate of less than 2 ppm/year. This year we are seeing a jump of 3.5 ppm over the past year. No, we don’t have an El Nino effect as an excuse this year. Have we crossed the threshold? Tipping point? Point of no return?





Slumdog Republic
by Satya Sagar 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/29/slumdog-republic/

It was always the worst kept secret in India, but has now finally become official – those who run the Republic of India do not need the Public of India at all. What is worse, they in fact see the latter as a grave threat to their very existence. All this was amply evident on Republic Day this year, as the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister unfurled the Indian flag at Chennai’s Marina Beach. There was much pomp and showbut a minor detail was somehow missing from the scene– there was no audience.





Torture Works…To Produce Fake News (And That’s How We Got Into Iraq)
by Juan Cole 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/29/torture-works-to-produce-fake-news-and-thats-how-we-got-into-iraq/

Beware of the information you get from torture. Your victim may be setting you up. And the psychopaths in the White House will be perfectly happy to run with the fake news gained from torture and use it to bamboozle the public for their own nefarious purposes.





Don’t Miss “The Speech” by Gary Younge
by Romi Mahajan 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/29/dont-miss-the-speech-by-gary-younge/

Gary Younge’s The Speech– released in 2013 by Haymarket Books (updated edition)- is increasingly important in these early days of Trumplandia.  A real account of the lead up to, acceptance, and political trajectory of King’s famous 1963 “I Have a    Dream” speech, the book is a clear reminder of the power of rhetoric but also of the forces of “nullification” that can manipulate even the noblest of utterances into their opposite.  Reading The Speech is to be trained howsoever partially in the reality of political struggle, something to which we must all devote considerable time, energy, and financial support in the coming months and years.






The God Of Big Things
Co-Written by Rachel Olivia O’Connor and Richard Martin Oxman

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/29/the-god-of-big-things/

The two of us highly recommend what Arundhati Roy — author of that 1997 Booker Prize for her debut novel, The God of Small Things — suggests is absolutely necessary. That is, that we find some new way of bonding as concerned citizens, so that our movement in solidarity isn’t undermined down the road quite as easily as it has been throughout the very long history of resistance in this troubled world. A huge, monumental undertaking, admittedly, this big bedeviling challenge.






Worsening Inequalities: The Courage To Face The Challenge
by Dr Chandra Muzaffar

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/29/worsening-inequalities-the-courage-to-face-the-challenge/

It is not surprising that the Davos Forum held in the middle of January 2017 chose not to examine the obscene, grotesque, ever widening economic inequalities in the world brought to its attention  by Oxfam, the global aid and development confederation. Oxfam revealed on the 15th of January that “the richest eight tycoons on the planet are worth as much as the poorest 3.6 billionpeople” — half of the world’s population. It also emphasised that the richest 1% continues to own more than the other 99% combined.





How Poor Women Are Taking Charge Of Their Future
by Moin Qazi  

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/29/how-poor-women-are-taking-charge-of-their-future/

The hallmark of any intervention for the poor is that it should stand on the following legs:  empathy, humility, compassion, conscience. A lot of good programs got their start when one individual looked at a familiar landscape in a fresh way. But several of these programmes were difficult to scale up. The measure of success is always relative to the native culture, which is why it’s so important to work with local groups who are part of the culture and thus know what success looks like .





TISS Students In Solidarity With Adivasis In Bastar, Fighting Against Corporate Loot And State Repression

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/01/29/tiss-students-in-solidarity-with-adivasis-in-bastar-fighting-against-corporate-loot-and-state-repression/

We, the concerned students of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai condemn the continuing state repression of adivasis and recent attack on human rights activist Bela Bhatia in Bastar, Chhattisgarh.