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An alarming United Nations report released Tuesday said global temperatures are on track to rise as much as 3.9°C by the end of the century, meaning only drastic and unprecedented emissions reductions can stave off the most devastating consequences of the climate crisis. According to the report, produced by an international team of leading scientists and researchers, greenhouse gas emissions must begin falling 7.6 percent annually by 2020 to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C by 2030.
If Julian Assange were to succumb to the cruelties heaped upon him, week after week, month after month, year upon year, as doctors warn, newspapers like The Guardian will share the responsibility, writes John Pilger.
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UN Report Warns Only Rapid and Transformational Action Can Stave Off Global Climate Disaster
by Jake Johnson
An alarming United Nations report released Tuesday said global temperatures are on track to rise as much as 3.9°C by the end of the century, meaning only drastic and unprecedented emissions reductions can stave off the most devastating consequences of the climate crisis. According to the report, produced by an international team of leading scientists and researchers, greenhouse gas emissions must begin falling 7.6 percent annually by 2020 to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C by 2030.
An alarming United Nations report released Tuesday said global temperatures are on track to rise as much as 3.9°C by the end of the century, meaning only drastic and unprecedented emissions reductions can stave off the most devastating consequences of the climate crisis.
The annual Emissions Gap report (pdf) from the U.N. Environmental Program (UNEP) warns that nations’ commitments under the Paris climate accord—from which U.S. President Donald Trump began formally withdrawing this month—are not nearly sufficient to bring about the widespread changes needed to avert climate catastrophe.
“It is evident that incremental changes will not be enough and there is a need for rapid and transformational action,” the report states. “By necessity, this will see profound change in how energy, food, and other material-intensive services are demanded and provided by governments, businesses, and markets.”
According to the report, produced by an international team of leading scientists and researchers, greenhouse gas emissions must begin falling 7.6 percent annually by 2020 to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C by 2030.
“Our collective failure to act early and hard on climate change means we now must deliver deep cuts to emissions,” Inger Andersen, UNEP’s executive director, said in a statement. “This shows that countries simply cannot wait until the end of 2020, when new climate commitments are due, to step up action. They—and every city, region, business, and individual—need to act now.”
Anderson added that only “major transformations of economies and societies” will be enough.
“We need to catch up on the years in which we procrastinated,” Anderson said. “If we don’t do this, the 1.5°C goal will be out of reach before 2030.”
🔴 We're on perilous ground 🔴We are on track for a temperature rise of over 3°C. This would bring mass extinctions & large parts of the planet would be uninhabitable.We need to supercharge our #ClimateAction ambition NOW to close the #EmissionsGap: https://t.co/AQiWUdoCzi pic.twitter.com/yCCvn3wDS8— UN Environment Programme (@UNEP) November 26, 2019
The Emissions Gap report comes just a day after the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported that levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a record high in 2018.
“There has never been a more important time to listen to the science,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement Tuesday. “Failure to heed these warnings and take drastic action to reverse emissions means we will continue to witness deadly and catastrophic heatwaves, storms, and pollution.”
May Boeve, chief executive of 350.org, said the new reports show “the science is screaming.”
“To world leaders we say: it is time to stop the expansion of the fossil fuel industry immediately,” Boeve said in a statement Tuesday. “Not a single new mine can be dug, not another pipeline built, not one more well dropped into the ocean. And we have to get to work immediately transitioning to sustainable renewable energy powered energy systems.”
“Across the globe, resistance to fossil fuels is rising, the climate strikes have shown the world that we are prepared to take action,” Boeve added. “Going forward people will keep up a steady drumbeat of actions, strikes, and protests that get louder and louder throughout 2020. To governments attending Cop25 in Madrid, the eyes of all future generations are upon you. The world has woken up to the reality of climate breakdown.”
Originally published by CommonDreams.org
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The
Lies About Assange Must Stop Now
by John Pilger
If Julian Assange were to succumb to the cruelties heaped upon him, week after week, month after month, year upon year, as doctors warn, newspapers like The Guardian will share the responsibility, writes John Pilger.
Gunfire, clash in second night of violence in Lebanon while business group calls for general strike
by Countercurrents Collective
Lebanon is going through turmoil. Clashes between supporters of Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Saad al-Hariri, and Shi’ite groups Hezbollah and Amal turned into gunfire in Beirut late on Monday, reported state news agency NNA.
Will Latin America Learn?
by Sandeep Banerjee
Lessons from Bolivia. Where Che
was Murdered. Where Again a Coup was Staged.
Lessons from Bolivia. Where Che was Murdered. Where Again a Coup was Staged.
Forty-six years and two months. Eduardo Galeano wrote La Trampa on events of Chile that happened on September 11, 1973, in a few touching paragraphs. The last two we can reread now.
“In those difficult times, the workers were discovering the secrets of economy. They were understanding that it is not impossible to carry of production without the industrialists, not impossible to carry on distribution without the merchants and markets. But the multitude of workers marched without weapons, in empty hands, in the road to their liberty.
“From the coast of Chile it could be seen, from the horizons are coming the warships of the United States. And the military coup, as announced, occurred.” [my translation, and not literal.]
Even without warships appearing on Chilean coast on that very time the coup was going to happen, as the Chilean army obeyed the orders of capitalist-imperialist nexus of Chile. After all they were the instruments of class power. And on the other sides, “But the multitude of workers marched without weapons, in empty hands…”
Argentine ‘old guard’ Atilio Boron did not forget. He was barely thirty then. He tells us something which are becoming rarest of rare nowadays in his “El golpe en Bolivia: cinco lecciones [Nov 10, 2019] ” published in his own website, and which was subsequently translated into English and appeared in many publications [readers may visit https://www.globalresearch.ca/coup-bolivia-five-lessons/5695084], including some places whose ideas are not very same. Anyway. We got profound analysis from a neighbour country of Bolivia.
The first of the five lessons he wrote told us that though the economic policy of the MAS govt. of Evo Morales maintained a capitalist economy run efficiently as per parameters of World Bank, IMF and in short parameters formulated by imperialism like GDP growth rate, FDI and return form that and so on, imperialism as such never likes a govt. that is not ‘theirs’.
In lesson four he writes: “the ‘security forces’ enter the scene. In this case we are talking about the institutions controlled by numerous agencies, military and civic, of the government of the United States. They train them, arm them, do joint exercises and they educate them politically.
“I had the opportunity to witness this when, at the invitation of Evo, I inaugurated a course “Anti-imperialism” for officers of the three armed forces. In this opportunity I was astonished by the degree of penetration of the most reactionary North American slogans inherited from the era of the Cold War and due to the undisguised irritation caused by the fact that an indigenous person would be president of the country.
“What these ‘security forces’ did was withdraw themselves from the scene and give free range for the uncontrolled actions of the fascist hoards – as they acted in Ukraine, in Libya, in Iraq, in Syria to overthrow, or try to do so in this last case, leaders that bother the empire – and as such intimidate the population, the militant sectors, and the figures of the government themselves.
“So it’s a new socio-political concept: military coups ‘by omission’, allowing the reactionary groups, recruited and financed by the right, to impose their law. Once terror reigns and with the defencelessness of the government, the outcome was inevitable.”
Atilio Boron continues to his Lesson number 5, the final lesson: “The security and public order should never have been entrusted in Bolivia to institutions like the police and the army, colonised by imperialism and it’s lackeys of the local right-wing.”
Here again we get example of what Marx and Engels taught us regarding the ‘state’ of the old order and why and how the commune of Paris replaced it.
It may be recalled that only in Venezuela we are still watching a different show – it is largely due to existence of an army obedient to Maduro (and previously Chavez) govt, obidient to the idea of Bolivarian revolution and Bolivarian republic – because in the time of crisis it mattered. Why it is so or how it could be so was explained by late Marta Harnecker. In her September 2003 article: “The Venezuelan Military: Making An Anomaly?” [available at http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/ar/libros/cuba/mepla/venezu/iartic4.pdf] she elucidated why the US planned military coup failed in Venezuela. It was really an exceptional case.
From Cuba we had another article: “Lecciones de una derrota” (Lessons of a Defeat, available at https://jovencuba.com/2019/11/16/cuban-reflections-on-the-bolivian-restoration/) by Yassel A. Padrón Kunakbaeva [dated 12 Nov, 2019]. Let us see what lessons are there.
“We should first understand what has happened. Evo Morales managed to peacefully coexist, for years, with the Bolivian middle-class. He walked on the path of liberal bourgeois democracy, getting 47% of the vote in the last election. However, the system shook him off, like a dog shakes off rainwater. The right showed its most violent and racist side, reaching extremes such as the rape of a indigenous young woman, who was then hanged with her own braids. The army and the police, which Evo didn’t manage to change, proved to be quite at home at oligarchic domination.
“Evo was the President. The MAS attained a degree of hegemony for years. However, the political system of liberal democracy – especially in the shape it takes in Latin America, with its institutions and power apparatus, its parties, its press, its justice and its military – proved to be effective.
“The bourgeoisie may let you sit at the head of the table, but it knows it owns the table, the chairs, the windows and the house itself. Sooner or later, they will kick you out of it.
“And so one cannot help but remember Fidel, and the clarity with which he led the Cuban Revolution once the insurrectionary phase was completed. He knew the first thing to be done was to disband the old army and the old police, to arm the people, to destabilise the entire bourgeois institutional system. The triumph and continuity of the Revolution in Cuba were achieved thanks to a complete dismantling of the preceding institutional apparatus, and to the cultural shift that was brought about, in which even the concepts of that political system were discredited and largely forgotten.
“Of course, it’s not the same to triumph by means of an armed revolution than by winning an election….”
Farther in the article we find: “Of course we need to have the rule of law. But justice must come from the heart of the people. It cannot come from those professional and class-minded mafias which treat Latin American countries brutally. We need popular and independent courts of law. It might be a good idea to remember ancient times, and how justice worked in the polis of Athens or in the Roman republic, as well as the experience of the Paris Commune.”
“We cannot abandon the idea of popular armed forces. Above all, we must rescue Fidel’s idea of popular militia. An army which is the people itself at arms, so no one may snatch away its destiny.”
Out of megabytes written on recent happenings in Bolivia, perhaps these are some vital-most lessons for the coming generations. PT of Brazil and the parties following Socialism of Twenty-first Century or the civil society may not like these nineteenth-century twentieth-century lessons. But the workers and peasants of Latin America need to learn precisely such ‘unrefined’ ‘uncivil’ lessons that the lackeys of imperialism engrave on their fleshes by violent rule.
Sandeep Banerjee is an activist who writes on political and socioeconomic issues and also on environmental issues. Some of his articles are published in Frontier Weekly. He lives in West Bengal, India. Presently he is a research worker. He can be reached at sandeepbanerjee00@gmail.com
Is Netanyahu ready to inflame war to escape his legal troubles?
by Jonathan Cook
The decision to indict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on three separate criminal counts pushes the country’s already unprecedented electoral stalemate into the entirely uncharted territory of a constitutional crisis.
7 Billion + Population Problem
by T Vijayendra
In the past the slogan, ‘Think Globally, Act Locally’ was very popular. This article too began looking at the problem globally. But in the future local self sufficiency will be the order of the day. So one should also be able to think locally and act locally. Below one can look at the Deccan in India as an eco region, look at its problems and try to look at the solutions that are being attempted.
This is meant to be an article for activist education and therefore on the one hand it starts with explaining basic concepts; on the other hand it avoids academic references. The population problem is complex and has been debated since Marx’s time. In the past leftists maintained that it is not a real problem, but a creation of capitalism. However in the last few decades resource constraints of the planet earth have been recognised and the present population of seven billion appears as a challenge. This article does not give definite ready solutions. It tries to present the problems and looks at possible solutions in a particular region.
Population growth means increase in population which is computed by subtracting total deaths from total births per year. For a specific area or country one has to add total immigration minus total outmigration.
Population grows at a ‘compound rate’ (like compound interest rate that students learn at school). The doubling of population is a function of growth rate. A simplified (but fairly accurate) formula is 70/growth rate = No. of years in which the population will double. Thus if there is 1 percent growth rate, in 70 years it will double. If there is 2 percent then in 35 years it will double and in 70 years it will be 4 times! If the growth rate is 10 percent it will double in 7 years—like the fixed deposits used to double in 7 years when the interest rates were 10 percent.
Zero Population Growth (ZPG)
Zero population growth rate (ZPG) means the rate of growth is zero or there is a stable population. There may be negative population growth which results in the decline of the population. This happens at some time both in nature and in human history.
In nature sustainable population is based on high child mortality and normal/low longevity. High child mortality occurs because almost all animals have predators, which kill the weak and the slow. Also in nature they don’t have ‘health care’ like humans have today, where the aim is to save every child and achieve as low child mortality as possible. High child mortality ensures lower growth rate and more effective genetic selection and therefore a ‘healthier’ population. Low longevity occurs because the predators kill the weak and the old because they cannot escape the predators. Animals that do not have predators (the top of the species) die due to inability to hunt or digest. For example, tigers die when they become too weak to hunt whereas elephants die due to losing their teeth.
In early human history human beings were not very different from other animals as shown in the population growth charts. But human history is different because humans can modify the environment to suit themselves to a greater degree than any other species. This ability kept on increasing and it increased by a leap due to industrialisation in the last 200 years. That is the root of the population problem.
The population growth is essentially due to humans’ ability to modify the environment to suit their needs. While the invention of fire and other similar inventions were important, a significant change occurred around 12,000 years ago due to introduction and growth of agriculture. Agriculture provided food security by increasing the shelf life of food (mainly grains), made slavery possible and in turn increased population. The figures are well known. Thus :
| | World | India |
| Beginning of agriculture (10000 BC) | 1 Million | |
| Introduction of Iron (500 B. C.) | 100 Million | |
| Beginning of Christian Era | 200 Million | |
| 1800 A. D. | 1000 Million or 1 Billion | 260 Million |
| 1900 A. D. | 1.6 Billion | 300 Million |
| 1950 | 2.5 Billion | 350 Million |
| 2000 | 6 Billion | 1 Billion |
| Today | 7 Billion + | 1.2 Billion |
(All figures and dates are approximate)
Agriculture also destroyed forests, grasslands and wetlands endangering the flora and fauna and in the final analysis it can endanger human species too. Agriculture created food security. But it is debatable because it also increased population and created slavery thus creating food insecurity for the slaves. This has happened more dramatically in the 20th century.
The 20th Century
As one sees from the data above, the 20th century was unique. It had the highest population growth rate in history. It was the only century in which the global population doubled and trebled! Several factors contributed to it. The green revolution (chemical fertilisers, pesticides, hybrid seeds, irrigation and mechanisation of agriculture), which was possible due to availability of cheap petroleum products, came only after World War I (in India it came in the 1970s). It contributed significantly to increase production of commodified food, particularly in the US, Canada and Australia and contributed to increase of population all over the world. On the other hand it also increased poverty, hunger and food insecurity for millions of people, especially in the third world.
Secondly increased longevity and decreased child mortality occurred due to dramatic changes in the health care industry. This is opposite to what happens in nature. In the era of cheap oil longevity increases due to ‘zoo conditions’ of old people – no predators, assured food supply and a high eco foot print of old people due to geriatric health care. In nature, ‘zoo conditions’ do not prevail and therefore longevity is low.
Thirdly, decrease in the number, intensity and deaths due to famines. So one gets a picture of a 7 billion population with millions of hungry people all around the world, particularly in the third world. The current UN data of hunger is around a thousand million or one billion.
Several other things happened too. A huge meat and poultry industry came up. These animals did not eat grass or insects as in the past but were fed agricultural produce (mainly corn in the US). So a greater area came under agriculture, further reducing grassland, wetland and forest. Several commercial crops like tobacco, tea, coffee and sugarcane also took up large agriculture areas. To feed this agriculture other industries and mining also increased. A huge resource drain occurred.
The 21st Century
There is a limit to growth of agriculture. It is limited by land and by input resources. The limit was artificially raised by cheap oil in the 20th century. This has ended in the 21st century. Oil production peaked (2005-2008), and it is now declining, never to rise again. This not only ushered an unending crisis of capitalism, it has also affected food production by increasing the input prices of agriculture. Today a billion people are starving the world over. About half of these starving people, that is, 500 Million are likely to die in this decade. And a full half of them, that is, some 250 Million will be Indians. It is difficult to imagine what other things will happen along with this catastrophic event. It is an end of era event —like the Black Death in Medieval Europe.
What else can happen during this period? With the arrival of Peak Oil, the curtain has closed on Act 1 of the drama Petroleum Man. What will happen in Act 2? Chekhov said, ‘If there’s a gun on the wall at the beginning of the play, by the end it must go off.’ In the world’s nuclear arsenal there are many guns on the wall. If life copies art, will there be an Act 3 in which the players, having learned their lesson the hard way, live sustainably? So if one does face a nuclear holocaust then one may have a situation when the ‘living shall envy the dead’. However as humans, people are optimistic and here are some more optimistic scenarios.
What are the possibilities?
There are two issues :
1. How the current and growing population can feed itself and,
2. How the world can move towards a sustainable population.
1. How the current and growing population can feed itself and,
2. How the world can move towards a sustainable population.
In a short term scenario there is going to be a lot of pain and starvation deaths. In the past due to cheap oil one could transport large quantities of food quickly. While it did not stop poverty or starvation, it prevented deaths. This no longer will be possible. These deaths will occur among vulnerable population, the poor and tribals. The sad thing is that these very people have many of the skills needed to sustain the society in a post-oil world. Various scholars have given different figures about reduction of population in the short term. One extreme figure is that the world population will be only two billion by 2050.
In the long term there are some possibilities. With the end of oil-economies will have to grow local because transport costs will be too high. If people do not destroy themselves social changes are bound to occur.
A viable future lies in some kind of non-capitalist social formation which is based on:
1. Equity
2. Scaling down of energy use
3. Local self sufficiency
4. Eco restoration by using Perma-culture / Agro Ecology
1. Equity
2. Scaling down of energy use
3. Local self sufficiency
4. Eco restoration by using Perma-culture / Agro Ecology
This may ensure enough food for the existing population. Each eco region will have to become self sufficient. Now different eco regions can support different levels of populations. Deserts and cold countries support smaller populations whereas tropical countries and riverine plains support bigger populations. So over a period the population will have to decline according to carrying capacity of the region. In the final analysis they will have to attain zero population growth and may even have shrinking of population.
Social Formation
There are two existing models which have tackled the present problems somewhat successfully: the Cuban model after the collapse of Soviet Union and the Transition Town Movement in Europe and USA. The latter has an anarchist kind of social formation.
The erstwhile socialist/communist countries (former Soviet Union, China, Vietnam etc.) may learn from Cuba and have their own version of ‘Special Period’ and come out of the crisis in 5 years.
The advanced capitalist countries may have some kind of social democracy with strong ‘Eco Socialism’ inputs and coupled with Transition Town models may also solve the problem within a relatively short period.
The so called ‘Third World ‘countries have limited experience of democracy. While they do have anarchist kind of experiments in pockets, like permacul-ture communes that are springing up everywhere, they are also facing lot of difficulties because the society at large still has an authoritarian background. So, these countries may have to go through some kind of revolution resulting in a command economy and then follow Cuba kind of ‘special period’.
This is an optimistic scenario, but in reality there will be lot of conflict, pain and misery, particularly before and during the revolution. There is also a possibility that some countries may not have revolution and may have a prolonged period of chaos destroying people and resources.
The new social formations coupled with organic farming or agro ecology can certainly feed the present population better. This is due to several factors. Due to relative equitable distribution people will have a little more food. A lot of waste due to wasteful consumption by today’s rich, waste due to storage and transport in the present capitalist economy will also be eliminated.
However as the world has seen organic farming fed only about two billion people in 1921. Can it feed 7 billion people today? It is a very difficult proposition. So there will be attempts to limit population growth and take it to zero population growth (ZPG).
The existing models of ZPG are based on urbanisation, nuclear family and increased prosperity. This model cannot be applied to the whole world because there are not enough resources for the whole world to achieve the prosperity that the western countries and some richer people in developing countries have achieved.
However one reason for the above model to work was the security that this model provided. It is possible to provide security at a lower level of consumption if the society is based on equity. So it is possible that in the new social formations ZPG may be achieved.
The sustainable population before agriculture was only one million. What is the desirable level of population that is actually sustainable over a long term? Obviously one million, the natural sustainable population before agriculture, is the lowest limit and mankind may never go down to that level. Various figures have been suggested, most of them are around two billion or less. This figure is arrived at due to the fact that in 1921 when the population was two billion, all agriculture was organic. For India this figure is 350 million (1950) when practically all agriculture was organic. However since then the soil has been degraded and without oil even this population may have difficulties to survive. Will mankind shrink to such a level? And of course the more pressing question is how the present population will face the situation when fossil fuel agriculture comes to an end. There is a possibility of large scale famine killing millions of people.
The Future
Will mankind be able to achieve this reduction of population to two billion? The question poses several issues. Mankind has developed an ethics that values life per se and it is unthinkable to allow child mortality to increase and have higher number of births. Similarly it is difficult to think of lowering longevity. At best one can think of an option—making euthanasia legal. But it will be exercised by very few. Only future generations will be able to think about it more clearly in changed circumstances. Even if there is negative growth rates, it will take a long time to achieve this kind of reduction. And what is the way to achieve this? If people voluntarily decrease birth rate, they will be saddled with an increasingly aging population, like Japan and France today. So logically nature’s way appears to be best. In organic farming one may say that-he should follow Nature’s way. Why should it not be applicable to human society? It remains a challenge to future generations as to how to achieve this in a humane way.
Think Locally, Act Locally
In the past the slogan, ‘Think Globally, Act Locally’ was very popular. This article too began looking at the problem globally. But in the future local self sufficiency will be the order of the day. So one should also be able to think locally and act locally. Below one can look at the Deccan in India as an eco region, look at its problems and try to look at the solutions that are being attempted.
Historically India has been endowed with rich natural resources and the country was self sufficient most of the time except in times of great political turmoil. Deccan too has been self sufficient. The last great famines occurred during the closing decades of the 19th century.
Every eco region has specific food practices. In Deccan it has been millets, pulses and ground nut. Agriculture is mainly rain fed with local irrigation from tanks. Some rice was grown in low lying areas with tank irrigation. Cotton was the main cash crop. Rearing of sheep and goats has been an important part of the local economy and meat has been part of the diet. Some amount of fish and poultry has also been part of the food. Some communities also eat pork.
A lot of this changed due to green revolution in other parts of the country and in the Deccan it introduced food insecurity and hunger and in some cases farmer’s suicide. How did it come about?
Increases of food production of wheat and rice are concentrated in green revolution areas. This was brought to the Deccan by the government’s public distribution system. Popular governments introduced rice at two rupees per kilo for the poor. This made the local millets expensive and people got used to eating rice and wheat. Slowly rice and wheat were introduced as food crops. As these require lot of water, tube well irrigation was introduced and tanks were neglected. Other cash crops like sugar cane, soybean and genetically modified Cotton were also introduced.
This led to a big disaster within 30 years. Water tables fell and there has been a big water scarcity in many regions. Commercial agriculture proved unviable for small and medium farmers and their burden grew to such an extent that several thousands of farmers had to commit suicide. Polished rice and white flour consumption affected the health of local people and possibly caused increased suffering due to diabetes. Hunger and water scarcity stalks the land.
The socialist solution to this situation is a combination of the old traditions and new. The old tradition consists of struggling for security of land ownership or land to the tiller or land reforms. The new is decentralisation, local food security and knowledge based restoration of ecology and agriculture that has been degraded due to the processes mentioned above. Local food security implies growing local foods as per local ecology. In the Deccan it would mean reducing rice and wheat and going back to millets, pulses and ground nut. Again the cash crop of sugar cane and soybean which are popular today will have to be abandoned or reduced drastically and organic cotton will have to be restored. Agro ecology would be the key science of the 21st century and rebuilding local communities would be the key social task.
A large number of social movements coordinated by NAPM (National Alliance of People’s Movements), NGOs like Deccan Development Society and several other organisations, small groups, permaculture farms in the region are following this path. While the scale is small and the ruling classes are very powerful, nevertheless they are showing a viable alternative. With larger political changes these policies and experiences will prove useful. It is certainly possible to visualise food self-sufficiency for the Deccan region.
Call to Arms
In the face of such imminent crises there are several people’s movements going—the Maoists, the ethnic and regional movements in Kashmir and the North East and scores of movements against large capitalist projects that take away common property resources such as land and water, existing livelihoods of poor people and endanger the environment. However there is a lack of coordination and understanding about the nature of capitalist crisis. The movements mainly oppose the exploitation and oppression and demand either immediate relief or improvement of the system. Many even think that they are fighting a losing battle. They do not realise that the time has come to fight for a win, to change the system. There does not seem to be the necessary urgency in the people’s movement. Partly it is inertia; partly it is the phenomenon of the boy crying ‘wolf’, that is, in the past, so many times, capitalism faced crisis and yet people did not have any revolutionary change in India. So this time around people are tired of responding. Then there is a divergence in various movements—in the issues handled—class, ethnicity or opposition to mega projects. So even though millions of people are actively opposing the present State and capitalism, there is no dialogue or coordination between different groups and movements. It is the need of the hour to have a dialogue, come together for concerted action and avoid the forthcoming disaster as much as possible. This time around the chances are better because the edifice of the enemy is weakened, is crumbling and imploding. Is anyone listening?
Originally published in Frontier Vol. 45, No. 14 – 17, Oct 14 – Nov 10 2012
T. Vijayendra is a political commentator
The Real
Deal on the War in Yemen
by Thomas C Mountain
The key to reunification of Yemen is negotiations, and the only real successful negotiations in recent times was under Eritrean leadership ie 1990. Eritrea has been successful recently in leading the outbreak of peace in Ethiopia and Sudan. Hopefully Yemen is next, inshallah. The problem is to many players vieing for a role in one of the most strategically critical chokepoints in the world, the Baab Al Mandeb straights where the Indian Ocean joins the Red Sea. If left alone the Yemenis with Eritrean mediation could solve their own problems once again.
Global Turmoil: Ethics offer a way out of the crisis
by Dr James M Dorsey
To achieve the kind of social and economic justice as well as live-and-let live environment that Mr. Brooks advocates, leaders, governments and civil
society will have to rediscover and readopt the moral and ethical values that are embedded in the world’s multiple cultures and common to much of mankind.
Where the World Meets: the Role of Sri Lanka in Indo-Pacific Theatre
by Harsha Senanayake
The the paper seeks to question the scholarly argument that ‘the Belt and Road The initiative has constructed the geopolitical position of Sri Lanka’ (Miller, 2017) and looks at the geopolitical behaviour of island nation throughout history based on its strategic position in the Indo-Pacific region while providing a Sri Lankan perspective on its regional role. Sri Lanka is indeed charting a new course for itself in the region through pursuing a more proactive role based on its geopolitical location and promoting the “multi-layered regionalism” (Waidyathilake, 2018). However, the paper analyses the contemporary geopolitical
behaviour of Sri Lanka based on a historical evaluation of the geopolitical decision-making process of Sri Lanka.
Constitutional morality can only come through humanist principles of Baba Saheb Ambedkar
by Vidya Bhushan Rawat
A constitutional morality in India is only possible if those who implement it have faith in humanist values as espoused by Baba Saheb Ambedkar. You cant really implement this constitution with caste superiority complexes in your heart. Be human and believe in humanity and that is the only towards constitutional morality.
70th Constitution Day of India: Demolition of Democratic-Secular Indian Constitution is an Old Project of The Hindutva Gang
by Shamsul Islam
The
fast-forward demolition of the democratic-secular polity of India which is taking place is neither new nor unexpected. Modi as CM of Gujarat while talking to Reuters (July 12, 2013) had declared himself to be ‘a Hindu nationalist’, the RSS top brass declaring again and again that India is a land for Hindus and by 2020-21 it would be Hindu rashtra with Muslims and Christians cleansed from the land, Indian nationality tied to worshipping of cow and open declaration of the Cabinet ministers that western concepts like secularism would be replaced by the principles of Hindutva.
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