ALTERNATIVES
Ursula K. Le Guin, legendary American sci-fi author and creator of the classic ‘Earthsea’ series, died on January 22. She was 88. In this tribute, we present a video of her talk on “Transformation Without Apocalypse: How to Live Well on an Altered Planet”, as well as her article on ‘the future of the Left’….
Read More about R.I.P. Ursula Le Guin, visionary science-fiction writer
Appuppen/Braindedindia
Conserve/Resist
From The Hindu: From a severely critical stand against Aadhaar in 2014, the Modi-led BJP in power has made a sharp U-turn to bulldoze its way into having every Indian scanned, tagged and labelled. As the Supreme Court begins hearing of petitions that challenge Aadhaar, a timeline of the country’s chequered date with the project….
Read More about Shriya Mohan: The Aadhaar of all things
Development/Growth
Shelley Kasli writes: Recent changes in India’s foreign direct investment policy allows 100 percent FDI (from current 49%) for single brand retail trading and construction, among others, paving the way for global players. In reality, India is being drawn into the spiral of debt economics to protect the American Dream from turning into a Nightmare….
Read More about Why should India risk an economic disaster to save the American Dream?
ALTERNATIVES
No doubt, capitalism has largely enabled the huge growth of human numbers in the last two hundred years. But human population growth has been occurring even in pre-capitalist eras. Parallel to this, also environmental destruction has been occurring and growing in these eras. It is not good to tell our readers only half the truth….
Read More about For saving the earth we need to tell the whole truth: A response to Richard Smith
ALTERNATIVES
Richard Smith writes: The fundamental contradiction with capitalism is that maximizing profit and saving the planet are inherently in conflict and cannot be systematically aligned even if, occasionally they coincide for a moment. But saving the world requires that the pursuit of profits be systematically subordinated to ecological concerns— and this no corporation can do….
Read More about Without a viable alternative to capitalism, our goose is cooked
Bookshelf
Radhika Desai writes: Read what Marx says. Pay no attention to those who tell you Capital is hard: they are merely saying ‘read my book first’. You have limited time: spend it on reading Capital. Remember, Capital was serialised in a workers’ paper. You are today’s workers and Capital is your invitation card to history….
Read More about Marx’s Capital at 150: An invitation to history
Economy
Devinder Sharma writes: In the 12-year period between 2004-05 and 2015-16, total tax concessions given by the Indian government to industry almost equals a whopping Rs 50-lakh crore. If these tax concessions were eliminated and the additional revenue generated was instead used effectively for social betterment programmes, India could have made hunger and poverty history….
Read More about Rs 50 lakh crore: India’s tax bonanza to corporations in the last decade
ALTERNATIVES
From Ecosocialist Horizons: The First Ecosocialist International is not just another gathering, nor another reunion of intellectuals to define ecosocialism. Neither is it a single organization with a seal, or with the omnipresent danger of becoming a bureaucracy. It’s simply a common program of struggle, with moments of encounter and exchange, which anyone may join….
Read More about The first Ecosocialist International is born!
ALTERNATIVES
From Entitle Blog: The “Warning to Humanity” signed by more than 15.000 scientists calls for action to save the planet proposing elitist environmentalism and missing the real target. The problem is not in the “barbarian hordes” and the “overpopulation bogeyman” but in the West’s “imperial mode of living” that is now expanding around the world….
Read More about Why “Warning to Humanity” gets the global crises (and its solutions) wrong
Consumerism/Lifestyle
Read More about The story of a rodent’s unrelenting quest for fulfilment, by Steve Cutts
Consumerism/Lifestyle
Recent studies show that those who identify themselves as conscious consumers use more energy and carbon than those who do not. Why? Because, environmental awareness is higher among wealthy people. It’s not attitudes that govern our impacts on the planet, but income. The richer we are, the bigger our footprint, regardless of our good intentions….
Read More about George Monbiot: Why ‘conscious consumption’ won’t save the world
ALTERNATIVES
Joanna Macy, an eco-philosopher and a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory and deep ecology, coined the phrase “The Great Turning” to describe “the essential adventure of our time”: the shift from what she calls the “industrial growth society” that is consuming the planet to a life-sustaining civilization. Here’s Macy’s interview with Truthout.org’s Dahr Jamail….
Read More about Learning to see in the dark: An interview with deep ecologist Joanna Macy
Development/Growth
The world’s top 1 percent held 45.5 percent of all household wealth in 2000. Now, they hold 50.1 percent, according to research by Credit Suisse. The Mukesh Ambani family, the only Indian family in Asia’s top 10 families, is also the richest in the continent, as its net worth rose $19 billion to $44.8 billion….
Read More about Credit Suisse report: World’s richest 1% of own half of global wealth
ALTERNATIVES
According to the legendary scholar Noam Chomsky, the world is “facing potential environmental catastrophe and not in the distant future,” and the only communities standing between humankind and catastrophe is the world’s Indigenous people. Here we present a selection of articles & essays on indigenous people and their fight to defend nature from ‘civilised’ humans….
Read More about Noam Chomsky: Indigenous people are our only hope for survival
Development/Growth
William Robinson highlights some revealing statistics to expose what is really behind the rapid digitalization of global capitalism, the rise of authoritarian leaders and the creeping spread of the global police state. These, he says, are nothing but an insecure transnational capitalist elite’s attempt to insure themselves against rising inequality and a looming economic crisis….
Read More about A global police state? Digital capitalism and the rise of authoritarian leaders
Mural by Bhagwati Prasad at the Majdoor Library, Faridabad
Conserve/Resist
From Faridabad Majdoor Samachar: “On the train, a person was calling out loudly: From tomorrow, all over India, everyone’s salary will be 18,000 rupees. Equal. No one will be thief, and no one king. Long live the government.” A timely and evocative missive from a monthly workers’ newspaper distributed widely in the industrial belt around Delhi….
Read More about Listen, the revolution blooms in silence
ALTERNATIVES
George Monbiot‘s powerful new book looks at how democracy and economic life can be radically organised from the bottom up. He argues against the “society-crushing system of neoliberalism”, and for a political agenda “that isn’t destined to destroy the living planet”, power given back to people so that wealth isn’t continually distributed to the rich….
Read More about Bookshelf: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis by George Monbiot
Consumerism/Lifestyle
Kurt Cobb writes: We’ve created a world of low-maintenance objects which are low-maintenance merely because they are disposable… Philosophers bemoan our love of material things. But I believe that we modern, industrialized people don’t actually love material things. We wouldn’t treat material things the way we do if we truly loved and cared for them….
Read More about The high cost of an easy-care, low-maintenance world
ALTERNATIVES
Ashish Kothari & Pallav Das write: Genuine alternatives to the destructive juggernaut of corporate and finance capital are emerging as much from contemporary progressive resistance as from the wisdom of indigenous peoples’ and other traditional community world-views. “Radical Ecological Democracy” (RED) is one such emerging paradigm based on which we can fashion a meaningful future….
Read More about Is there a way out? Announcing the new Radical Ecological Democracy website
ALTERNATIVES
From Solutions Journal: The stunning manner in which the Zapatistas presented themselves to the Mexican government, as well as the world, saw them descend upon several towns, cities, prisons, and wealthy landowners. During the revolt, guerillas liberated political prisoners, stormed military barracks, occupied government offices, set fire to trumped-up files that unfairly criminalized Indigenous people….
Read More about Food sovereignty in rebellion: The Zapatista Solution
