Keep Countercurrents Alive ! An App...
For nearly two decades now Countercurrents has...
Environment
After earth, is human body a dumping ground to microplastics?
Eva Badola | January 22, 2021
Biden on Biodiversity: The Silence and the Promise
Subhankar Banerjee | January 20, 2021
Amazon Rainforest Will Collapse by 2064, New Study Predicts
Tiffany Duong | January 11, 2021
Featured Stories
World
The Captive Media in the USA
“A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself.” – Joseph Pulitzer A media system set up to serve the needs of the Financial Institutions will not serve the interests of the majority of the population. Media ownership, since the Bill Clinton deregulation, has been greatly concentrated and globalized. 1. Its[Read More…]
India
Pulling together to tide over the pandemic: Lessons from Bengaluru
Madhu[1], 39, works as an electrician in a private firm in Bangalore. In July 2020, while the pandemic was still at its height, his wife, elderly mother and father and Madhu all tested positive for Covid 19. Madhu lives in a ward in Bangalore where the NGO Centre for Advocacy and Research (CFAR) is actively working with communities in providing[Read More…]
Globalisation
Dispossession and Imperialism Repackaged as ‘Feeding the World’
The world is fast losing farms and farmers through the concentration of land into the hands of rich and powerful land speculators and agribusiness corporations. Smallholder farmers are being criminalised and even made to disappear when it comes to the struggle for land. They are constantly exposed to systematic expulsion. In 2014, the Oakland Institute found that institutional investors, including[Read More…]
Human Rights
Widespread Opposition of Arrest Warrant Against Eminent Journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
On January 19, a court in Gujarat issued an arrest warrant against eminent journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta in a defamation suit filed by the Adani Group. Since then several leading media organizations and commentators have voiced strong opposition of this action against a senior journalist with many-sided achievements in print journalism, TV and documentary films. Thakurta has also been working[Read More…]
Imperialism
The Future of War, American-Style
A Bidenesque Tour of America’s Regional and Global Military Adventures Hard as it is to believe in this time of record pandemic deaths, insurrection, and an unprecedented encore impeachment, Joe Biden is now officially at the helm of the U.S. war machine. He is, in other words, the fourth president to oversee America’s unending and unsuccessful post-9/11 military campaigns. In terms of active U.S.[Read More…]
Communal Harmony
Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan: Muslims for Composite Indian Nationalism
As per the recent communiqué from Chief Minister of Haryana M.L. Khattar’s, the Government of Haryana has decided to change the name of Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan Hospital in Faridabad to Atal Bihari Vajpayee Hospital. So far we have witnessed the name changes by present ruling dispensation aplenty. Most of these changes involved the changing of names of roads/cities, which[Read More…]
Climate Change
Complex Life Threatened
Throughout the world, scientists are speaking out like never before. They’re talking about an emergency situation of the health of the planet threatening “complex life,” including, by default, human life. It’s scary stuff. On this subject, America’s green NGOs prefer to address the danger by sticking to a middle ground, don’t scare people, too much doom and gloom backfires, turns[Read More…]
Environmental Protection
After earth, is human body a dumping ground to microplastics?
Researchers finding microplastic in the placenta of pregnant women buzzes precursor alarms to life on earth. Plastic has prevailed in every sphere of the planet earth, from deepest trenches in the ocean to the highest mountains; even the mother’s womb could not escape plastic. By 2040, scientists estimated that earth would be dumped with 1.3 billion tonnes of plastic, in[Read More…]
Counter Solutions
The Most Obvious and Important Role of Humanity is Now the Most Neglected and Violated
Ever since the dawn of human life, philosophers as well as common people have often pondered on the meaning and role , the goal and aims of human life. Many ideas have emerged, some interesting and valuable, others clumsy and risky. When humanity is examined not just in isolation but in integration with nature and environment, and all the millions[Read More…]
Resource Crisis
Fossil Fuel Production Is Reaching Limits in a Strange Way
Strangely enough, the limit we seem to be reaching with respect to fossil fuel extraction comes from low prices. At low prices, the extraction of oil, coal, and natural gas becomes unprofitable. Producers go bankrupt, or they voluntarily cut back production in an attempt to force prices higher. As the result of these forces, production tends to fall. This limit comes long[Read More…]
Alternative Energy
Solar is now ‘cheapest electricity in history’, confirms IEA
The world’s best solar power schemes now offer the “cheapest…electricity in history” with the technology cheaper than coal and gas in most major countries. That is according to the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2020. The 464-page outlook, published today by the IEA, also outlines the “extraordinarily turbulent” impact of coronavirus and the “highly uncertain” future of global energy use[Read More…]
Patriarchy
Encroaching Identity
During the hearing of the farmer movement, the Supreme Court expressed concern towards the elderly and women and asked them to withdraw from the movement which is revealing the court patriarchal mentality towards women as well as the movement. Supreme court is directly trying to disturbed unity and organization of the movement. Chief justice of India said That “We do not[Read More…]
Palestine
As Trump Departs, America Is Anti-Supremacist At Home But Pro-Supremacist For Israel
In the wake of the January 6 insurrection, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would have us believe that the United States and Israel have a common enemy. Pelosi implies that the American insurrectionists whose ideologies are rooted in racism, xenophobia and supremacy represent a threat to both the US and Israel — i.e., she believes antisemitism threatens the well-being and sanctity of the[Read More…]
South Asia
United States of South Asia
In more ways than one, South Asia has been pushed back to the 1940’s. If we were to take stock of the situation in the entire subcontinent, we can easily find out that we have made little progress and have got stuck in the status-quo mud for the past three-quarters of a century. Besides providing a binding social order, the[Read More…]
Annihilate Caste
State And Annihilation Of Caste
Indian state is part of Indian society and Indian society is built on caste based social order. That way state or the government can do very little to destroy the caste system because as the state is built on the caste and the caste society is controlled by the top castes – the state cannot go against the system[Read More…]
Life/Philosophy
Common Myths About Human Progress
There are several widely held myths about human progress which have persisted widely for a long time and the wide persistence of these myths has itself become an obstacle in the path of progress. Perhaps the most common myth is of the inevitability of progress over a long period of time. It is taken for granted that if we compare[Read More…]
Arts/Literature
Freedom
Freedom — All the while, they talk of freedom. What has freedom rendered them? Has it given them the ability to soar? To fly? Has it given voice to their inner souls? Has it helped them rise? Has it got rid of diseases? Has it got rid of prisons that bar the mind — of human constructs[Read More…]
Book Review
How Aakar Patel Under-Read The Character Of Hindu Rashtra? A Review Article
Aakar Patel starts his timely and well-researched book Our Hindu Rashtra: What It Is. How We Got Here with a sentence “Majoritarianism is primitive and easy to do”. He surmises that establishment of Hindu Rashtra, which has only one meaning, that a Kshatriya king should rule the Hindu Rashtra under the supervision of a Brahmin head priest. Such a Hindu[Read More…]
