From patrice at xs4all.nl Wed May 1 00:28:24 2002 From: patrice at xs4all.nl (Patrice Riemens) Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 20:58:24 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] IDF in Palestine: Operation Destroy the Data Message-ID: <20020430205824.B13591@xs4all.nl> From rafael at csi.com Wed May 1 01:15:17 2002 From: rafael at csi.com (Rafael Lozano-Hemmer) Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 21:45:17 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Vectorial Elevation @ Artium Message-ID: Dear Sarai list, I would like to invite members of this list to participate in an online interactive light sculpture currently live in the Basque Country. It is a new version of the relational architecture piece ³Vectorial Elevation², which has been launched for the opening of the Basque Museum of Contemporary Art, ARTIUM, in the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz. From rehanhasanansari at yahoo.com Wed May 1 07:14:23 2002 From: rehanhasanansari at yahoo.com (rehan ansari) Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 18:44:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Musharrif's Referendum: another one bites the dust Message-ID: <20020501014423.91879.qmail@web12901.mail.yahoo.com> Another One Bites The Dust by Shandana Minhas from www.chowk.com -------------------------------------------------------------------- Lowering the voting age to 18 for the referendum makes sense if you look at the speed with which General Musharrafs latest tactics are alienating many over 21. Most 18 year olds don�t bother following the news. They are content to follow the lead of those they feel are most qualified to lead the world, i.e. the bully�s and the beautiful. But to socially challenged people like me, barred from rolling in the alligator wrestling ring of life by the dual constraints of self respect and mid-term pregnancy, the news is all we have. And the news over the last couple of weeks has raised a few ideological obstacles to my making a beeline for the �yes� line in the voting booths come referendum day (unless it be to drag away any 18 year olds I happen to know). I was one of those M enthusiasts who liked every move of our new moderate leader. In that narrow window post- September 11, pre referendum, General Musharrafs �political correctness� made it easy to ignore questions, to push them back down into the subconscious with all the other debris accumulated during a Pakistani existence. This is sometimes called a coping mechanism. Stop thinking. Life is so much easier if you don�t think. Ironically, it was the wording of the referendum question itself that raised my mental hackles and compelled the slug inside to yell �Oye�just a minute!� �For consolidating the local government system; establishment of democracy; continuation of reforms; end to sectarianism and fundamentalism; and fulfilment of Quaid-i-Azam�s concept of Pakistan, would you like to elect President General Pervez Musharraf as President of Pakistan for five years?� I�m not even going to go into the legality of the whole exercise. I know nothing about it. But the wording of the question�a simple �Would you like to elect President General Pervez Musharraf as President of Pakistan for five years?� would have sufficed. Why suggest a �No� meant opposition to all of the above? Why equate dissent with disloyalty? In world of real, painful dichotomy, why add a false dilemma to the mix? Hadn�t the �either you are with us or against us� school of thought already caused enough suffering over the last one year? Did we really need an addition to the current line up of �asses� of evil? So began another tale of disenchantment. And, like a local hospital administrator faced with the Congo virus, I�d like to share. Introspection is more effective pre-stupidity. The �power in the hands of the people� initiative sounded sweet but its quite disturbing to see the �hands of the people� behaving like especially constructed prosthetic devices with long handles for back scratching. Commandeering public transport and making attendance of rallies mandatory for the rank and file doesn�t create faith in the government, it erodes it. Nazims who have till date been pleading in vain for an infusion of funds into silly things like health, education and waste management infrastructure have suddenly found the pockets of the federal government are miraculously deep when it comes to expenditure on M�s rallies. Nazims objecting to the arbitrary movement of people and funds on a marionette string have found the pockets of the federal government to be empty, concrete lined and populated by an army of deaf mutes with doctorates in grudge bearing. Some would say the press has never been freer but respect and disdain can be synonymous. Money has been poured into a cosmetic overhaul of state television but a tyrannosaurus rex with lipstick is still a tyrannosaurus rex. Presswalas have been castigated for their �myopic� rendering of the facts; intimidation tactics have ranged from the rhetorical to the physical. Journalists and columnists have been asked to refrain from writing about things �of which they have no knowledge.� Do they want to drive an entire profession out of business? The �woman� angle promoted by a smart line in reform and increase in representation seems to be just a line when faced with the fact that an administration willing to mobilize millions in expenditure and human resources for the consolidation of power at the drop of a hat has yet to do the same in a drive against honor killing or laws and mechanisms that oppress and punish women and minorities. Politicians will be arrested upon reentry but murderers, wife beaters and rapists can still walk free. The stink of the previous government�s verbal diarrhea still covers the land and every day there is another barrage of dung patties at the (supposed) enemies of the state. And all that�s on offer is repetitive old hat set against a backdrop of all too familiar lota faces and people who have no business at political rallies. The articulate sincerity apparent from General Musharraf's earlier speeches seems more ominous now; comments like �I am aware that you have never disappointed me in the past and will not let me down in future� and �we will make up our own minds and then your views will be invited� seem more �general to his troops� then �servant of the people�. And who is this mysterious �We� anyway? Is it M and I? Him and George? Gorillas in the mist? The boys in khaki? After months of appearing bathed in a gentle golden backlight (like a little sting ray from heaven) in the run up to the referendum the General�s chosen coterie and whole hearted embrace of political mannerisms and actions is doing a lot of damage to the store of goodwill he had accumulated amongst the �silent majority�. Most still believe he is a good person but wonder if he is a good judge of character (one man does not a government make). It is getting harder to identify how what he stands for is any different from the politicians he says are wholly and solely responsible for all of the Pakistani peoples suffering. The way he divisions blame is another issue. Either he is delusional (could be caused by combination of pagri cutting of circulation to his head and hyena advisors sniffing around his heels) or he thinks the silent majority has a collective IQ of 30. If he is so concerned about the sins of ex-MNA� and MPA�s what is he doing with various Chaudrys and Tariq Aziz? If he is so concerned with extremism why have so many activists of religious organizations been quietly released? How many army men has NAB prosecuted? Can anyone honestly discount the role of the military in bringing us to the point of intellectual and cultural retardation? What �checks and balances� does the General have in mind for his king makers? Where is the military section of his �narration of injustice�? Can you dive into �root causes� and pretend there is no elephant behind the light pole? Will I have answers to these questions come referendum morning? Probably not. And according to yesterday�s paper, I might not need them. President Musharraf told a news conference on April 16th he had yet to decide whether to step down in case he did not get himself elected in the referendum. How reassuring it is to know the bounty of the �economic revival� is being utilized for something other than the whimsical. If your opinion has no bearing on the result, should you bother to vote at all? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness http://health.yahoo.com From hansathap1 at hotmail.com Wed May 1 09:51:45 2002 From: hansathap1 at hotmail.com (hansa thapliyal) Date: Wed, 01 May 2002 04:21:45 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] it is a scam Message-ID: dear people, should not have hurried off the aaj tak thing. a friend wrote to say- it was an ongoing poll and appeared on the mobiel too- changing poll percentages all the time. i presume the idea was just to get people on to aajtak. sick but transparent enough to not bed taken seriously? hansa _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx From rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com Wed May 1 10:55:29 2002 From: rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 22:25:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Dental care Message-ID: <20020501052529.32748.qmail@web14608.mail.yahoo.com> December 31st 1999. In the grip of a temporary but passionate numerology the masked party-goers of the world wait to see what happens when digits turn. Three zeros is like three tunnels into the past, through the messy swirl of 945s and 848s and 389s and towards more far-off dates that you rarely think about, through 1000 (since no one can remember what happened that year) to 0000 which was never written as a date but which has some powerful relationship to God and the beginning of what, for everyone that counts, can be called Time. Time made real that night, standing among us like waxworks from the past, entering people's guts and making them feel aged. TIME magazine tells us about the Stars of the Millennium and suddenly our memories are long and epic and our hearts are leaping: Thank God I lived to see this! "See what?" is a mean-spirited question, for the magic of numbers is still magic, and even the rationalists have found their techno version of it in which all of Capitalist Mother Nature - all the power stations and bank account databases and supermarket inventory systems to whose bounty we owe our daily happiness - loses its fecundity at midnight as the clocks of the world register the fact that there is no more time. They have a code for it: Y2K or L or M or something. How can it properly end, the twentieth century? whose drama has replaced every other drama by its scale and pixelated plenitude. How could the demons and saints whose fables are replayed every night on History Channel withdraw into 'last century'; how could the tragedies whose rubble is still being turned over or the triumphs that have made modern life So Different, So Appealing, cease to belong to 'our century'? But too late; the revellers are already preparing the birth of the new millennium (which other mean-spirited people predict for the following year) and your grip on all that stuff is weakening. Saturday 1st January 2000 has already dawned bright and hot in New Zealand, and even Greenwich Mean Time has gone off the end of the twentieth century scale. But everyone knows that cosmic time is American time, Eastern Standard Time, and the nervous world-managers in Boston and New York and DC are not comforted so easily. Just before midnight: standing in a party looking down on Times Square, a rectangle of lights and people in the middle of a dark and abandoned buffer zone that the Mayor's numerology experts have advised him to shut off. As the last twenty-fourth of the day plays itself out to bad twentieth century techno, fancy dress people in costumes of time spin out from the dance floor one by one and look down. There are exceptions: Death still has his tongue down the throat of some girl in the corner, his scythe and his awareness of the hour temporarily abandoned. But we look down: and no one talks as balls drop and a million camera flashes go off down below, the moment seized the only way we know how, the end of time rolling through the Kodak machines on Monday morning in sets of 24. Also rolling: tears down the cheeks of the woman who stands in front of me. The moment seems large and meaningless, and tears are not uncommon. Party doesn't pick up again even though about sixty cops who have finished manning the barricades on Seventh Avenue lurch in around 2am ready to start their evening. People go to bed sober because they needed their wits about them to get through that. And the next morning, they wake up. Sometimes you watch suspense movies and the hero keeps waking up amazed he still alive. You ain't surprised cuz of course he gonna get through: but he never gets that into his head; and every time he just fulla surprise. Did you touch yourself that morning, make sure you all there? Heart still beating at 70 even in 21st century time? You say 'two thousand' to yourself real quiet to see how it sounds now it really here? Phone got a dialling tone and the fridge full of twentieth century shit still cold and everything is really *normal*. Your body catches up with the 21st century real fast. You realise you know how to do this. Wierd superstitious thoughts of the previous night seem suddenly like another age. There's always more time where that came from; and we just got another hand out. Wow. This is the time that wasn't supposed to come, man. This is fresh time, new time. You start feeling all protective about the new century. It's like a kid has just lost his Coke-stained bike-bashed baby teeth and 28 new ones come through and you looking at them thinking of your own voyages with a blind boatman down the depths of the root canal and saying to yourself "Those teeth gonna stay just as good as they look today." Start getting all moral about cookies and soda 'n' shit cuz the old teeth was just temporary but the new ones is permanent. You got a new look on your face. You gonna be the Colgate of the 21st century man, you gonna keep it sunny and beautiful like it is this morning. No plaque, added whiteness. Twentieth century was f**ked up by other people. We didn't have a choice. But the 21st, that's still pure. This is the century we gonna get old man, century we gonna die. You realise you don't what music sounds like from the century you in now, don't know how people dress. You don't even know how to say the dates yet cuz 'twenty hundred' still sounds like a rational possibility. You been used to the snappy rhythms of '60s' and '70s' and all that but '00s' ain't something you say, just something you imagine. Wow. This is our time man, our time to make. If there gonna be great movies this century - we gonna have to make them. Time is weightless, this century. Empty. You move easier, think more clearly. Well: stock markets crash and a whole lotta people lose a whole lotta money they didn't have to begin with. Depending on who you are, that ain't so bad. All those ads celebrating the humble man-on-the-street billionaire getting a bit annoying. Know a few people mourned for the thirty year-olds losing their hard-earned twenty million but maybe that's the kind of tragedy a century can handle. We've seen tragedies of millions before and they can be worse than this. Still, a bit of irrational exuberance is always fun to have around, idea you can be a billionaire just by investing your $35 to reserve YAHOO! dot-com is always handy to have in your back pocket. And when the patient corporate moguls move in to rationalize the Internet things seem sterner. 'Oh *that's* what capitalism looks like' we remember. But all kindsa things are happening, people. Big things. The fact is, and here we gotta be a little bit discreet, keep our voices down, no one really sure what nations are for any more. And that is a problem. Like to have a government with a vision, money for the poor, parks for the kids, but they don't seem to be in control of all that shit anymore. Look at that Tony Blair says such nice things he really believes in! But he's gotta put down more cops and more tests just to stay afloat and still there's race riots breaking out all over the shop he can't do nothing about! Lest we doubt that he's the guy in charge he knows how to talk the talk of the C-E-O don't worry we can turn this around quarter one two three it's all about more computers more management skills more technology - and Brits are such nice people so technology is always good even when it lands on people's heads - but now those people turning up in Dover and we got even more problems. Please keep your heads, people! - I come to praise Tony not to bury him - and it really couldn't happen to a nicer guy. But virtual money got him by the short and curlies and all he's really gotta think about from dawn to dusk is how to get people to work more for it. Nations are a joke that does the rounds of the chat rooms and labor camps of the world. Nations are dead. They still standing looking like they always did but they're just mirages. And the more you don't believe in them the more furious they get. September 11, 2001 - man the century ain't two years old yet! - and a bunch of guys who don't believe in nations do something astounding. It makes nations really mad. Those people just the sort of unpatriotic wanderers the Jews was before you couldn't say that kinda stuff no more. With bombs in their pockets. They grow up in England, y'all, got all the miracles of modern life and education at the London School of f**king Economics and still deep down they don't give a shit about everything we struggled to build. Live in Germany and Italy, people, live in Florida! And still they thinking about places we never even go on vacation, thinking about Afghanistan and Iraq y'all! Who *are* these people? What kinds of minds? We gotta work that out, people, gonna try to understand, more categories are needed, more fields in the database. Bomb Afghanistan, bomb Iraq and Sudan if we gotta - that stuff is obvious. But the real war is a war of renewal cuz we're not gonna let this 21st century go down just like that. We gotta find out more, know more, keep on top of everything, everything will be OK as long as we just know enough. It's clear Muslims is more complicated than they seemed but that's a temporary problem. Keep your heads people! But in some quarters patience is at an end. Had enough of these outsiders! Enough! And some of those people are thinking about other uses for nations. Big men say: if you stick with me I'm gonna get rid of the nation and give you a homeland! But you gotta be in the contract and it ain't just social. Contract of flesh. Contract of suspicion: I'm gonna tolerate you as long as you don't slip up but after that you're out. People are happy: if the nation can't do nothing for me no more then the nation is gonna BE me! Do I let tumors and viruses just hang around in my gut or do I cut them out? In the nation that is me you gonna be cut out boy cuz you don't need to prove your disloyalty no more. Europe thinks the 21st century won't suffer from a few more powerful men that look good on TV and know that it ain't no time to be talking about inclusion right now. Israel, where inclusion wasn't a problem you had to deal with, decides the time is right to extend its psyche all the way to those new borders where irrationality and the death wish still lurk. That's innovative man; if you think it's ironic it's cuz you haven't come so far as Israel in putting the twentieth century behind you. India embarks on a far more ambitious plan, since even the borders it isn't fighting over with the Muslims contain 120 million Muslims and that's a lot of expansion that's gotta be properly planned and budgeted for. Man I'm having problems keeping my train of thought clean here cuz there's murder in this story, murder - and bodily interactions that aren't so hygienic. Man we have bodies mounting and sights that weren't supposed to be part of this 21st century: we got mass graves y'all and politicians making the lists of the people who gotta die and Safe Havens where people don't seem so safe. We got sights! we got all kindsa - we got - sorry I gotta - people I think I gotta stop there and depend on your knowledge of Current Affairs cuz I don't wanna talk about the other stuff. The stuff that no decent person could allow in their heads. You saying to yourself - why he spoiling my surfing with bad words and big numbers I can't fit inside? I understand people cuz sometimes I slip into tastelessness that just steals up on me never gave no warning. I understand and I'm sorry. I really am. It's still our century, people! But I'm trying - hear me out here - to make a little point that I'm gonna have to whisper again. Point is that when you got problems with nations you got serious problems. May not like nations. But you gotta see what happens when they break apart. That's really f**king scary. Realize there was a lot of things keeping a lot of other things in place. Your decency, for a start. Century not yet three years old, y'all. We not used up a fraction of it yet. Do you still got your sense of protectiveness? 21st century still gonna be whiter than white? You sensing some tooth decay? I'm telling you dental technologies amazing these days. Can fix you up like nothing ever happened. I know a guy smashed his teeth out on a skateboard making $60 thousand in facial modeling! I know - it's amazing - but I'm just saying what's possible. Course prevention is better than cure y'all, my man still wishing he didn't take that skateboard that morning. Course now you wondering whether we talking about cavities or we talking about all that other shit? Not sure myself now. But while we're on the subject I can't tell you enough how important that dental hygiene is. I'm really serious about this. Floss, brush. That's basic, of course. Every poster in every dentist place tell you that. Look I think some of you got all worried. I'm telling you. Don't get upset. This is our century, y'all; it's ours to make. If there gonna be great massacres this century - we gonna have to make them. And that ain't gonna happen. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness http://health.yahoo.com From sumayar at freemail.absa.co.za Wed May 1 15:13:30 2002 From: sumayar at freemail.absa.co.za (sumayar) Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 11:43:30 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Critique of NEPAD Message-ID: <007701c1f0f5$0a8ab200$459bcba3@default> Dear all on the Reader List There has been much talk by certain African governments about the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), but many African intellectuals have critiqued the project, Read on. Abu Latif _____________________________________________________________ (Codesria is the main association of African intellectuals, so this is quite a remarkable statement; Third World Network-Africa is in Accra, and has been the loudest international advocacy voice on African issues.) DECLARATION ON AFRICA'S DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES (Adopted at end of Joint CODESRIA- TWN-AFRICA Conference on Africa's Development Challenges in the Millennium, Accra 23-26 April, 2002) 1. From the 23 to 26 April, 2002, we, African scholars and activist intellectuals working in academic institutions, civil society organisations and policy institutions from 20 countries in Africa, as well as colleagues and friends from Asia, Europe, North America and South America met at a conference jointly organised by the Council for Development and Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and the Third World Network-Africa (TWN-Africa) to deliberate on Africa's developmental challenges in the new millennium. 2. Our deliberations covered such issues as Africa's initiatives for addressing development; Africa and the world trading system; mobilising financing for development in Africa; citizenship, democracy and development; education, health social services and development, and gender equity and equality in development. Challenges to the space of Africa's own thinking on development 3. In our deliberations, we recalled the series of initiatives by Africans themselves aimed at addressing the developmental challenges of Africa, in particular the Lagos Plan of Action and the companion African Alternative Framework for Structural Adjustment. Each time, these initiatives were counteracted and ultimately undermined by policy frameworks developed from outside the continent and imposed on African countries. Over the past decades, a false consensus has been generated around the neo-liberal paradigm promoted through the Bretton Woods Institutions and the World Trade Organisation. This stands to crowd out the rich tradition of Africa's own alternative thinking on development. It is in this context that the proclaimed African initiative, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), which was developed in the same period as the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa's Compact for African Recovery, as well as the World Bank's Can Africa Claim the 21st Century?, were discussed. 4. The meeting noted the uneven progress of democratisation and in particular of the expansion of space for citizen expression and participation. It also acknowledged the contribution of citizen's struggles and activism to this expansion of the political space, and for putting critical issues of development on the public agenda External and internal obstacles to Africa's economic development 5. The meeting noted that the challenges confronting Africa's development come from two inter-related sources: (a) constraints imposed by the hostile international economic and political order within which our economies operate; and (b) domestic weaknesses deriving from socio-economic and political structures and neo-liberal structural adjustment policies. 6. The main elements of the hostile global order include, first, the fact that African economies are integrated into the global economy as exporters of primary commodities and importers of manufactured products, leading to terms of trade losses. Reinforcing this, secondly, have been the policies of liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation as well as an unsound package of macro-economic policies imposed through structural adjustment conditionality by the World Bank and the IMF. These have now been institutionalised within the WTO through rules, agreements and procedures, which are biased against our countries. Finally, the just mentioned external and internal policies and structures have combined to generate unsustainable and unjustifiable debt burden which has crippled Africa's economies and undermined the capacity of Africa's ownership of strategies for development . 7. The external difficulties have exacerbated the internal structural imbalances of our economies, and, together with neo-liberal structural adjustment policies, inequitable socio-economic and political structures, have led the to disintegration of our economies and increased social and gender inequity. In particular, our manufacturing industries have been destroyed; agricultural production (for food and other domestic needs is in crisis; public services have been severely weakened; and the capacity of states and governments in Africa to make and implement policies in support of balanced and equitable national development emasculated. The costs associated with these have fallen disproportionately on marginalized and subordinated groups of our societies, including workers, peasants, small producers. The impact has been excessively severe on women and children. 8. Indeed, the developments noted above have reversed policies and programmes and have dismantled institutions in place since independence to create and expand integrated production across and between our economies in agriculture, industry, commerce, finance, and social services. These were programmes and institutions which have, in spite of their limitations, sought to address the problems of weak internal markets and fragmented production structures as well as economic imbalances and social inequities within and between nations inherited from colonialism, and to redress the inappropriate integration of our economies in the global order. The associated social and economic gains, generated over this period have been destroyed. 9. The above informed our reflections on the NEPAD. We concluded that, while many of its stated goals may be well-intentioned, the development vision and economic measures that it canvases for the realisation of these goals are flawed. As a result, NEPAD will not contribute to addressing the developmental problems mentioned above. On the contrary, it will reinforce the hostile external environment and the internal weaknesses that constitute the major obstacles to Africa's development. Indeed, in certain areas like debt, NEPAD steps back from international goals that have been won through global mobilisation and struggle. 10. The most fundamental flaws of NEPAD, which reproduce the central elements of the World Bank's Can Africa Claim the 21st Century and the ECA's Compact for African Recovery, include: (a) the neo-liberal economic policy framework at the heart of the plan, and which repeats the structural adjustment policy packages of the preceding two decades and over-looks the disastrous effects of those policies; (b) the fact that in spite of its proclaimed recognition of the central role of the African people to the plan, the African people have not played any part in the conception, design and formulation of the NEPAD; (c) notwithstanding its stated concerns for social and gender equity, it adopts the social and economic measures that have contributed to the marginalisation of women (d) that in spite of claims of African origins, its main targets are foreign donors, particularly in the G8 (e) its vision of democracy is defined by the needs of creating a functional market; (f) it under-emphasises the external conditions fundamental to Africa's developmental crisis, and thereby does not promote any meaningful measure to manage and restrict the effects of this environment on Africa development efforts. On the contrary, the engagement that is seeks with institutions and processes like the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, the United States Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, the Cotonou Agreement, will further lock Africa's economies disadvantageously into this environment; (g) the means for mobilisation of resources will further the disintegration of African economies that we have witnessed at the hands of structural adjustment and WTO rules; Call for Action 11. To address the developmental problems and challenges identified above, we call for action at the national, continental and international levels to implement the measures described below. 12. In relation to the external environment, action must be taken towards stabilisation of commodity prices; reform of the international financial system (to prevent debt, exchange rate instability and capital flow volatility) as well as of the World Bank and the IMF; an end to IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programmes; and fundamental changes to the existing agreements of the WTO regime, as well as stop the attempts to expand the scope to this regime to new areas including investment, competition and government procurement. Most pressing of all, Africa's debt must be cancelled. 13. At the local, national and regional levels, development policy must promote agriculture, industry, services including health and public education, and must be protected and supported through appropriate trade, investment and macro-economic policy measures. A strategy for financing must seek to mobilise and build on internal and intra-African resources through imaginative savings measures; reallocation of expenditure away from wasteful items including excessive military expenditure, corruption and mismanagement; creative use of remittances of Africans living abroad; corporate taxation; retention and re-investment of foreign profits; and the prevention of capital flight, and the leakage of resources through practices of tax evasion practised by foreign investors and local elites. Foreign investment while necessary, must be carefully balanced and selected to suit national objectives. 14. Above all, these measures require the reconstitution of the developmental state: a state for which social equity, social inclusion, national unity and respect for human rights form the basis of economic policy; a state which actively promotes, and nurtures the productive sectors of the economy; actively engages appropriately in the equitable and balanced allocation and distribution of resources among sectors and people; and most importantly a state that is democratic and which integrates people's control over decision making at all levels in the management, equitable use and distribution of social resources. The Challenge for African scholars and activist intellectuals 15. Recognising that, by raising anew the question of Africa's development as an Africa-wide concern, NEPAD has brought to the fore the question of Africa's autonomous initiatives for development, we will engage with the issues raised in NEPAD as part of our efforts to contribute to the debate and discussions on African development. 16. In support of our broader commitment to contribute to addressing Africa's development challenges, we undertake to work both collectively and individually, in line with our capacities, skills and institutional location, to promote a renewed continent-wide engagement on Africa's own development initiatives. To this end, we shall deploy our research, training and advocacy skills and capacities to contribute to the generation and dissemination of knowledge of the issues at stake; engage with and participate in the mobilisation of social groups around their interests and appropriate strategies of development; and engage with governments and policy institutions at local, national, regional and continental levels. We shall continue our collaboration with our colleagues in the global movement. 17. Furthermore, we call, (a) for the reassertion of the primacy of the question and paradigm of national and regional development on the agenda of social discourse and intellectual engagement and advocacy;; (b) on Africa's scholars and activist intellectuals within African and in the Diaspora, to join forces with social groups whose interests and needs are central to the development of Africa; (c) African scholars and activist intellectuals and organisations to direct their research and advocacy to some of the pressing questions that confront African policy and decision making at international levels (in particular negotiations in the WTO and under the Cotonou agreement), and domestically and regionally; (d) upon our colleagues in the global movement, to strengthen our common struggles, in solidarity. We ask our colleagues in the North to intervene with their governments on behalf of our struggles, and our colleagues in the South to strengthen South-South co-operation. 18. We pledge ourselves to carry forward the positions and conclusions of this conference. And we encourage CODESRIA and TWN-Africa to explore, together with other interested parties, mechanisms and processes for follow-up to the deliberations and conclusions of this conference. Accra, April 26, 2002. ========== To remove your email address from the debate mailing list, send the following two-line email message (no subject) to majordomo at sunsite.wits.ac.za : unsubscribe debate end To add your email address to the debate mailing list, send the following two-line email message (no subject) to majordomo at sunsite.wits.ac.za : subscribe debate end To get a list of all listservs under majordomo at sunsite.wits.ac.za and a majordomo help file, send the following three-line email message (no subject) to majordomo at sunsite.wits.ac.za : lists help end ========== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020501/04f2d6b6/attachment.html From shuddha at sarai.net Wed May 1 21:05:03 2002 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 21:05:03 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] May Day Greetings Message-ID: <02050121050300.01670@sweety.sarai.kit> Dear all on the Readers List Today being May Day, International Labour day, some of us at Sarai decided to have Gulab Jamuns in the afternoon in memory of the eight hour working day many workers used to have in the last century. We also quietly remembered that it was one year since the Cybermohalla programme started at Sarai. I hope that you all accept your correspondents heartfelt May Day greetings. In the afternoon, some of us went to the VV Giri National Labour Institute, in Noida to witness the inauguration of the website of the archives of Indian Labour, which was a collaboration between the Indian association of Labour Historians and the VV Giri NLI. Some of our comrades in Sarai had laboured intensively to help set up the online archive, and we had gone to display our solidarity with our (Sarai's) small corner of the international working class, and also, because we were not a little proud of the 'labour' put in by our fellow workers in getting the archive online. When we got there, we realized that we would sit through a couple of hours of some excrutiatingly interesting speeches by trade union leaders, bureaucrats and technical experts. One bureaucrat gave the quotable quote of the afternoon - when she said that "workers are human, we need to put (human) faces to numbers". Luckily, there was nescafe, spring rolls and mayonnaise sandwiches to be had in the end. Finally, we got lectured by the the minister of state for Labour Mr.Muni Lal, and the union minister for labour Mr. Sharad Yadav. Mr Muni Lal said that the the "labour department is a very important department, labour is a hot topic and a buzzword and hoped that the archive of Indian labour wouid help experts and researchers find methods to improve labour efficiency and productivity" Mr. Sharad Yadav, veteran socialist, complained, like some have done on this list, that we (everyone, not just us lumpens at sarai - luckily he didnt even know who we were) dont pay enough attention to the teachings of M.K. Gandhi, and that this shows how willing we are to be inspired by foreign inspired teachings of Karl Marx, etc. When he tried to log on to the website twice, with the password, Mahatma Gandhi, it did not work, not once, but twice. Naturally, the honourable minister, felt that the labour movement should pay more attention to the thoughts and teachings of Gandhi. For a brief moment, in the middle of may day, it was wonderful to connect with the immense and inspiring reality of the state in India, and be reminded that we all were not numbers but human, and be told that we should all pay more attention to the man whose image is printed on many denominations of the units of abstract generalised exchange which denote occasionally the value of our labour power, and which also act as indices of the surplus values that is extracted from us all. Elsewhere in the world, May Day was observed in many other ways., some reassuringly traditional. I am pasting below, a brief summary of the days events in many countries, this is taken from the website of that great institution that represents the working class - the New York Times, and so here it is, International Labour Day, 2002 solidarities Shuddha ____________________________________________ May 1, 2002 Police and Activists Clash in May Day Protests By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 10:21 a.m. ET BERLIN (AP) -- Demonstrators rallied against the right in Germany and France, merchants boarded up stores to guard against attacks by anti-capitalist demonstrators and riot police turned out in force as Europeans marked a tense May Day on Wednesday. Police in Berlin used tear gas to quell overnight clashes with anarchists who threw rocks, set street fires and looted a supermarket, the worst violence on the eve of May Day for years. An estimated 5,000 police turned several parts of the German capital into restricted zones, including a main thoroughfare through the landmark Brandenburg Gate. Scores of anarchist protesters were detained in several cities overnight, and police said two people were injured seriously in Berlin. May Day in the German capital has regularly degenerated into street battles between police and anarchists over the past 15 years. In France, as many as 500,000 people demonstrated nationwide against extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, the largest turnout so far against the ultra-nationalist politician since he qualified for this Sunday's presidential runoff. Earlier, Le Pen led several thousand supporters through central Paris. They chanted ``Le Pen, president'' and waved tricolor flags and signs that read, ``I'm proud to be French.'' Some 700 supporters of a far-right fringe party marched through a Berlin suburb, escorted by nearly 2,000 police who kept them apart from heckling counter-demonstrators shouting ``Nazis out!'' At least one marcher was detained by police for making the banned stiff-arm Nazi salute. ``We're demonstrating because we love our country,'' declared far-right marcher Wolfgang Kuehl, 34. At Berlin's city hall, labor leaders rallied a crowd of about 10,000 behind Germany's first industrial strike in seven years, due to start next week. In Moscow, at least 140,000 trade union supporters holding up pictures of President Vladimir Putin rallied downtown. The Communists marked the occasion separately, drawing mostly elderly people who carried red carnations and proudly displayed World War II medals on their lapels. In Greece and Turkey, protesters proclaimed solidarity with the Palestinians in their bloody struggle with Israel. ``A thousand greetings to the Palestinian resistance,'' read a slogan at a rally in Istanbul, Turkey. In Athens, about 6,000 people marched to the U.S. and Israeli embassies to protest Israel's military incursion into Palestinian areas. In the economically struggling former Yugoslav republic of Croatia, workers marched through the capital, Zagreb, to protest government plans to trim labor rights. Polish officials laid flowers at a monument in the city of Poznan to workers killed in 1956 anti-communist protests, but the capital, Warsaw, was calm as many people left for the countryside for a five-day weekend. Workers in Macedonia handed out platefuls of hearty cooked brown beans -- considered a laborer's staple -- in the capital, Skopje, as they demonstrated for an end to poverty. The country has the highest jobless rate in the Balkans. In London, more than 100 noisy demonstrators on bicycles blocked intersections in the busy Oxford Street shopping area. Some of them, representing a variety of groups from environmentalists to anti-capitalists, went to the U.S. Embassy bearing a banner reading ``Capitalism doesn't work.'' Cuba's communist authorities called out more than 1 million citizens for a May Day march to protest Latin American criticism of its human rights record. President Fidel Castro was to head the annual workers march in the Havana. In Asia, police clashed with protesters in at least three nations while elsewhere, workers demonstrated peacefully for better working conditions and higher pay. In the Philippines, thousands of demonstrators were met on the streets by riot police amid coup rumors and terrorist threats. Police said they thwarted two possible terrorist attacks, including one that might have targeted President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Activists in Sydney, Australia, used May Day to highlight the plight of thousands of asylum seekers kept in detention centers for up to three years while their cases are reviewed. Police on horseback charged demonstrators after 500 people blockaded offices of a company that operates five of the detention centers. In Singapore, police arrested two prominent opposition party officials and civil rights activists as they tried to stage an unauthorized rally outside the tightly controlled city-state's presidential palace. Police later arrested an additional activist who refused to leave a police station where one of the other activists were detained. Malaysian police arrested 17 people as hundreds of plantation workers marched toward the world's tallest buildings in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, to demand better pay. Riot police backed by water cannon were on standby at the Petronas Twin Towers. In Hong Kong, about 700 workers -- including maids from other Southeast Asian nations -- marched in downtown areas demanding that the government create new jobs, set a minimum wage and limit the working day to eight hours. From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Wed May 1 23:03:44 2002 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Wed, 01 May 2002 13:33:44 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: [DRUMnewz] Radio today: HRW on Gujarat / Trafficking / Feminist publishing in India Message-ID: >> >>Tune in 9-10 pm EST >>Wednesday May 1 2002 >>ASIA PACIFIC FORUM on >>WBAI 99.5 FM, New York City >> >>Or listen on our NEW WEBSITE: >>http://www.asiapacificforum.org/ >>e:mail: info at asiapacificforum.org >> >>:************************************************** >>HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: Report on the Gujarat Massacres >>TRAFFICKING IN WOMEN: A Growing Grassroots Opposition >>KALI FOR WOMEN PRESS: Activist Feminist Publishing >>:************************************************** >> >>1: HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH has just published its report on the recent >>religious >>violence in Gujarat, "We Have No Orders To Save You": State Participation >>and Complicity in the Communal Violence in Gujarat." We will start with a >>discussion with the author of that report: >>SMITA NARULA: Senior researcher with the Asia Division of Human Rights >>Watch, in charge of South Asia. >>Link to the HRW report: >>http://hrw.org/reports/2002/india/ >> >>2: The problem if trafficking in women has grown, internationally, to the >>point where, in money terms, it rivals the trafficking in illegal drugs >>and >>in illegal arms. But at the same time, there is a growing movement of >>opposition, both at the grassroots and from governments. We talk about >>this >>with: >>RUCHIRA GUPTA: Journalist, founder & president of Apne Aap, a grassroots >>group for womens rights and the eradication of trafficking in women >>PAMELA SHIFMAN: Lawyer, former associate director of Equality Now and a >>board member of Apne Aap. >> >>3: Started in a garage in New Delhi in 1984, KALI FOR WOMEN PRESS has led >>the way for more than 15 years as a politically involved activist, >>feminist >>publishing house, a model not only in India but for activist publishing >>all >>over the world. We talk to: >>RITU MENON: one of the 2 co-founders of this press. >>Link to Kali for Women press: >>http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/fasiapub/india/kali.htm >> >>*********************************************** >>*********************************************** >> >>In her capacity as a senior researcher for the Asia Division of Human >>Rights Watch, SMITA NARULA oversees HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH'S South Asia >>program, is the author of "We Have No Orders To Save You": State >>Participation and Complicity in the Communal Violence in Gujarat. The >>75-page report documents state and police participation in anti-Muslim >>violence in Gujarat in which 2,000 people have been killed since February >>27, 2002. Smita is also author of Broken People: Caste Violence Against >>India's "Untouchables," a Human Rights Watch report on caste-based >>violence >>and discrimination that affects at least 160 million "untouchables" >>(Dalits) in India. Smita works closely with India's National Campaign on >>Dalit Human Rights and in March 2000 formed the International Dalit >>Solidarity Network with other human rights organizations, donor agencies, >>and development groups. >> >>RUCHIRA GUPTA, founder & president on Apne Aap, an organization dedicated >>to women's rights & the eradication of trafficking. Ruchira worked inside >>the UN for 5 years advising governments on the issues of trafficking. She >>made the Emmy-Award winning film: The Selling of Innocents about the >>trafficking between Nepal & India. >> >>PAMELA SHIFMAN: Board member of Apne Aap International, is a lawyer, & >>formerly associate director of Equality Now, an international human rights >>organization working for the rights of women & girls throughout the world. >> >>*********************************************** >>The program is brought to you by Aniruddha Das of Asia Pacific Forum and >>the SAMAR collective. >>*********************************************** >>Asia Pacific Forum is New York's pan-Asian radio program, broadcast each >>Wednesday night at 9-10 p.m. on WBAI-FM, 99.5, New York City, and live on >>the Web at: >>www.asiapacificforum.org >>www.wbaifree.org (click on "WBAI (NY)" near the bottom of the page) >>OR www.2600.com (click on "Listen Live to WBAI" near the bottom of the >>page) >> >>For more information on APF and to get more information about this >>evening's program, or other programs, please contact us via >>email: info at asiapacificforum.org; >>website: www.asiapacificforum.org >>phone: (212) 209-2991; fax (WBAI): (212) 747-1698; >>or mail: Asia Pacific Forum, WBAI 99.5 FM, 120 Wall St., 10th Floor, NY, >>NY 10005. >> >>************************************************* >>For more information about SAMAR, a South Asian Left media resource, >>please contact: SAMAR, P.O. Box 1349, Ansonia Station, NY, NY 10023; >>e-mail: SAMARCollective at yahoo.com; >>www.samarmagazine.org >>phone: 212-888-7108. >> >> >> >> >> >>******************************************************* >>Aniruddha Das 212 327-7770 (ph) / 327-8240 (fax) >> dasa at mail.rockefeller.edu >>Rockefeller University >>1230 York Ave >>New York, NY 10021 > > > _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Thu May 2 01:52:36 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 21:22:36 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Who's a Minority? Message-ID: <20020501202236.41151.qmail@web8102.in.yahoo.com> Dear all, In the entire GUjarat debate, it is being assumed that there exists a minority and that there exists a majority. People don't exist, except in so far as they belong to either a minority or a majority. There seems to be no other form of solidarity possible in India, except to belong to the minority or to the majority. NO other form of solidarity exists, except in being understood in terms of "identity", reduced to HIndu/self and Muslim/other. While The fascists have played this game very well in GUjarat, it seems those who are against what has happened in Gujarat are unaware of getting trapped in the same game: (the same, brutal, insistence on sentimentality; the same, idealist, lack of historical perspective; the same, equally idealist, immature [as Max Weber understood, in his inaugral lecture] appeal to not politics but ethics.) I have just read Sucheta Dalal's posting. It breaks my fart...er, heart. She ends: and end impunity for orchestrated violence against Indian minorities. This is the last phrase of her posting. The "Indian minorities" portion gives the whole game away. Exactly who is a minority in India? The muslims who have suffered "genocide", or the intellectuals who do not want to give a name to this event? The muslim community in Ahmedabad, or the community of enemployed labour (that is both Hindu and Muslim) in Ahmedabad? The educated middle class, or the struggling-to-get educated classes, a social fallout of the political franchise to vote? Sucheta Dalal's report divides this country into only two ways of being: she proceeds, sentimentally, with this assumption. How can her report challenge the BJP if it works within their scheme of things? Sucheta Dalal assumes that there exists an Indian Majority. How can she assume this? Isn't she playing into the smug BJP game of giving the self an ultimatum of being "this" or "that"? This is precisely what the facsists want, the simplification of the lifeworld into white and black. Who belongs to this Majority? Is the majority she asumes an "ethical" majority, or a "political" majority? How can you you assume a majority? The moment you do so, you have been drowned by the darker currents of identity politics. Which the fascists want you to swim in (and hopefully keep swimming in, or drown). I am not saying: let's rise above this (as if we were levitation dudes). I am merely saying: let us produce an unsentimental knowledge of Gujarat. We are intelligent enough! yours, pp ________________________________________________________________________ For live cricket scores download Yahoo! Score Tracker at: http://in.sports.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Thu May 2 02:33:48 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 22:03:48 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Re: Sucheta dalal/suchita vemuri Message-ID: <20020501210348.91030.qmail@web8105.in.yahoo.com> Dear all, Absolute apology. Complete confusion in my posting between "sucheta dalal"/"suchita vemuri". Of course, one could overlook the importance of names. Given that the the former is an avid writer on economic issues (from the corporatist point of view), and the latter seems to be a (funded) activist, one could overlook the semantic confusion. Maybe it was intuitive. Who belongs to which side? Difficult to say! Ulp! Gupl! swallowingly, pp ________________________________________________________________________ For live cricket scores download Yahoo! Score Tracker at: http://in.sports.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From coolzanny at hotmail.com Thu May 2 19:16:18 2002 From: coolzanny at hotmail.com (Zainab Bawa) Date: Thu, 02 May 2002 19:16:18 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) Message-ID: Dear Readers, I am new on this list and have been very keenly reading all the postings. I must say that I am very happy to be part of this list. On the issues of Gujarat and Communal Violence (actually they are as one as dual), I have been reading many postings. I have two questions for which I invite generous responses: 1). How much of the happenings in Gujarat are economically motivated? Also, what are the economic pay-offs to this whole incident? 2). What can be done? This question is foremost on my mind because while it is important to rehabilitate Gujarat, how can we prevent such happenings in other states in future. Apart from the prevention, we are clearly moving into an era which is about cultural nationalism, jingoism, fascism, fundamentalism, etc. There might be a civil war or an ethnic cleansing of Muslims and other 'minorities'. There might be a nuclear war. The possibilities are many and the threats are real. As a 23-year old, I do not what future to expect for my generation or the generations to come after me. I am scared because today, the label that I carry is that of a 'minority'. I see orange flags all around my city and suddenly, I am wondering whether the solidarity that was so much present in Mumbai after the riots is gradually crumbling. At the same time, I am watching people trying to safeguard themselves by not confronting the situation that is so real. People are still busy trying to make money to 'safeguard' their 'futures' and I laugh and cry at this irony because what the hell is that future and what the hell is that security. Isn't it false? Yet, more than cynicism and armchair criticism, there is need for action, hope and true optimism. Yes, I know that I can't single handedly prevent what is happening now or what may happen in future. I am no superman or hercules. But I am human and the best thing is that I am alive in the sense of not just existing, but in the sense of being aware that there is more to life than just me, myself, my share of food, clothing and shelter. I am a stakeholder in this country, in this world and in my future which I share with others. Yet, what is it that I can do now? For one, I do not want to anger hardliners any further because even though I may not be one of them, I may be a hardliner in a different sense. The need of the hour is to listen and I am trying to listen inspite of my anger, listen with compassion rather than listen to retort. Yet, I am wondering, is there any hope and hopes and if there is or are, what is or are they? I am still wondering. Best regards, Zainab Bawa _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Thu May 2 23:52:50 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Thu, 2 May 2002 19:22:50 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020502182250.2335.qmail@web8104.in.yahoo.com> Dear Zainab, The whole point of a planned progrom is to render the "Other" impotent (that's a deliberately used word). The basis of impotence is economic. If X is not allowed to earn (if not only X's shop, but also his house is burnt, so that all the papers pertaining to the shop, and the business, go up in flames so that X will never be able to, henceforth, prove that that particular shop, or that particular home belonmg to him), then X has no option but to move out. That is precisely what the fascists want. GUjarat is also a takeover, in many respects. In keeping with the circulated fantasy that all muslims want is Pakistan (the only thing they dream for is Pakistan), BJP-RSS-Bajrang Dal propaganda has convinced many poor, lower-caste people that their "hope", their "advancement", their "mobility", their "success", their "identity", their "place in the world" lies in only removing this obstacle called the muslim. This is a fantasy. That's why it is so bizarre. That's why it has such real effects. You must understand that this fantasy, the creation of such a fantasy, has a political purpose to it. The purpose is not so much to bash up Muslims. The purpose is to make sure that the democratic groundswell whereby lower-middle castes, and lower-castes, are able to articulate their political vision is delayed. The BJP-RSS-Bajranj Dal Agenda is a Hindu upper-caste agenda. The upper-caste need mercenaries, "fall guys" to ensure that true democracy is as delayed as it can be in India. Actually, The BJP-RSS-Bajrang Dal people are in reaction. They are scared of what would actually happen if the Indian majority really exercised its franchise. If they did, all the well-to-do people would be blown apart. But that cannot happen, right? Even we educated people flinch at that prospect. Gujarat is a brilliant example of how the upper-caste fascist Right has managed to stimmy the democratic groundswell, how it has managed a "disgruntled" majority, and used it for its own purposes. How, instead of the upper-castes being the "class", or real, enemy, it has convinced everybody that the "muslim" is the real enemy. For a very interesting discussion on what actually went on in Ahmedabad, please read Jan Breman's article titled "Communal Upheaval as Resurgence of Social Darwinism", in the current issue of the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) magazine, Vol XXXVII No 16 April 20 2002, pp 1485 onwards. This will give you some insights as far as your Q no 1 is concerned. As far as Q no 2 is concerned, I am (speaking personally) completely foxed. I realise that we do have to find, conceptualise, actively disseminate, counter-propagandise about, seriously invest in, some form of social solidarity that contests the fascism that has successfully been spread in Indian society for at least a decade. The current slogan is "secularism". This slogan is losing its strength ( at least, the parivar is ably able to counter this notion). It is also losing its explanatory power. How, therefore, do we find a knid of social solidarity that can contest the vitriolic identity-politics of the Parivar? I am returning your question to you. Let us all, concerned, sensitive, try and find an answer to this question. Zainab, you give us an answer. Tell us what you think we shopuld do. I will try and find an answer. All of us on this List should find an answer. All of us should be able to find an answer to Zainab's query: "What can be done?" I end with your crippling reminder: "Yet, more than cynicism and armchair criticism, > there is need for action, hope and true optimism." What is it that we are quite vacuous about as far as Gujarat is concerned? Can we all, on this List, search for "hope and true optimism"? yours, pp --- Zainab Bawa wrote: > Dear Readers, > I am new on this list and have been very keenly > reading all the postings. I > must say that I am very happy to be part of this > list. > On the issues of Gujarat and Communal Violence > (actually they are as one as > dual), I have been reading many postings. I have two > questions for which I > invite generous responses: > > 1). How much of the happenings in Gujarat are > economically motivated? Also, > what are the economic pay-offs to this whole > incident? > > 2). What can be done? > > This question is foremost on my mind because while > it is important to > rehabilitate Gujarat, how can we prevent such > happenings in other states in > future. Apart from the prevention, we are clearly > moving into an era which > is about cultural nationalism, jingoism, fascism, > fundamentalism, etc. There > might be a civil war or an ethnic cleansing of > Muslims and other > 'minorities'. There might be a nuclear war. The > possibilities are many and > the threats are real. > > As a 23-year old, I do not what future to expect for > my generation or the > generations to come after me. I am scared because > today, the label that I > carry is that of a 'minority'. I see orange flags > all around my city and > suddenly, I am wondering whether the solidarity that > was so much present in > Mumbai after the riots is gradually crumbling. > > At the same time, I am watching people trying to > safeguard themselves by not > confronting the situation that is so real. People > are still busy trying to > make money to 'safeguard' their 'futures' and I > laugh and cry at this irony > because what the hell is that future and what the > hell is that security. > Isn't it false? > > Yet, more than cynicism and armchair criticism, > there is need for action, > hope and true optimism. Yes, I know that I can't > single handedly prevent > what is happening now or what may happen in future. > I am no superman or > hercules. But I am human and the best thing is that > I am alive in the sense > of not just existing, but in the sense of being > aware that there is more to > life than just me, myself, my share of food, > clothing and shelter. > > I am a stakeholder in this country, in this world > and in my future which I > share with others. > > Yet, what is it that I can do now? For one, I do not > want to anger > hardliners any further because even though I may not > be one of them, I may > be a hardliner in a different sense. The need of the > hour is to listen and I > am trying to listen inspite of my anger, listen with > compassion rather than > listen to retort. > > Yet, I am wondering, is there any hope and hopes and > if there is or are, > what is or are they? > > I am still wondering. > > Best regards, > Zainab Bawa > > _________________________________________________________________ > MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print > your photos: > http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx > > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and > the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to > reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the > subject header. > List archive: ________________________________________________________________________ For live cricket scores download Yahoo! Score Tracker at: http://in.sports.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From dfontaine at fondation-langlois.org Fri May 3 00:35:04 2002 From: dfontaine at fondation-langlois.org (Dominique Fontaine) Date: Thu, 2 May 2002 15:05:04 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] The Program of Grants for Researcher in Residence: 2002 Call for Research Proposals Message-ID: Pour la version française : http://www.fondation-langlois.org/f/informations/nouvelles/index.html [ Veuillez excuser les envois multiples / apologies for cross-posting ] _____________________________________________________________________ **Press Release** THE DANIEL LANGLOIS FOUNDATION LAUNCHES A CALL FOR RESEARCH PROPOSALS IN THE PROGRAM OF GRANTS FOR RESEARCHER IN RESIDENCE Montreal, May 2, 2002 - The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology is launching a call for research proposals in the program of grants for researcher in residence. This program being in its second year, the Foundation hopes to foster critical thinking about how technologies affect people and their natural and cultural environments. Following an international competition open to historians, curators, critics, independent researchers, artists and scientists, the Foundation will enable two researchers to work in the collections and archives of the Centre for Research and Documentation (CR+D). The research project must focus on one of the Foundation's collections; a profile of the Foundation's collections is available at the following URL: http://www.fondation-langlois.org/e/CRD/index.html. Twice a year, the CR+D will welcome a researcher for three to six months. The researchers will be given access to computer and audiovisual equipment, the Foundation's database and its documentary collections. Their research findings will be published on the Foundation's Web site. For more details on this initiative, consult the program of grants for researcher in residence in the Funding Programs section of the Foundation's Web site: http://www.fondation-langlois.org/e/programmes/bourses.html. The deadline for applying is *August 31, 2002*. If you don't have Internet access, or if you have any questions about how to submit a project to the Foundation, please contact the program officer Jacques Perron. - 30 - SOURCE: Jacques Perron, jperron at fondation-langlois.org Program Officer for individual artists or scientists T: (514) 987-7177 F: (514) 987-7492 E: info at fondation-langlois.org W: www.fondation-langlois.org _____________________________________________________________________ We've sent you this press release to keep you abreast of activities at the Daniel Langlois Foundation. If you wish to be taken off our mailing list, simply reply to this message with the words REMOVE from mailing list in the subject line. Thank you. _____________________________________________________________________ From geert at desk.nl Fri May 3 16:28:38 2002 From: geert at desk.nl (geert lovink) Date: Fri, 3 May 2002 20:58:38 +1000 Subject: [Reader-list] digitally-mediated migrancy? Message-ID: <001a01c1f291$92f89970$c2de3dca@geert> From: "Stephen Cairns" Dear Sarai list, I am currently editing a book for Routledge on architecture and migrancy (tentatively titled: Building Dweling Drifting: Migrancy and Architecture). The book explores the implications migrant forms of dwelling (networked, dispersed, diasporic etc.) have for architecture - the premise being that architecture has historically been heavily invested in the metaphysics of stability and permanence. I have a good range of material - particularly from around and across the Pacific Rim, the notional focus of the book. But what I do not really have is material dealing digitally-mediated diasporic communities. In other words, material on the ways in which specific migrant communities sustain themselves through digital technologies and media. Is anyone of you working on this topic? Or of any material already published on this theme? I would be happy to either commission something fresh (which would be particularly good) or re-print something if it fits the bill. The focus of the book remains spatial and architectural, but it needs something on this particular kind of deterrritorializing. Anything come to mind? Best Stephen -------------------------- Stephen Cairns Department of Architecture The University of Edinburgh 20 Chambers St Edinburgh EH1 1JZ UK e. stephen.cairns at ed.ac.uk p. (131) 650 2313 f. (131) 650 8019 -------------------------- From sopan_joshi at yahoo.com Fri May 3 17:38:10 2002 From: sopan_joshi at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?q?Sopan=20Joshi?=) Date: Fri, 3 May 2002 13:08:10 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] THE ANTI-AMERICAN: Ian Buruma on Arundhati Roy Message-ID: <20020503120810.43311.qmail@web9804.mail.yahoo.com> A lot has been posted on this list on Arundhati Roy, mostly sympathetic. Here's a counterpoint: IAN BURUMA critiquing some of her writings (more specifically, some aspects of her writing). I can't say that I agree with everything he says, but I think he has a point (or two). That said, he does seem vague on certain factual details. It'll be interesting to read Ms. Roy's response to this. Has she come out with one? Here's an extract, followed by the full text of the article:- Roy's efforts on behalf of the victims of dam-building show her to be a good citizen; but if her aim, as a writer of political essays, is to promote common understanding, she is less than a success. The essays express her convictions and her prejudices with great passion, but by her own account she aims higher. Roy wants language to cut through platitudes and lies: "As a writer, one spends a lifetime journeying into the heart of language, trying to minimize, if not eliminate, the distance between language and thought. 'Language is the skin of my thought,' I remember saying to someone who once asked what language meant to me." If so, her thoughts could do with a course of Clearasil. ----------------------------------------- From: http://www.thenewrepublic.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020429&s=buruma042902 THE ANTI-AMERICAN by Ian Buruma Brilliant people can be remarkably obtuse. The critic and novelist John Berger declares, in his introduction to Arundhati Roy's collection of political essays, that the American war in Afghanistan is an "act of terror against the people of the world." He also states that the nineteen hijackers "gave their lives" on September 11 "as did three hundred and fifty-three Manhattan firemen," as though there were no difference between people who die to commit mass murder and those who die to save lives. And the killings in New York and Washington, Berger informs us, were "the direct result of trying to impose everywhere the new world economic order (the abstract, soaring, groundless market) which insists that man's supreme task is to make profit." The soaring market in Algeria? The new world economic order in Sudan? Profit-making in Afghanistan? Ah, if only. There were no doubt many reasons for the suicidal murder spree at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but global capitalism surely comes low on the list. Islamism flourishes precisely in places that are relatively or even absolutely untouched by IBM or Motorola or even, strange to say, McDonald's. If the new economic order were the problem, why didn't the terrorists come from Bangkok, or Hong Kong? Still, John Berger is the right man to introduce Arundhati Roy's collection of political polemics. Few intellectual voices have been as ubiquitous as Roy's after September 11, and few quite so shrill. Roy is the author of The God of Small Things, a novel read by millions all over the world. Her articles have appeared all over the world, too, in--among other publications--The Guardian, Le Monde, El País, and Der Spiegel. One reason people listen to her, apart from her literary fame, is that she has positioned herself, successfully, as an authentic Third World voice. And like Lee Kuan Yew, a very different kind of Asian voice, she is highly articulate in English, a winning combination. Roy does not like to be called an "activist," but she has stuck her neck out for a variety of causes. Some of them, such as the protest against potentially catastrophic dam-building projects in India, are certainly worth fighting for. So for that she should be commended. Yet, at the same time, Roy has a tendency to sound preposterous. Her reaction to the events of September 11 was that we would never know what had motivated the hijackers, but that "Mickey Mouse," that is to say, the United States, was not a viable alternative to "the mullahs." (She made this pronouncement on "Nightline" on November 3, 2001.) The snobbery of her tone alone betrays the lingering, if perhaps unconscious, influence in India of British lefties from the end of the Raj. It is the language of the Bloomsbury drawing room. You could well imagine Bertrand Russell taking this line. The question is whether Roy's preposterousness undermines the causes that she promotes. Ramachandra Guha, a well-respected scholar and writer in India, thinks that it does. In a sharp attack on Roy's political statements, published in the newspaper The Hindu in November 2000, Guha argued that Roy should stick to writing novels, because her vanity and her self- indulgence devalues the work of more serious activists. He mentioned as an example her efforts on behalf of the movement against the huge expensive dams in western India, which will displace hundreds of thousands of poor people. The cause is just, but Guha believes that Roy's grandstanding on its behalf, which recently earned her a well-publicized night in jail, made a spectacle of her at the expense of the anti-dam movement. The quarrel between Roy and Guha has implications that go beyond the Indian borders. It touches upon celebrity culture, on the uses of literary fame in political causes, on the public role of the writer in a democracy, and on the intellectual roots of anti-Americanism. For these reasons alone, Roy's recent writings merit closer attention. Arundhati Roy may have come late to the anti-dam movement, as Ramachandra Guha says, but she did so in 1999, when the movement was in poor shape. She revived flagging spirits among the activists and put their goals back in the public eye. Building huge dams has been almost a fetish of Indian governments since Nehru, who made the famous statement (later regretted) that dams were "the temples of modern India." The Hoover Dam was the original model for this kind of thing, but it was Soviet-style nationalist machismo that inspired developing countries such as India. Dams are the very models of Stakhanovite enterprise, the perfect symbols of massive modernity. The Chinese are still at it, too. The results, as Roy has been at pains to point out, have often been disastrous. During the last fifty years, as many as fifty million mostly poor, low-caste Indians have lost their homes and livelihoods as a consequence of big dam projects. The benefits go mostly to the urban rich, while many peasants still have no access to safe drinking water. And even the benefits are often exaggerated. In the case of one big Indian dam, only five percent of the area that was promised irrigation actually received any water. All this is bad enough, especially for the dislocated poor. There is really no need for tasteless comparisons. But Roy writes: "Shall we just put the Star of David on their doors and get it over with." It is not immediately clear what gallery she is playing to here--her essays were written for Indian readers-- but the effect diminishes the power of her message. The Sardar Sarovar plan to build 3,200 dams on the Narmada River, which runs through three states in western India, is designed to be the biggest dam project of all. Roy says that it will submerge and destroy 4,000 square kilometers of forestland, and displace hundreds of thousands of people without adequate plans for re location or compensation. The other odd aspect of this huge irrigation scheme is that it will benefit only one of the three states, Gujarat, while the sacrifices are all to be born by villagers in the other two, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. Guja rat is naturally all in favor of this, as was the World Bank, at least initially. An enterprise that began as a form of Third World mimicry of Soviet methods now finds its most vociferous defenders among free-marketeers, right-wing Hindu chauvinists in the Indian government, and Western corporations. One of the most disturbing stories in Power Politics, Roy's essay against the dams, is about the way Enron squeezed billions of dollars out of the state of Maharashtra for a power plant that most local industries cannot even afford to tap. Critical studies of big dam building began to appear in India in the 1980s. The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), a movement of protest specifically against the Sardar Sarovar dam, organized demonstrations and strikes through the 1980s and 1990s. Independent reports, commissioned by the Indian government as well as by the World Bank and the World Conservation Union, were highly critical of the dam, for environmental reasons as well as social reasons, and after much pressure from activists the World Bank withdrew its support. Still, the Indian Supreme Court, after being petitioned by the NBA, decided to let the project go ahead anyway. Anti-dam activists, including Roy, were smeared in the pro-government press as traitors, and accused of assaulting a group of lawyers at the Supreme Court. There was no evidence for this, but the case went to court, and Roy wrote in her affidavit that this showed "a disquieting inclination on the part of the court to silence criticism and muzzle dissent." As a result, she was charged with contempt of court, spent her night in jail, and paid a fine. Unwise, perhaps; but more people read about the dam problem because of her than would otherwise have been the case. When Roy got involved in the anti-dam movement, she was already a famous writer. But it was not her first brush with organized protest. Her mother, Mary Roy, is a well-known promoter of women's rights in India, so Arundhati imbibed dissent with her mother's milk. But she is also rather melodramatic about the public role of the writer. To be a writer, she says, "in a country that gave the world Mahatma Gandhi ... is a ferocious burden." Quite where Gandhi fits in is unclear. Still, Roy writes about politics not as a famous novelist, but as a citizen, "only a citizen, one of many, asking for a public explanation." She has no "personal or ideological axe to grind." She has no "professional stakes to protect." It is simply "time to snatch our futures back from the 'experts.' " There is nothing wrong with this. Experts are fallible. Famous novelists are citizens, too. But there is in fact something professional at stake here. For Roy goes further than saying that a writer should use her fame to promote worthy causes. She believes that what "is happening in the world lies, at the moment, just outside the realm of human understanding." But help is at hand: it is "the writers, the poets, the artists, the singers, the filmmakers who can make the connections, who can find ways of bringing it into the realm of common understanding." Some of the reactions among the writers, the poets, and the artists to the events of last September make this kind of special pleading less than convincing. Roy's efforts on behalf of the victims of dam-building show her to be a good citizen; but if her aim, as a writer of political essays, is to promote common understanding, she is less than a success. The essays express her convictions and her prejudices with great passion, but by her own account she aims higher. Roy wants language to cut through platitudes and lies: "As a writer, one spends a lifetime journeying into the heart of language, trying to minimize, if not eliminate, the distance between language and thought. 'Language is the skin of my thought,' I remember saying to someone who once asked what language meant to me." If so, her thoughts could do with a course of Clearasil. Roy showed a fondness in her novel for overlush imagery and showy stylistic flourishes. The same thing is true in her essays, where her literary mannerisms often obscure understanding. The text is pockmarked with flip haiku-like clichés of the following kind: "My world has died. And I write to mourn its passing." (This is about India's development of the nuclear bomb.) Or this tired old dictum: "One country's terrorist is too often another's freedom fighter." There is also the constant hyperbole, which actually weakens the power of language. Privatization, Roy writes, is a "process of barbaric dispossession on a scale that has few parallels in history." Really? On the same topic: "What is happening to our world is almost too colossal for human comprehension to contain. But it is a terrible, terrible thing." Well, perhaps it is, but this judgment does little to help my own human comprehension of international economics. And if we are really dealing with matters outside human understanding, then human reason is obviously an inadequate tool, so why bother to write an essay at all? It doesn't help either that Roy adopts the patronizing tone of a tour guide for schoolchildren: "Allow me to shake your faith. Put your hand in mine and let me lead you through the maze." And her attempts to find a literary expression for her contempt of American capitalism are equally childish. America is likened to Rumpelstiltskin with "a bank account heart" and "television eyes" and a "Surround Sound stereo mouth which amplifies his voice and filters out the sound of the rest of the world, so that you can't hear it even when it's shouting (or starving or dying) and King Rumpel is only whispering, rolling his r's in his North American way." In the end, though, how much does it really matter? Does Roy's style really do as much damage to the substance of her cause as Ramachandra Guha thinks? In the case of the Sardar Sarovar dam, the merits of her involvement surely outweigh the limitations of her prose or the manner of her public presentation. The cause is clear enough. There are many more sober, more scholarly, more considered books and articles to read, for those who take a serious interest in the matter. And for those who would rather not be bothered, such as millions of Indian voters, Roy's passionate advocacy at least brings it to their attention. But when Roy attempts to tackle a wider world, fulminating against the American intervention in Afghanistan, or against "globalization," her tone and her stylistic tics become more than irritating. Her demonology of the United States takes on the foaming-at-the-mouth, eye-rolling quality of the mad evangelist. Un fortunately, it is this side of her, and not the campaigning against dam projects, that has found a worldwide audience. Roy has become the perfect Third World voice for anti-American, or anti-Western, or even anti-white, sentiments. Those are sentiments dear to the hearts of intellectuals everywhere, including the United States itself. The litany is well-known. America is the most belligerent power on earth. Its government is committed to "military and economic terrorism, insurgency, military dictatorship, religious bigotry and un imaginable genocide (outside America)." The economic policies of the United States, otherwise known as globalization or imperialism, are "merciless" and rapacious, destroying economies "like a cloud of locusts." This means, in Roy's view, that "any Third World country with a fragile economy and a complex social base should know by now that to invite a superpower like America in ... would be like inviting a brick to drop through your windscreen." This rather ignores the historical fact that it is precisely America's old "client states" in East and Southeast Asia--South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan--that have done rather well, politically and economically. South Vietnam, had it remained under American patronage, would no doubt have been among them. If American economic imperialism is bad, American militarism is worse. Not only is America responsible for the deaths of millions in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Central America, but also, according to Roy's account, in ... Yugoslavia! So the belated American intervention, which saved countless Bosnian and Albanian Kosovar lives, is now also a part of America's bellicose record. Rumpelstiltskin's empire is an evil, evil place. To drive this home, Roy uses the usual tricks of the demagogue. One of those tricks is the misleading quotation. The other is what used to be called, in Cold War days, moral equivalence. One quotation pops up in many an anti-American diatribe, including Roy's. This is the way she reports it: "In 1996, Madeleine Albright ... was asked on national television what she felt about the fact that five hundred thousand Iraqi children had died as a result of U.S. economic sanctions. She replied that it was `a very hard choice,' but that all things considered, `we think the price is worth it.'" This sounds pretty horrible. In fact, Albright had already made it clear to Lesley Stahl of CBS, who asked the question, that the Iraqi children were not dying because of the sanctions. Iraq can buy as much medicine as it wants. She admitted that sanctions did have negative consequences, but she argued that this was a price worth paying for containing the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. The moral-equivalence argument is crudely employed. Terrorism, Roy writes, is "as global an enterprise as Coke or Pepsi or Nike." Terrorists move their "factories" from country to country "in search of a better deal. Just like the multinationals." This is true, as far as it goes, but the business of Pepsi is not exactly mass murder. The terrorists, Roy goes on to say, are "the ghosts of the victims of America's old wars." Osama bin Laden is "the American President's dark doppelgänger," and "the twins are blurring into one another and gradually becoming interchangeable....Both are engaged in un equivocal political crimes. Both are dangerously armed...." And so on and so forth. One gets the drift. Now why would an Indian novelist get so overwrought about the United States? And she is not the only writer to do so. Consider Harold Pinter's description of America in the latest issue of Granta magazine: "The `rogue state' has--without thought, without pause for reflection, without a moment of doubt, let alone shame--confirmed that it is a fully-fledged, award-winning, gold-plated monster." For a start, it must be said that American corporations--Enron being just one instance--have not always played a pretty role in India. Union Carbide's involvement in the Bhopal gas leak in 1984, which killed more than ten thousand people, was horrendous. And American foreign policy, especially its support of Pakistan during the Bangladesh war, has distressed many Indians. Indeed, over-sensitive though Indians may sometimes be to slights (or imagined slights) from Western powers, Washington has not done nearly enough over the years to cultivate goodwill in Asia's biggest democracy. But there must be more to Roy's rage. For, in fact, American corporations have played a fairly minor role in postwar India, compared to many other parts of Asia. There is one verbal tic that keeps recurring in Roy's writings that may help us to understand her feelings--for that is what they are, more than coherent thoughts. She refers a great deal to India's "ancient civilization," usually to show how humiliating it is for an ancient people to defer to a jumped-up, uncivilized place such as the United States. About President Clinton's visit to India, she observes: "He was courted and fawned over by the genuflecting representatives of this ancient civilization with a fervour that can only be described as indecent." This speaks of the same snobbery that informed Roy's remark on American television about Mickey Mouse and the mullahs. Rich, rampant America shows up the relative weakness and backwardness of India. This is hard to take for a member of the intellectual or artistic elite, educated by nationalist professors, whose thoughts were often molded by British Marxists from the London School of Economics. The genuine popularity of American pop culture among the urban masses in India makes the elite feel marginal in their own country, which sharpens their sense of pique. For India, you could also read France, Italy, Japan, or even China. Thus Roy's voice is less representative of the Third World than of a global intelligentsia, floating from conference to conference, moaning about the effects of globalization. Being more civilized, wiser, older, and more spiritual is the last wall of defense against superior power. Again, about September 11, describing the reaction in the supposedly more civilized parts of the world, Roy notes "the tired wisdom of knowing that what goes around, eventually comes around." How could the callow denizens of the New World ever match such ancient understanding? Since many American intellectuals, be they novelists or academics, share Roy's contempt for American pop culture and the vulgar patriotism of the American media, some are inclined to applaud her sentiments. This in itself would be of little consequence, were it not that better informed, more intelligent criticism of American policies, foreign and domestic, is needed more than ever. Arundhati Roy's overheated prose gives criticism a bad name. She makes it too easy for unthinking patriots to dismiss any foreign skepticism toward American policy as mere envy or prejudice. And the effect of her voice in the non-Western world might be worse. The Iraqi intellectual dissident Kanan Makiya observed in his book Cruelty and Silence that Edward Said's Orientalism contributed to a pervasive lack of a sense of responsibility among young Arab intellectuals for the problems of the Middle East. If everything is the fault of a supposedly omnipotent America, or of ingrained Western colonial attitudes, then there is nothing to be done at home, except lash out in a rage. Roy is someone who has taken responsibility for problems in her own country. There her anger found a target in a concrete cause. In the wider world, however, it gets dissipated in hot air and petulance. The simple-minded demonization of the American monster is pure Occidental ism, or Said in reverse, which only helps to undermine the political self-scrutiny without which a democracy cannot work, or, more to the point, without which an authoritarian society cannot become a democratic one. This cannot be what Roy set out to accomplish. [Ian Buruma is the author, most recently, of Bad Elements] --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? Get personalised at My Yahoo!. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020503/0530fb6f/attachment.html From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Sat May 4 09:59:41 2002 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Sat, 04 May 2002 00:29:41 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Israel Radio defines Arabic Newspeak Message-ID: > >more wordplay >this is so disgusting >zehra. >------------------------------- > >http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=156135&contrassID >=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y > >Israel Radio defines Arabic Newspeak > > By Ori Nir > > Haaretz > April 26, 2002 > > Journalists in the Arabic language department of Israel Radio must not >use > the word "victim" when referring to Palestinian civilians killed in the > intifada, according to guidelines distributed a week ago to editors and > journalists at Reshet Daled, the Arabic station of Israel Radio. Instead > of "victim" broadcasters should say "the dead"(katla). > > The guidelines include other instructions on the use of certain > expressions: > > "Quotations of Palestinians or Arabs should not be preceded by the word > `akkada'" which means "underscored." This, says the guide, might "give >the > impression that you support or identify with the quote." > > The word "version" should not be used to describe statements by >"official > Israeli spokespersons" - like the Israeli Defense Forces - > "because this gives the impression you are casting doubt on the > statement." But it does add "there is no restriction on using the word > when referring to the Palestinian side." > > l When an official Israeli spokesman, such as the IDF spokesman, denies > "lies and slander like the massacre in Jenin, it is not sufficient to >use > the expression `nafa' [denied] as has been done in some broadcasts." > Instead, journalists must use verbs that make clear the allegations are >a > lie, and reiterate this by adding at the end: "The spokesman underscored > that these slanderous allegations are entirely false and baseless." > > When a Knesset member contradicts or refutes statements by the prime > minister "never use expressions such as `refuted' or `contradicted,' but > say instead: `The Knesset member objected, or expressed his objections >to, > the prime minister's statement." > > The word "assassination" should not be used in referring to > Israel's assassinations of Palestinian activists. Instead the word > "killing" (katal in Arabic) should be used for those actions which the >IDF > itself calls "targeted assassinations." > > Journalists in the Arabic news department say that since the > intifada began in the territories a year and a half ago, there has been > considerable management interference in broadcasting. Several employees > argue that this harms the reputation for reliability and integrity which > the station has among its Arab Israeli listeners and in the Arab world. > > Edmond Skhayyek, the head of the department, said the guidelines have >yet > to be approved and he has not taken a position on the directives. He >said > they had not yet been distributed in the department, but employees >denied > this. > > > > > >******************************************************* >Aniruddha Das 212 327-7770 (ph) / 327-8240 (fax) > dasa at mail.rockefeller.edu >Rockefeller University >1230 York Ave >New York, NY 10021 > >-------------------------------------------------------------------- _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com From coolzanny at hotmail.com Sat May 4 13:02:44 2002 From: coolzanny at hotmail.com (Zainab Bawa) Date: Sat, 04 May 2002 13:02:44 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) Message-ID: Dear Prakash, Thanks for the thought provoking email. I have gained a lot from it. I have seriously been thinking as to what is it that can be done in a situation like this. While relief and communal harmony agencies are trying to provide material help to rehabilitate the riot victims, the wounds are much deeper. Unfortunately, they soon develop to become historical wounds which lead to more antagonism in future. My concern is for the youngsters who are likely to be influenced by the Sangh Parivar. Here in Mumbai itself, thousands of youngsters have been recruited to serve the RSS and its 'cause'. Women are being mobilized to take up arms use training. Ekta Kapoor with her 'fantastic' serials like Saas bhi kabhi, Kahani, etc. is subtly propagating a 'Hindu' culture which I am becoming very wary of. There are Ramayan readings in the dark corners of Western Suburbs at mid-nights. One wonders the motivation behind all of this. Isn't it too obvious, too sinister?!?!?! What can we do? My personal aim is to work with young people and stimulate their faculities of independent thinking. At this point, I find apathy in my generation, yet there is strong hope in this generation and that hope is driving me to continue to work towards my vision. At the same time, I am wondering what is the role that media can play? Recently, two friends in Ahmedabad began to use the radio to send out messages of how violence can affect lives and how violence can lead to contructive or destructive attitudes. They seem to be happy with the responses of the effort. Are there other ways? Whom can we talk to? How can we talk to them? Is dialogue the way? Is 'otherization' of the fanatics the way? Are there are multiple and parallel ways? I am thinking still . . . Zainab _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com From announcements-request at sarai.net Sat May 4 10:40:14 2002 From: announcements-request at sarai.net (announcements-request at sarai.net) Date: Sat, 4 May 2002 07:10:14 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Announcements digest, Vol 1 #41 - 1 msg Message-ID: <200205040510.HAA23317@mail.waag.org> Send Announcements mailing list submissions to announcements at sarai.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to announcements-request at sarai.net You can reach the person managing the list at announcements-admin at sarai.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Announcements digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Violence - call for festival submissions (NewMediaArtProjectNetwork) --__--__-- Message: 1 Reply-To: "NewMediaArtProjectNetwork" From: "NewMediaArtProjectNetwork" To: Date: Fri, 3 May 2002 15:36:30 +0200 Organization: NewMediaArtProjectNetwork Subject: [Announcements] Violence - call for festival submissions Please forward this call to all who might be interested in. *********************************************************** 'Violens' Festival Tabor (Czech Republic) Call for submissions Deadline 15 June 2002. No entry fee! As the creator of 'A Virtual Memorial' www.a-virtual-memorial.org - I have been invited by 'Violens' Festival Tabor (Czech Republic) to curate and organize an online art exhibition on the theme violence, entitled simply 'Violence', as part of the festival this year. The festival will take place from 15 - 25 August 2002 and is organized by CESTA (Cultural Exchange Station in T�r). Read more about CESTA below. I would like to invite artists of all artistic disciplines to participate und submit either net based works or physical art works to be submitted as digital files, i.e. poems, texts, paintings, videos, documenation, photographs, etc All kind of artistic approaches and views on the subject are welcome. *Festival Statement: 'Art and violence both seem to stem from the abstract: that place beyond logic, the realm of the emotion. When they intersect we are simultaneously repelled and attracted, frightened and excited. Historically this meeting has been wrought with complexity, and as cultural violence in every society increases, we are prevented by paranoia, censorship and ethical demands from asking, and sometimes even posing, some of the most important questions violence and art together and separately produce: how is violence represented, and what or how much of it do we need to resist the cultivation of fear and the encouragement of dependency? Is violence a tool, a process or a result? When are artistic portrayals of violence justifiable? As intellectual exercise, ritual, or spiritual enhancement? For other purposes? Or are they never justifiable? Is violence in art an action, reaction, or reflection? ' **The art works can be submitted a) net based works as URL b) any other kind of art work as following digital file typs: text:.txt, .doc, plain email text image:.jpg,.gif, .png sound: mp3 video/animation: .swf (Flash), .dcr (Shockwave), .mov (Quicktime), .avi (Windows Video), .rm (Real Video) (no more than 2MB for each submitted work) **Please fill out this Entry Form, all items are mandatory: Name of artist Email Nationality URL Short CV (to be published) not more than 250 words Title of works 1. 2. 3 year of origin used media of original work submitted format of digital work **Please send the form together with the media files to violence at a-virtual-memorial.org Only complete submissions will be accepted. All works which go seriously down to the subject will be included. *Deadline 15 June 2002. **Notification of acceptance until 30 June 2002. *About CESTA CESTA's festival themes and parameters of cross-national interdisciplinary collaborations represent the center's commitment to improving communication through creative expression. We base our selection of artists on a review of applications resulting from our annual open call. CESTA Nov�va 387 T�r 39001 Czech Republic http://www.cesta.cz *The exhibition site will be hosted by 'NewMediaArtProjectNetwork' and will go online in the beginning of August 2002, it will also be 'Featured project' during September 2002 on 'A Virtual Memorial' www.a-virtual-memorial.org , which is dedicated that month to the victims of violence regarding particularly the memory of the terror attack on 9/11/2001. The exhibition will be included for permanent in "A Virtual Memorial' environment. I hope many of you will participate. Best for now, Wilfried Agricola de Cologne info at a-virtual-memorial.org www.a-virtual-memorial.org A Virtual Memorial - Memorial Project against the Forgetting and for Humanity, corporate member of 'NewMediaArtProjectNetwork' --__--__-- _______________________________________________ Announcements mailing list Announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements End of Announcements Digest From jeebesh at sarai.net Sat May 4 14:54:35 2002 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Sat, 4 May 2002 14:54:35 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Walking the streets with Zainab and Pratap Message-ID: <02050414543508.00594@pinki.sarai.kit> Over some period now, i have been in a regular conversation with a group of young people in the LNJP basti (New Delhi). Streets and movement is something we have discussed and talked about many a time. It is usually about harsh, aggresive and obnoxious behaviour of men towards women, no pedestrian paths, no lighting, hard traffic, anti-disabled etc. Also, talked and discussed have been the expereince at home where `dangerous streets` always meant a legitimate ploy to justify `stay at home` (safety, security and safe from influence of unknown). We also talked about meeting strangers and being in a crowd. Today, a young woman narrated an interesting perspective. She said that being on the street we sense a freedom but fear looms large because we are alone. So if we can build a community (sanjha) of users, we will walk with more freedom. She actually was more interested in walking the streets and all the other ideas were being filtered through the desire for that practice (or act). I write this in response to Zainab and Pratap's postings. best Jeebesh From jeebesh at sarai.net Fri May 3 18:05:57 2002 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Fri, 3 May 2002 18:05:57 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Walking the streets with Zainab and Pratap In-Reply-To: <20020502182250.2335.qmail@web8104.in.yahoo.com> References: <20020502182250.2335.qmail@web8104.in.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <02050318055700.00828@pinki.sarai.kit> Over some period now, i have been in a regular conversation with a group of young people in the LNJP basti (New Delhi). Streets and movement is something we have discussed and talked about many a time. It is usually about harsh, aggresive and obnoxious behaviour of men towards women, no pedestrian paths, no lighting, hard traffic, anti-disabled etc. Also, talked and discussed have been the expereince at home where `dangerous streets` always meant a legitimate ploy to justify `stay at home` (safety, security and safe from influence of unknown). We also talked about meeting strangers and being in a crowd. Today, a young woman narrated an interesting perspective. She said that being on the street we sense a freedom but fear looms large because we are alone. So if we can build a community (sanjha) of users, we will walk with more freedom. She actually was more interested in walking the streets and all the other ideas were being filtered through the desire for that practice (or act). I write this in response to Zainab and Pratap's postings. best Jeebesh From suchita at del6.vsnl.net.in Fri May 3 14:11:09 2002 From: suchita at del6.vsnl.net.in (Suchita Vemuri) Date: Fri, 3 May 2002 14:11:09 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] letter fm a police officer ref gujarat Message-ID: forwarding this fyi -- suchita Dear All, I am circulating a piece by V.N. Rai to his colleagues in the police force. Thought it would be of interest. PArvathi GUJARAT 2002 : A LESSON FOR THE MEMBERS OF THE INDIAN POLICE SERIVCE< Dear Colleague< I am writing to you at a very difficult time as an Indian Police Service officer and with a sense of anguish The recent events related to the communal holocaust in Gujarat are a matter of great concern for the country and should inspire serious introspection among all of us IPS officers. The terrible carnage that occurred at Godhra was an early warning of the fact that big events of communal destruction could occur the next day all over the State and the expectation from a professional police force was that it would oppose all actions of revenge and counter-violence with all the force that it could muster. But this did not happen. Not only was the police unsuccessful in containing the violence of the next few days but, it seemed, that in many places policemen were actively encouraging the rioteers. The failure of the police should not be attributed to the lower ranks but must be seen as a failure of leadership that is a failure of the IPS The events that followed the beastly incident at Godhra did not surprise a person like myself who is not only a police officer but also a keen student of social behaviour. The same old story was repeated everywhere from Ahmedabad, the capital, to the rural areas. Since l960, in almost all riots that have occurred, the same picture has been painted in the same colours, a picture of a helpless and often actively inactive police force that allowed wailing members of the minority community be looted and killed in its presence, that remained a mute witness to some of their members being burnt alive Whatever maybe my concerns as an ordinary citizen, as a police officer, my greatest concern is the preservation of the professional character of the police force. An insensitive Chief Minister can pat his incompetent police force on the back and the senior police leadership can also blame the 'misleading media' and the 'anti-national minorities' for any criticism made of its handling of the situation, but the truth is that after every riot the same criticism is made of the police, that of its not only having failed to protect the lives and property of the minorities but of siding with Hindu rioters and encouraging them. And after this recent rioting also the same criticism is being levelled against the Gujarat police Whatever happened in Gujarat is not something new. It only once again underlines the fact that the senior leadership of the police will have to sit down and think as to why after every riot the same story is repeated that of incompetence, inactivity and criminal negligence. Until we accept that all is not in order in our own house, nothing can be put right The first institutionalised opposition to communal violence is initiated by the police. This occurs at several levels: collection of intelligence before the outbreak of violence, preventive measures while tension is escalating, use of force to stop violence and, after peace is restored, initiation of legal proceedings against the guilty. These are some of the steps taken by the police to combat communal riots. None of these steps can be taken effectively if we ourselves are infected with a communal bias. For an average policeman, collection of intelligence is limited to gathering of information about the activities of communal Muslim organisations. It is not easy to make him realise that the activities of Hindu communal organisations also come under the purview of anti-national activities and, therefore, it is necessary to keep an eye on their activities also. It is a fact that very little input on the activities of communal Hindu organisations and their activists is to be found in the police station records. Similarly, preventive arrests, even in riot situations in which Muslims are the worst sufferers, are restricted to members of the minority community. Further, even where Muslims are being attacked and the police resorts to firing, their main targets are Muslims. House-searches and arrests reveal the same biasvnrai at hotmail.com From hansathap1 at hotmail.com Sun May 5 09:55:05 2002 From: hansathap1 at hotmail.com (hansa) Date: Sun, 5 May 2002 09:55:05 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] public solidarities Message-ID: for two months, i taught as part of a disreputable money making graduate programme tht is supposed to be bringing in revenue to many colleges in bombay- is completely unplanned and unregulated(and so perfect for people like me who can step in to play teacher teacher and do as we please.) i was taking a class in scriptwriting etcetra two hours every week, and mostly perhaps discussed just that - think visual! don't say symbolism too soon, time and space, space and time- alfred hitchcock says. the college is in 'town' in bombay, but manages to have an interesting eclctic character, and has students from the less tree lined avenues coming to study. when i was told to set a paper for their exams- i gave them photos9taken by monica on this list) of unpeopled city spaces- vacant park benches- an auto line up at night, etcetra, in the hope that the photos would help them write scripts that connected characters with space. what i got were scripts that shook me from my teaccher teacher complacency. there were stories that saw in those spaces our normalised strange futures, and wrote narratives of our present. the park was projected 27 years ahead- into a space where affiliations to this or that country- india or pakistan- divided all spaces microscopically. so the same park bench had at its corners a couple with differeing nationalities, sitting in a pretty park morning, having an intimate conversation across the fence dividing them, on mobile phones. the couple is middle aged, prosperous, gold shinig here and there- they are plannig for a sons marriage, planning around the visas that will take two years, just like childrens educations are supposedly planned for today keeping in account exisiting rules. children are playing as they do in parks today- a ball goes across to the other side- the pakistani sentry as matter of course picks it up, throws it to the indian sentry who gives it to the children. children wave out to each other across the fence but will not cross. sentries do their job as jobs- people work around new rules- and carry on. in another story- a down and out man with a small plastic packet around his neck comes to where the autos are parked- he gets in exhausted, into a parked, empty auto, and takes out a hardened bit of paav- bread, from his plastic packet. he munches the hardened bread opens the auto dikki with a metal rod and finds something to drink and his mood changes- he is happy go lucky now and in bambaiyya hindi revels in his capacity to make a new home every night- and covering himself with a tattered cloth he carries, he falls asleep. at night a mob comes, with objects and righteousness and a readiness to pillage and they burn the line of autos, and feel vindicated. somewhere else, the park benches find a small stone in their midst. a flower seller exhausted from his day drops his basket and goes off for a pee and a nap. someone walks by sees the flowers and thinks it is a shroine and throws coins, coins accumulate. the flower seller returns, grins at his luck and peoples foolsihenss and picking up the coins, leaves behind the flowers. other stories- love story with an alien in a park overlooking bombay- love despite otherness- she is bald has sharp pointed teeth- and the city scape spread below the park choppers flying with ads... what i loved and was sometimes was starled by was what i saw as perspective in the face of violence. many of my students are muslim, and while i have been away from bombay for a bit, i can imagine that zubairs description of the saffron flags coming out all over. younger people, their anguish and their clarity. i could i suppose work at trying to shoot one of these stories with them. i have walked past classes in wilson where i have heard animated discussion with young professors- on issues of violence of identity- how to create more public voice for these solidarities? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020505/ad61ef7f/attachment.html From marni at thepaper.org.au Mon May 6 10:49:00 2002 From: marni at thepaper.org.au (marn*i) Date: Mon, 06 May 2002 15:19:00 +1000 (CST) Subject: [Reader-list] East Timor Media Message-ID: <1020664140.3cd6194c750c9@webmail.myspinach.org> Hey there, I've just spent the last couple of months researching independent media in East Timor and thought reader-list people might be interested in the following article. Ongoing research thru-out the Asia-Pac region will be documented at www.smallvoices.org Cheers, Marni. From pankaj at sarai.net Mon May 6 15:05:24 2002 From: pankaj at sarai.net (Pankaj Kaushal) Date: Mon, 6 May 2002 15:05:24 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: [ilugd]: Skipping commercials may now be illegal! Message-ID: <200205060941.LAA31852@mail.waag.org> ---------- Forwarded Message From Linux-Delhi---------- http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/columnists/3200101.htm Posted on Sat, May. 04, 2002 Paranoia, stupidity and greed ganging up on the public By Dan Gillmor Mercury News Technology Columnist Dear Reader: If you are reading this column in the newspaper, but did not read every article and look at every advertisement in previous sections, stop now. You must go back and look at all of that material before continuing with this column. If you are reading this column on the Web and did not go to the newspaper's home page first, stop now. Go to the home page and navigate through whatever sequence of links our page designers have created to reach this page, and don't you dare fail to look at the ads. Ridiculous? Of course. Tell that to the dinosaurs at some major media and entertainment companies. They insist they have the right to tell you precisely how you may use their products. Consider: . DVD movies have copyright notices at the beginning, but can disable the fast-forward feature of your DVD player while the notice is on the screen. Studios have also placed commercials at the start with the fast-forward disabled. . Hollywood and the broadcast television cartel are going to war against the makers of hard-disk video recorders that allow you to skip past commercials. The head of Turner Broadcasting calls it ``theft'' when you, the viewer, decline to watch the ads he wants you to view. . A major newspaper (not this one) is telling people they may not post hyperlinks to pages on its site other than the home page. The paper says avoiding the home page lets viewers avoid home page advertising. [snip] -- Raju Mathur raju at kandalaya.org http://kandalaya.org/ It is the mind that moves ================================================ To subscribe, send email to ilugd-request at wpaa.org with subscribe in subject header To unsubscribe, send email to ilugd-request at wpaa.org with unsubscribe in subject header Archives are available at http://www.mail-archive.com/ilugd%40wpaa.org ================================================= ------------------------------------------------------- -- Pankaj "Trompe Le Monde." From mainakray at now-india.com Sun May 5 15:05:09 2002 From: mainakray at now-india.com (Mainak Ray) Date: Sun, 5 May 2002 15:05:09 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The old Dualism. Message-ID: The "mirror of production" has been superseded by a complete transparency, the vertigo of terror. Land, labour, nature, self itself, life itself, and even death can be re-invented as the basis of all exchange -- everything is money. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: totalized.exe Type: application/octet-stream Size: 104960 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020505/29a44a5b/attachment.exe From kanti.kumar at oneworld.net Sun May 5 16:10:46 2002 From: kanti.kumar at oneworld.net (Kanti Kumar) Date: Sun, 5 May 2002 16:10:46 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Open-Source Office Productivity Software Message-ID: Dear friends, For your information. Kanti Kumar -----Original Message----- From: owner-gkd at phoenix.edc.org [mailto:owner-gkd at phoenix.edc.org] On Behalf Of Jacqueline McNally Sent: Wednesday, May 01, 2002 08:30 To: gkd at phoenix.edc.org Subject: [GKD] ANN: Open-Source Office Productivity Software OpenOffice.org MEDIA RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE OPENOFFICE.ORG COMMUNITY ANNOUNCES OPENOFFICE.ORG 1.O: FREE OFFICE PRODUCTIVITY SOFTWARE Global Community builds full-featured office suite with revolutionary momentum Perth, Australia (May 1, 2002) - The OpenOffice.org community (http://www.openoffice.org/) today announced the availability of OpenOffice.org 1.0, the open source, multi-platform, multi-lingual office productivity suite available as a free download at the OpenOffice.org community website. OpenOffice.org 1.0 is the culmination of more than 18 months of collaborative effort by members of the OpenOffice.org community, which is comprised of Sun employees, volunteer developers, marketers, and end users working to create an international office suite that will run on all major platforms. OpenOffice.org 1.0, which shares the same code base as Sun's StarOffice 6.0 is-like StarOffice 6.0 -- a full-featured office suite that provides a near drop-in replacement for Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org 1.0 offers consumers and businesses software freedom, enabling a free market for service and support, while the Sun-branded product, StarOffice 6.0, offers 24x7 fee-based support and training for consumers and businesses, along with deployment and migration services. StarOffice also offers additional features, such as a database, special fonts and Sun quality and assurance testing.The two office suites complement each other, meeting the varying needs of consumers, open source advocates and enterprise customers. "OpenOffice.org 1.0 may be the single best hope for consumers fed-up with Microsoft's desktop monopoly," said Eric Raymond, co-founder of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). "With Sun moving to a full service and support business model for StarOffice, users around the globe will continue to have a free office productivity software tool through the OpenOffice.org open source community." The OpenOffice.org 1.0 office suite features key desktop applications- including word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and drawing programs -- in more than 25 languages. In addition, OpenOffice.org 1.0 works transparently with a variety of file formats, enabling users familiar with other office suites, such as Microsoft Office and StarOffice, to work seamlessly in the application. The OpenOffice.org 1.0 software runs stably and natively on multiple platforms, including Linux, PPC Linux, Solaris, Windows and many other flavours of Unix. OpenOffice.org is the largest open source project with more than 7.5 million lines of code. To date, more than 4.5 million downloads of earlier versions of OpenOffice.org 1.0 have taken place. With the release of the 1.0 version, the OpenOffice.org community expects that number to grow significantly as businesses and individuals around the world explore the free alternative to proprietary office suites. The OpenOffice.org Community In less than two years, the OpenOffice.org community has grown to more than 10,000 volunteers, working together to build the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format. Sun initiated this effort by donating the StarOffice source code and engineering to the OpenOffice.org community. One of the major benefits of community-based development is peer review, which has resulted in a stable, secure and flexible software package. Participants in the Community work on projects ranging from code development to porting and localisation, to bug reporting, documentation, product marketing, local language sites and mirror sites for software download. "There are many important roles that volunteer developers can play to shape the future functionality of OpenOffice.org (OOo) so if you are looking for someplace to contribute, OOo can use you," said Kevin Hendricks, a key contributor to the OpenOffice.org community since its inception nearly two years ago. Hendricks has lead volunteer development teams for both the OpenOffice.org 1.0 spellchecker and PPC Linux port projects. "When OpenOffice.org was released, it was a tremendous amount of code with a very deep history, and thus we knew it would take a lot of time and effort to reach a critical mass of community participation," said Brian Behlendorf, CTO and co-founder, CollabNet. "The project has now attracted a significant amount of outside involvement, some of it in pretty interesting areas like marketing and quality assurance. With the release of 1.0, it's clear those efforts are bearing real fruit. Congratulations to the community-and to Sun-for making this happen." CollabNet's SourceCast application enables both centralised and geographically distributed software development teams to collaborate on OpenOffice.org projects and to track them accurately. SourceCast is the premier Web-based collaboration environment, which includes an integrated set of software development applications. CollabNet also provides strategic advice on open source issues and the growth of OpenOffice.org, and offers analysis on current trends within the community. "OpenOffice.org may be the most important open source project right now, said Miguel de Icaza, founder of the GNOME project. Because people will try it and see they can get everyday work done without giving more money to Microsoft, they'll see-in a low-risk way-that open source software can work for them and be an even better solution. About OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org is the home of the open source project and its community of developers, users and marketers responsible for the on-going development of the OpenOffice.org 1.0 product. The mission of OpenOffice.org is to create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format. Additional ports, such as FreeBSD, IRIX and Mac OS X are in various stages of completion by developers and end-users in the OpenOffice.org community. OpenOffice.org 1.0 is written in C++ and has documented API's licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL) open source licenses. About CollabNet CollabNet provides companies with solutions for collaborative software development by combining a Web-based software application with a suite of consulting services. Using these solutions, customers can collaborate on development projects within an enterprise, with customers, business partners, or with third party developer organisations, such as industry specific or open source communities. CollabNet enables corporations to reduce costs and increase revenues by bringing different project team members together, regardless of their location. CollabNet is currently working with customers ranging from hardware and software providers to companies from industries such as financial services, wireless, and pharmaceuticals. Brian Behlendorf, co-founder of the Apache Software Foundation, established CollabNet in July 1999. For more information, see http://www.collab.net/. About Sun Microsystems, Inc. Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision-"The Network Is The ComputerTM"-has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq:SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that power the Internet and allow companies worldwide to take their businesses to the nth. Sun can be found in more than 170 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://www.sun.com/. MEDIA RELEASE CONTACT: Jacqueline McNally Community Contact, Australia/New Zealand OpenOffice.org Marketing Project Jacqueline McNally +61 8 9474 3021 (GMT +0800) tsukusenai at openoffice.org ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, an NGO that is a GKP member*** To post a message, send it to: To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: . In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.343 / Virus Database: 190 - Release Date: 3/22/02 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.343 / Virus Database: 190 - Release Date: 3/22/02 From jchaudhuri at mantraonline.com Mon May 6 08:46:38 2002 From: jchaudhuri at mantraonline.com (Jyotirmoy Chaudhuri) Date: Mon, 06 May 2002 08:46:38 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: on 05/04/2002 1:02 PM, Zainab Bawa at coolzanny at hotmail.com wrote: Dear Zainab, And all, A few disjointed comments: > There are Ramayan readings in the dark corners of > Western Suburbs at mid-nights. One wonders the motivation behind all of > this. Isn't it too obvious, too sinister?!?!?! Rings a bell, almost as if the bells are tolling- and loudly, an earth-shattering jagaran. For some reason, in this horrible heat of Delhi, people seem to find the need to put up idols of gods - matas - they say, the Vaishno Devi mata - gaudy idols with some ear-splitting music through cracked speakers. There is a coin box too, and one has promised that one will put in Rs 11 (from the day's first earning) every day (or some such money) and keep doing it till the end of time. The mata is supposed to be very potent and will bless you always. This is my friend talking. He drives a three-wheeler (Auto) in the city for a living. He is unbelievably polite, caring, a family man, who comes back home well in time, and even after the queues at the CNG counters. We get to spend at least an hour everyday together. We chat a lot. About everything on earth except Gujarat, except Muslims. The other day, I see the strip of a sticker on his windscreen announcing another jagaran, a large one in Govindpuri. He tells me that the pandal is as awesome as the ones made in the Bengali ghetto, CR Park during Durga Puja. The mata is as awesome. He does not talk to me very comfortably about it, never does, we are entering the forbidden territory, Muslims and the latest pogrom may come up. He believes, in the mata very deeply. There is a sense of contentment when he speaks of the deity. Anyway, he has invited me to the jagaran, I might go, I will probably not. And then, there is that friend who flies with an international airline, earns a decent packet, lives a comfortable life and visits Vaishno Devi very regularly. She fasts once (or is it twice a week), keeps all the bratas, (I remember her Karva Chauting) and though she is avowedly secular, she believes in the Hindu. I have had many other friends from other religious denominations and most of them are Karva Chauting in their own way. Reading Marx on one hand and praying five times a day. And yes, there was a woman who told me that I should stop being crazy about her since I was not one of the faithful. I did rather she told me that I was fat and boring. So, it has been reels and reels of faith, so much belief and contentment and matas all around that I feel left out. Not for long, though. I have decided to become a Rimpoche. Jyoti From rahulj at glide.net.in Sun May 5 16:36:28 2002 From: rahulj at glide.net.in (Rahul Jindal) Date: Sun, 5 May 2002 16:36:28 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) References: Message-ID: <00be01c1f434$9441c6e0$3325c0cb@rahul> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Zainab Bawa" To: Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2002 7:16 PM Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) > Dear Readers, > I am new on this list and have been very keenly reading all the postings. I > must say that I am very happy to be part of this list. > On the issues of Gujarat and Communal Violence (actually they are as one as > dual), I have been reading many postings. I have two questions for which I > invite generous responses: > > 1). How much of the happenings in Gujarat are economically motivated? Also, > what are the economic pay-offs to this whole incident? > Sorry for catching on with this, this late. I just wanted to bring forth an observation. The regions in which the riots are the most are the most economically promising regions. They have seen an increase of land rates of around 300% over the past few years. An example of a region was given (which is in the worst affected area) where one lane of muslim houses was completely destroyed by "mobs" (as they come out of nowhere) which was comprised mainly by the people (mostly labourers) from the rest of the lanes (inhabited by hindus). Secondly in the same areas diamond works are being agressively setup, so what better time to scare people away from them than now ? A friend of mine who is going to IIM-A this year is more scared by the violence (in the area) than the course itself! Cheers Rahul From rahulj at glide.net.in Sun May 5 17:47:41 2002 From: rahulj at glide.net.in (Rahul Jindal) Date: Sun, 5 May 2002 17:47:41 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) References: Message-ID: <00bf01c1f434$952cc320$3325c0cb@rahul> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Zainab Bawa" To: Sent: Saturday, May 04, 2002 1:02 PM Subject: Re: [Reader-list] (no subject) [SNIP] > take up arms use training. Ekta Kapoor with her 'fantastic' serials like > Saas bhi kabhi, Kahani, etc. is subtly propagating a 'Hindu' culture which I > am becoming very wary of. There are Ramayan readings in the dark corners of > Western Suburbs at mid-nights. One wonders the motivation behind all of > this. Isn't it too obvious, too sinister?!?!?! Dear Zainab, Though I subscribe to almost all you say, but I have some objections regarding the above. I mean imagine a house being shown in a serial and has no religion or rather, mostly seen in "comedies", a place having members from all the communities. If its a story about a hindu family, then there have to hindu customs being depicted, what is the problem with that? Though I don't like any of her serials due to an overdose of sentimentality but depicting a hindu culture is not incorrect. Also digressing a bit, I have observed a very amusing trend in American movies / serial / music videos : One that of having a lot of people of Asian Origin (very rarely Indians, so you know what I mean), first it was the american-africans now the asians, talk of american way of subtle imperialism. Since this is NOT something many people would relish and would seem "fake" just as american wrestling (popularly WWF) is, I think NOT showing hindu customs and stuff would be a bit boring to the audience. I've seen people enjoy serials like Amanat (I'm not sure if I have the right name but its on Zee) that have an ample cast playing a Muslim family and some more serials that have inter-religion affairs and stuff, so I think its all okay. Ramayan readings, secondly should not be a cause of concern, after all its very natural for a hindu to be reading a religious book for the Hindus. You might just not find it "interesting" enough but calling it _sinister_ is NOT AT ALL justified. We should not see reading of Ramayan as indicating harm, just as we should NOT attribute violence and only hatred to madrassas. Hindu religious schools are few and "hindu terrorists" coming out of schools haven't been heard of (or not that commonly visible). Finally, the fascists may be using the Religion as a way to divide, though not the religious teachings. I don't believe (though I may be incorrect) that there are concepts analogous to "Kafir" and others in Ramayana. Ramayana is more than two arrows colliding and producing colorful show as in BR Chopra's mega serial In the end it all falls back to my unfledged self. Cheers Rahul From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Tue May 7 04:02:57 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Mon, 6 May 2002 23:32:57 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] What are we to do? Message-ID: <20020506223257.65227.qmail@web8104.in.yahoo.com> Dear Zainab, Jeebesh, and others, The current issue of the "Seminar" magazine is entirely devoted to Gujarat. I have been reading it. On reading this magazine, I find too much emotion in it. Its contributors seem to have taken a stance whereby "truth" is inseparable from "guilt", itself an arguably easy way out. Of course, two essays stand out: Ganesh Devy's essay on "Tribal Voice and Violence" and Upendra Baxi's essay on "Notes on Holocaustian Politics". Zainab has addressed this issue of too much emotion, and so has Jeebesh. They have addressed this issue laterally, in their own ways. There does exist a simple solution to the "gujarat" problem. If we accept (as I would like to argue, perhaps a bit redundantly) that Gujarat has been ideologically overdetermined, that what has happened in Gujarat is seriously a case of thoughts or ideas being transformed into reality (first the ideas were put in through civil society associations, then the ideas sank in, then they took hold, and once they took hold they needed an outlet), then there is only one way out. A different set of ideas has to be disseminated, via civil society associations (completely like the kind of associations the facsists have put into place). The facsists have mimicked the Left, in the matter of organising the flows of knowledge and quotidian existence. They have mimicked the left so well that they have completely left the Left behind: there is the Pushti Marg, Swaminarayan Sampraday, Shakti Sampraday; there is of course the Vanavasi Sevak Sangh, like the RSS but geared to convince adivasis that they could not be adivasis because history, and the history of identity, begins with Aryans; there is the closure, and transformation, of all solidarity associations based on labour (sports clubs, reading rooms, family care and counselling courses, classes for adult education, day nurseries, primary health centres). WE need now to remember these strategies of building solidarity. We need to "re-memory" these strategies. Most importantly, we need to disseminate a certain kind of material into society that will give its readers a different (perhaps "old", perhaps "welfarist", certainly "rehashed", so that the historical mistakes/involuntary despotisms don't occur; certainly "communitarian", for this form of solidarity has not really been tested on Indian political soil ) way to imagine and build society. GUjarat didn't happen in a day. It was planned for, over 15 years. At the cost of sounding pathological, there has to be "another" plan. A 10-year "another" plan. If the Right has mimicked the Left in GUjarat, then they have to be "re-mimicked". For this, we need to nurture the services of school-teachers, college-teachers, influence parents, talk to children. Its a 10-year thing. Anybody got the guts? I ask this question for personal reasons. I don't have the guts. I want to have the guts, but I can't seem to take the step. (Such a vetan-bhogi I am.) We also need to produce easily understandable knowledge about India's democratic groundswell. For instance, Mayawati has to be talked about as a victory, even if what she is doing doesn't help the Dalit movement. I believe that the info about post-independant India is so middle-class that the real complexities of class/caste development have been talked about only in "academic" discourse. Actually, caste/class formations have been radically changing: this academically-redundant fact needs to be disseminated. We need to talk about, and disseminate, the electoral realities of democracy in India. In a Haryana village, a Gujjar can go to a Dalit share-cropper, or agricultural labourer, and say: You have the power to vote. But we control the land. If you vote, God help you in the next harvest. How do we this counter this "counter"-talk? Zainab, I teach in Jamia Millia Islamia. There, there have been no protests on GUjarat. The elite Muslim bloc that also controls the university has had nothing to say, or do, about GUjarat. They are not bothered. Of course, Ehsan Jafri was killed (as a colleague told me, his head separated from his body was carried around, exhibited in a blatant act of what I interpret as lower-class Hindu chaucinism). But so were a lot of ex-textile mill workers, trying to eke out their existence as humdrum entrepreuners. But JMI is unruffled. Or is it? A friend of mine talks about secret meetings being held in the community around Jamia. He says that there exists a certain opinion among the residents who live in the Jamia area (I deliberately make this vague: do you know the "Jamia area"? Zakir Nagar? Jamia Nagar? Abul Fazl Enclave?). The opinion is this: let them come. The only way they can take care of us is through aerial bombing. We now have examinations in Jamia. The teachers don't talk. But my students stop me, as I gladly run away from a mindless 3-hour invigilation. They talk to me about GUjarat. They are happy it didn't happen in Delhi, but they are unsure. They say they feel unsafe. They say they don't know if they should apply for good jobs. Will I be taken, Sir? What should I do, Sir? An ex-student of mine has moved into Zakir Nagar. When I asked him why (this was in December, last year), he said: Safety, Sir. JMI is not protesting GUjarat, as a lot of the teaching staff wants it to. JMI students are locked in a dilemma: they are no longer sure "civil society" is willing to recognise their talents. They are sure it is ready to undercut them. What should I do, Sir/Madam? I am merely invigilating, and feeling fucked. yours, pp P S: Everybody should feel free to walk about. They do. My students walk about in groups. Daringly, they walk about in mixed groups. Couples (or temporary couples, or couples-in-process) weave off into the dark passages of the New Friends Community Centre. I don't know what my students' fathers and mothers think. I am not sure they are not dreaming about Pakistan. I don't understand them. I understand their children. ________________________________________________________________________ For live cricket scores download Yahoo! Score Tracker at: http://in.sports.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From rehanhasanansari at yahoo.com Tue May 7 10:16:05 2002 From: rehanhasanansari at yahoo.com (rehan ansari) Date: Mon, 6 May 2002 21:46:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] What should I do sir/madam? Message-ID: <20020507044605.82647.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> Dear Pratap, Dr Reyhan Chaudhry and others, There was some talk earlier, with pratap and dr. reyhan chaudhri about english, and i found myself substituting "modern" for "english," throughout the conversation. We heard voices in our head in Karachi that learning English was going to make us Modern. Now pratap tells us that his jamia student's fathers and mothers are dreaming about Pakistan. He is not sure what their children can dream about. I can tell you their dreams if their parents had indeed come to pakistan. I am reading a writer who says the relationship between those who walk the streets of a city like Mumbai and those who built those streets is like the relationship between descendants and their ancestors. Of course, I am from Karachi, but the first time I came to Bombay, and roamed in the Fort and Colaba area, I felt I was walking in the city of my ancestor. I could feel it as I turned street corners, sat in Irani cafes or went into a cinema. A preposterous idea grew in me even as I was engaging in ordinary, even boring, activity, walking in the heat, failing in cooling myself off with a Fanta in a caf�watching a bad film at The Regal. Karachi is to Bombay what a potted plant is to the nursery it came from. What madness to remember Elphinstone Street, Karachi when walking towards Flora Fountain from whichever direction! It was a slow madness, coming at me at the pace at which I was walking. At that time I blamed the afternoon heat and the boredom of my tourism. Everyone walking these streets was there because they had to. Just as I would not be found on the streets of Saddar, Karachi unless I had work. I was pursuing, more truthfully I was being pursued, by insanity: I felt I was back in Karachi encountering a feeling from all those years of driving through Saddar facades that Karachi will someday grow up. Or, that it was supposed to grow up a certain way and didn�t. The gloom of the evening. In the silhouette of Bombay University I saw my school Karachi Grammar School, the old building that has been around since 1847. Walking listlessly, the school silhouette still visible, past pavements full of books, much thumbed Harold Robbins, arcane programming books, I came across a grey statue, I had seen several in the day but had not paused to read the print. In a city where I knew no one, no one at all but where walking the streets brought me ungrounded joy, I saw the name Dadabhai Naoroji. This then is my ancestor! Along with the rest of the grey statues of Parsis the captains of commerce and law, responsible for these streets, and whose hand I could now see behind Karachi facades. Its not the dust and fallen facades of Saddar, Karachi that this statue was recalling, it was the Karachi in my mind, a city I was trained to aspire to. I laughed, feebly: any ustaad of Jinnah is good enough for me. Akbar S. Ahmed's feature film on Jinnah is not worth speaking about but there is a documentary he has produced in which there is generous use of footage of Jinnah in Bombay: his Savile Row suits, two toned brogues, snookeering at the club, all his friends Parsi, and Ratti wearing sleeveless at receptions. This documentary has now been shown several times on PTV, including on Pakistan Day 14th August. Everyone approves of this image of Jinnah, the posterchild of Muslim modernity. It is young Jinnah, modernity resplendent, the Savile Row image not old-man-Jinnah-in-a-sherwani idea that hangs in the disused National Assembly in Islamabad. Ashis Nandy says the great journeys of the twentieth century were of the mind, but I really do think that for a Pakistani nothing, not even television, beats walking Bombay streets, stumbling across Parsi statues. I thought of my school, Karachi Grammar School, ill afforded by my parents, an establishment Macaulay, Naoroji and Jinnah would have approved of. I thought of my father who went to a school in Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi, an other enterprise to make modern the Muslim boy. All of this kaleidoscoping in front of the suited booted statue that is father to Jinnah's modernity! I recalled Rohinton Mistry's novel's title Such a Long Journey and thought of the journey of Muslim boys and could not associate it with destinations (villages, cities, nations, schools, clubs, saddars, silicon valleys) or self transformations. I could only feel exhaustion. I could only associate with our journeys the great, a great deal of, energy expended. I'll end with a quote from the book Arcades Project, by Walter Benjamin. He was walking in Paris. His ideas speak to me, with an accent. "Boredom is a warm gray fabric lined on the inside with the most lustrous and colorful of silks. In this fabric we wrap ourselves when we dream. We are at home then in the arabesques of its lining. But the sleeper looks bored and gray within his sheath. And when he later wakes and wants to tell of what he dreams, he communicates by and large only this boredom. For who would be able at one stroke to turn the lining of time to the outside? Yet to narrate dreams signifies nothing else. And in no other way can one deal with arcades structures in which we relive, as in a dream, the life of our parents and grandparents, as the embryo in the womb relives the life of animals. Existence in these spaces flows then without accent, like the events in a dream." __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness http://health.yahoo.com From jeebesh at sarai.net Tue May 7 17:05:32 2002 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 17:05:32 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Call for volunteers Message-ID: <0205071705320A.00594@pinki.sarai.kit> Dear All, Please pass on this appeal. Maybe someone on this can move into Ahmedabad and post from there. best Jeebesh ---------------------------------------- From: majlis [mailto:majlis at vsnl.com] Sent: Monday, May 06, 20026:58 PM Appeal for Volunteers & Funds to Set Up Short Term Centers in Relief Camps in Ahmedabad The communal holocaust, which has ravaged Gujarat, has left in its wake colossal loss of life and property and displacement of people. While the number of dead and injured is at least countable, the number of missing people who have vanished without a trace is much larger. The relief dole promised by the government is a mere trickle. In most cases it adds insult to the injury. At the other level, the plea to punish the guilty has fallen on deaf ears. Even the minimum requirement of filing FIRs against the offenders has become a herculean task. A whole community is trying to cope with loss of dignity and self-respect. In addition, women are trying to cope with sexual violations and police brutalities. The few NGOs who have been struggling with the enormous task of recording statements, collecting data and registering FIRs are overworked and getting burnt out. To cope with this reality, Majlis, along with two grass root level groups in Ahmedabad, Sanchetana and Vikas Adhyayan Kendra, will co-ordinate support initiatives in three areas in Ahmedabad ? Gomtipur, Shah-e-Alam and Daria Khan. We will co-ordinate batches of ten volunteers to go to Ahmedabad for one week each, over a period of next two months. St. Xavier?s Institute in Ahmedabad has volunteered to provide accommodation. The host groups will arrange for a vehicle to take the volunteers from the hostel to camps and the volunteers will work along with the local activists in each area. The expenses to be incurred by the volunteers would be the train fare and food. For those volunteers who cannot afford, train fare and minimum daily expenses will be provided. The volunteers will be placed in one of the centers for the entire period and will be assisted by members of the local group. The work will be specified by the local group and would include recording statements of victims, filing FIRs, obtaining hospital reports, ensuring that the relief declared by the government reaches the recipients, making a list of missing persons and ensuring that the declared requirement for availing compensation is adhered and helping out with other legal initiatives. The working conditions are harsh, the heat is killing and coming face to face with human tragedy of such magnitude is emotionally draining. Knowledge of Hindi is essential and knowledge of Gujarati will be of great help. It is important to mention that a schedule for less than seven days will not be practical. The volunteers may contact us with personal details and the time frame during which they are available for this project at the earliest. E-mail: majlis at vsnl.com Telephone: (022) 6160252 Fax: 022-6148539 This appeal is also for funds for relief work and to sustain local initiatives. With the impending monsoon and the threat of closing down the relief camps, the displaced people are faced with even greater hardships. Hence time becomes a very important factor in this initiative. The donation for relief can be made by Money Orders, a/c payee cheques, or DDs to Majlis payable at Mumbai. Hope to hear from you soon. We shall appreciate if you could spread this message to the widest circle. Flavia Agnes / Veena Gowda Majlis, A-2/4 Golden Valley, Kalina, Mumbai ? 400 098 From shuddha at sarai.net Wed May 8 01:46:36 2002 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 01:46:36 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] To Zainab - Gujarat and Elsewhere Message-ID: <02050801463601.01450@sweety.sarai.kit> Dear Zainab, (and Pratap, Jeebesh and others) I have been thinking about a lot of the issues raised by you (Zainab, and the responses to them) . I am writing this also in order to connect with a whole lot of similar issues that faced me in the autumn of 1984, when I saw my city (Delhi) go up in flames, and when more violence (in terms of the number of people being killed) was unleashed within three days, than has occurred in Gujarat over the last two months. This is not to belittle the violence in Gujarat, but to try and see it not as an exception, but as a part of a larger pattern. Many people have reacted indignantly, and rightly so, at George Fernandes's trivialization of the violence done to women in Gujarat in the course of the debate in Parliament, But in another sense, what really disturbs me is the fact that he has not spoken untruly. (And lets make no mistake about the fact that i detest him entirely for his defence of the ruling dispensation and the regime that carried out the pogrom in Gujarat). But, in a perverse sense, what he said is true. Gujarat is not an exception, the kind of violence that we have seen there, happens everyday, in many places. And hardly anyone talks about them. This does not mean that we should see the suffering of the women in Gujarat as "less worthy of attention". Rather, it means that we should seriously think about what makes it so normal that these things can happen, and that we can pretend that they don't, or ignore them, or be silent and embarassed about them. Why does it take a Gujarat to make us sit up and think about the complicity of the state and people in police and paramilitary uniforms in violence? I started by talking about the anti-sikh pogrom in 1984, which was orchestrated in Delhi by the then ruling secular party, which is spearheading the opposition to Narendra Modi today. I remember 1984 very clearly. I shaved a young Sikh man who lived for those few days in our house with his family, and over the years I have seen him become a schrizophrenic, still stuck and lost in 1984. Gujarat will have its own toll in the years to come in terms of the number of people who will gradually find their sanity succumbing to their nightmares and their memories. I saw, on my way home from school, mobs burn Sikhs to death with burning tyres, and saw policemen protect the mobs, not the victims. I learnt early, ( I was sixteen at that time) that no violence of this scale can ever take place without the direct connivance of the power of the state, no matter who or which party, controls the state. I learnt early, that the feeling of insecurity, that violence of this order brings with it, is the most important foundation of the consent we give to the power that the state has over us. The situation returns to "normalcy" and we say (in relief) that the body count could have been higher, and we thank the army for stepping in and cleaning up, and life, well, goes on. Until the next time. But remember, some places in this country have lived through this for decades on end.They haven't ever had the luxury of waiting for the "next time". Take Kashmir, for example. It made no difference whether you had a Congress, NDA or Third Front (JD +/- Left) government in power. The pattern of violence in Kashmir by the state has remained the same, and constant, for the last thirteen years. The conservative estimate of non combatant (militant or military) civilian casualties (deaths of ordinary people) in Kashmir is said to be 35,000 - people since 1989. (this is from a coloumn by Chindu Sreedharan - "The Lost Generation" on the impact of violence on Children in Kashmir that appears regularly in Rediif.com at http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/dec/11childin.htm ) That is roughly 2,692 people each year for the last 13 years. I am taking these figures from sources that are not sympathetic to Kashmiri separatists. Chindu Shreedharan is a fellow of the National Foundation of India. Figures given out by human rights organizations working in Kashmir, or by Kashmiri separatist groups tend to be much higher and converge generally around the apporximately '80, 000 dead since 1989' figure. The truth probably lies between the underevaluation of the conservative figure and the exaggeration of the human rights actvists and separatists. But let us, to err on the side of caution, stick to the conservative estimate. Now lets turn to missing people. According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, in September 1998, the non-governmental Association of Parents of Missing People stated that 2,000 people had disappeared between 1990 and 1998 alone after being taken into custody in Kashmir, and that there were no legal remedies for discovering their fate. That's an average of 250 per year. If you multiply that by 13 years you get an estimate of about 3,250 missing persons. If you add that figure to the estimate of people dead you get - 35,000 + 3,250 = 38,250 people. Estimate of people dead and missing each year for the last 13 years - 2,942 people. The civilian casualty figures breakup between January and April this year in Kashmir, taken from the Kashmir Live section of the Indian Express Website (www.expressindia.com) is as follows Total Civilians 133 Men 78 Women 23 Children 32 Now, compare this to the casualties in Gujarat - official estimate - 822 (including Godhra) dead. Unofficial estimate of the number of people dead - 2,000. (source - Communalism Combat - Genocide Gujarat 2002 - March/April 2002, Year 8, No.77-78) Let us compare compare the 'official' estimate in Gujarat, to the 'conservative' estimate in Kashmir), so as to minimize any possibilty of exaggeration in either case. If you look at the number of people living as 'internal refugees' as a result of violence in India, than you get the figure of some some 350,000 Kashmiris (Pandits and Muslims) and more than 157,000 others in Northeast India. Additionally, there are about 17,000 refugees from the Indian held part of Kashmir, who are currently living in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. (source - WorldWide Refugee Information Website - Country reports for India and Pakistan, 2000 - http://www.refugees.org/world/countryrpt/scasia/india.htm) The number of people living in 'relief and rehabilitation camps' in Gujarat at the moment is - 113,697. (source - Communalism Combat - Genocide Gujarat 2002 - March/April 2002, Year 8, No.77-78) I have not mentioned 'rape' because numbers are far harder to get, but the ground realities suggest that the use of rape as a weapon of aggression has been near perfected by the armed forces and paramilitaries of the Indian state in Kashmir and the North East. Whatever we do, whichever set of numbers we take, we realize that a tragedy - at least of the same proportions, if not higher, as what has happenned in Gujarat, in terms of violence, killings, rape, arson and disappearances, has been happening over the last thirteen years in Kashmir. Arguably, the situation that obtains in Kashmir is similar in many respects to that which is true of the north eastern states of India as well. But figures are less known. Partly, there is an active Kashmiri diaspora, which keeps tabs on what is going on in Kashmir, and Pakistan of course has its own axe to grind in the matter, but since there is less of a Naga or a Manipuri diaspora, much less news gets out of these places. What we do know is that the Indian State did not hesitate to use even its air force in bombings of villages in Mizoram even as far back as in 1966. And the military has (through the Armed Forces Special Powers Act) virtually had much of the north east in the vice like grip of near martial law. Today, we recognize the violence in Gujarat as the manifestations of Fascism, and rightly so. But I think, that many of us, who are not communal, not Hindutva-vaadis, are comfortable with making the identification between Hindutva and Fascism, which is un-deniable, while at the same time, we are not ready or not prepared to make the identification when it comes to the agencies of the Indian state in its more secular manifestations. Perhaps we should think carefully before assuming that this is the only identification (in terms of 'fascism' ) that can be made. The abstract machinery of the state in India (regardless of whether Hindutva-vaadis are in power or not, acts just as brutally, when it wants to, and hardly anyone in the 'secular' camp takes notice of the lethality of its actions). This is evident from the history of Kashmir. In both cases, Gujarat, and Kashmir, the overwhelming majority of victims of organized violence have happenned to be Muslims. (Kashmiri Pandits have sufferred at the hands of the fascism of Kashmiri Muslim/seperatists militants, but the scale of their suffering - in numerical terms, pales in comparison to the violence unleashed by the Indian state's armed forces on the mainly muslim inhabitants of Kashmir valley, that is why all numbers I have referred to are only of civilain, non-miliant, non-military casualties). Now, it is a matter of fact, that barring a few killings of informers, (and in an earlier phase of a few prominent Kashmiri Pandits. amarnath pilgrims or other pro-India personalities) militants in Kashmir, have a great deal to lose from killing civilians because it ends up antagonizing the local population. There have been instances of civilan "collateral damage" in the instance of bomb explosions. But the majority of killings that take place in Kashmir are not due to bomb explosions. They are due to armed bodies of men coming into neighbourhoods and villages, picking people and using them as 'human shields' from behind whom they open fire , or taking them away and shooting them in 'encounters'. It doesn't make tactical sense for Kashmiri militants to use civilans as human shields, or to torch muslim majority villages, because these "mass killings" cost them the little support they may have in the civilian population. The Indian Army and paramilitary forces do this as a matter of routine. The miliants on their part, take large numbers of hostages, kill them and extort and inflict many other privations on the same civilian population, but these have an incremental effect, and so are affordable for the militants, in that the suffering they cause is immediately offset by another set of sufferings with greater numbers on its side. Thus retaining a perverse and macabre balance of terror between the state (army and para-militaries) and the proto-state (militant outfits). I have absolutely no sympathy for Kashmiri nationalism of any variety (Islamist or secular), just as I have absolutely no sympathy for the Indian state's claim on the people or territory of Kashmir. Both contribute to the body count. But, it seems to me, that one set of Muslim deaths and testimonies of victimhood, are somehow seen as being more central, more traumatic, than another. Kashmir, is sufficiently distant, sufficiently "other" for us not to bother about. Gujarat isn't. It is India's most industrialized, most urbanized, fastest growing state. It is as "mainstream India" as you can get. It is impossible to ignore in a way that we have grown accustomed to ignore or not care about Kashmir. The only reason why anyone says anything about Kashmir is "it is an inalienable part of India". No one, has to say, Gujarat is an "inalienable part of India" becase they know it is. It is the anxiety about the Indian state's dubious record in Kashmir that makes people say "the in-alienable part of India" statement, even as they ignore the mounting body count in Kashmir. This "weighing" of lives and deaths, this banal decision to give a much greater importance to the suffering of one set of people over another (whether deliberately or by ommission) lies at the heart of fascism. In telling us that some of us are more important than others, the fascist state erects its most important edifice, the confidence that it imparts on a section of the population that the state will enact, unleash or patronize a violence unto others, unto a "them" whom "We" are never going to be. "We" are given to believe that "we" will never have to suffer what people in Kashmir suffer, because "we" are part of the Indian "mainstream". Then, when for once, violence occurs in the heart of the "mainstream" at a comparable scale to what happens outside it, "we" all get disturbed. When 'normalcy' finally is restored, let us say if and when the present chief minister of Gujarat is removed, the mainstream (secular and communal) of public life will return to its hum-drum, "mainstream" pre-occupations. The margins, places like Kashmir, will continue to exist as "Gujarat's" , but that is another matter. When the sangh parivar values the deaths of the Hindus who died at Godhra over the deaths of the Muslims who died in Ahmedabad or Baroda, that is one kind of everyday fascism. Similarly, when we value the deaths of people who happen to be Muslims who died in Gujarat, (as victims of Hindu Fascism) even as we forget, ignore, are indifferent to the equal number of deaths of people who happen to be Muslims who die in Kashmir routinely, we may be guilty of another, "secular-nationalist" variety of fascism. Or, forget whether people are Muslims or not, forget the whole arithmetic of minority and majority, and think instead of the numbers who die in custody in India. At the last count (year 2000) 1,143 people died in police custody in prisons all over India - and the majority of these deaths is likely to have been due to torture, and that there are at present close to 60 people awaiting the death penalty all over India. (source - Amnesty International Country report 2000). India has yet to ratify the UN Convention against Torture which it signed in October 1997, nor had it invited the UN Special Rapporteur on torture to visit the country. This means that there are no remedies in International Law for any Indian citizen to appeal against the violation of his/her right to be protected from torture, should the state in India be the party that executes the act of torture. No political party (right wing, left wing, centrists, secular, communal, pro-dalit, regional or whatever) has ever made the ratification of the convention against torture, or the abolition of the death penalty a public issue - and this silence means that the broad spectrum of political parties are unanimous (by ommission or commission) in their tacit or active support to the torture and executions carried out by the Indian state. In this country, we all have skeletons in our respective closets, and the uncounted dead to account for. In either case, some deaths are seen as more deserving of commemoration than others. The truth is, every instance of violent death, every disappearance, that takes place, no matter where, is just as sad, just as much of a nightmare for those it leaves grieving. The resistance to fascism, can begin only when we stop devaluing other peoples lives and deaths, no matter who those people are. The resistance to fascism must begin with the recognition of the fact that the greatest devaluation of the lives of people has occurred, routinely, at the hands of the state that we submit to daily, through many acts of obedience. Who knows what remedies, what forms of association, how many little and everyday solidarities we will have to build in the years to come to face this fascism. I am not as sanguine as Pratap is about the "Mayawatis" of this world, because I am sure that in the assertion of their 'identitiis' and in the airing of their victimhood, they will create their own militias, and their own neo-Buddhist/Ambedkarite fascism. If we can have Hindu, Sikh and Muslim and Secular Fascism in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and Tamil (Hindu and Christian) and Sinhala (Buddhist) Fascism in Sri Lanka, it only points to the bewildering array of possible south asian sub-continental fascisms that still lie in wait. A neo-Buddhist/Dalit fascism is just as likely or unlikely as any other variety. The second most important lesson, to my mind, in terms of building a politics that can combat fascism, is to give up the illusion that any one is innocent. All our 'identities' are complicit in the everyday politics of fascism. Every constrcution of "us" and "them" is equally guilty, whether it is made on communal, secterian, ethnic, caste or national lines. It is only by moving towards an everyday form of politics that has room for sckepticism about the claims that "we" make on ourselves, and the claims that are made about us, or on our behalf, that we can actually question the hold that 'everyday' fascism has over us. I look forward to the gradual, corrosion of the certainties of who "we" and they are by a sckepticism that is born of the This is why, I don't think, unlike Pratap, that the answer to Hindu fascism is to create our own "shakhas". We will then have created our 'own' fascism. If the right has successfully mimicked the left, I don't think that the answer to it lies in re-mimicking the right ( or re-re-mimicking the left?). Rather, I want to think about what we can do to make all 'shakhas', all uniforms, all anthems, all 'sangathans' equally unattractive and dull. So that we do not even have to enter the tactical terrain of setting one kind of identity as an antidote to another. Of saying "Indians" when we might be uncomfortable saying "Hindus". This might require us to take the battle on to the register of a playful irreverence towards all forms of authority and identity formation, per se. That is one place where the fascists can never get. They have condemned themselves to certitude and seriousness, they can never be heretics and irreverential. They want to win. We must be prepared to subvert every victory, including those of our own. This means that we might have to speak a language that seeks to dissolve power rather than to take it over to make it better, that seeks to reject rather than reform the state. Those of us who have no icons to defend, no identities to protect, no nations to nurture, no faiths to believe in and no birthplaces to build temples for might be well placed to initate a wave of non-serious heresy that may well be the last (and only) stumbling block in the path of every kind of fascism, be it of the riotous right, the lethal left, or of the dead centre. From jeebesh at sarai.net Wed May 8 14:27:51 2002 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 14:27:51 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] are we forgetting something in our rage Message-ID: <0205081427510A.00594@pinki.sarai.kit> dear All, Somedays back I was going through books in Bookworm (in CP, Delhi). A tall, frail women from a working class background, with very clear diction in Hindustani was trying to understand the shelf arrangement. In conversations I learnt that she wanted to read about feminism and needed an introductory text, a text that introduces and stimulate her interest. We went through the books available and found a book or two. She was willing to spend maximum Rs. 600/- . We could only manage two books with that resource. She said that reading and working is tough and since libraries are closed in the evening she has to buy books. English books will take some time to finish and it will provide her enough resource to buy next round. Sadly I was unable to recommend her cheaper books or good translations or original work in Hindi. It is my lack of knowledge but also a certain invisibility of these books adds to the problem. On thinking further I would think that the problem is much deeper. Somewhere in our rage about `authoritarian` poltics we seem to overlook the simple matrix of the everyday. we forget sometimes, as alluded to by others on the list, that knowledge and conversations need to circulate and be available at very low resource base. best Jeebesh We all seem to acknowledge that we are living in a very disturbing period. Now no longer is there the framework of `inferiorised cultural difference` (like the racial politics of 19th C). The new framework is a fetishised discources of identity around ` irreconcilable cultural differences`. Increasingly accepted norm is becoming `lets live our lives seperately`. We all seem to recognise certain echos of earlier historical times (remember PolPot?). The construction of `we` & `our` and `them` and `theirs` seems to have engulfed more and more of thinking and speech. But I am sure we will be able to interpret and act within this milieu with a different language and imagination. Let's re-new the ideas of `commons'. Let's find new language that talks to our nomadic selves, our complicated and mulitple inheritance routes, histories and cultures of hospitality towards strangers. We need a new interpretative framework to discover and invent solidarities and recognitions. I am enclosing few paragraphs from an article that I find very illuminating in cautioning us about familiar traps of thinking about fascism and anti-fascism. The full text is very insightful. If time permits please do go over it. best Jeebesh ------------------------------------- FASCISM / ANTIFASCISM by Jean Barrot http://www.spunk.org/texts/antifasc/sp000833.htm .....Fascism has the following characteristics: 1) it is born in the street; 2) it stirs up disorder while preaching order; 3) it is a movement of obsolete middle classes ending in their more or less violent destruction; and 4) it regenerates from outside the traditional State which is incapable of resolving the capitalist crisis...... ......With World War II, the mythology of Fascism was enriched by a new element. This conflict was the necessary solution to problems both economic (crash of 1929) and social (unruly working class which, although non-revolutionary, had to be disciplined). World War II could be depicted as a war against totalitarianism in the form of fascism. This interpretation has endured, and the constant recall by the victors of 1945 of the Nazi atrocities serves to justify the war by giving it the character of a humanitarian crusade. Everything, even the atomic bomb, could be justified against such a barbarous enemy. This justification is, however, no more credible than the demagogy of the Nazis, who claimed to struggle against capitalism and Western plutocracy. The "democratic" forces included in their ranks a State as totalitarian and bloody as Hitler's Germany: Stalin's Soviet Union, with its penal code prescribing the death penalty from the age of twelve. Everyone knows as well that the Allies resorted to similar methods of terror and extermination whenever they saw the need (strategic bombing etc.). The West waited until the Cold War to denounce the Soviet camps. But each capitalist country has had to deal with its own specific problems, Great Britain had no Algerian war to cope with, but the partition of India claimed millions of victims. The USA never had to organize concentration camps in order to silence its workers and dispose of surplus petits bourgeois, but it found its own colonial war in Vietnam. As for the Soviet Union, with its Gulag which is today denounced the world over, it was content to concentrate into a few decades the horrors spread out over several centuries in the older capitalist countries, also resulting in millions of victims just in the treatment of the Blacks alone..... The development of Capital carries with it certain consequences, of which the main ones are: 1) domination over the working class, involving the destruction, gentle or otherwise, of the revolutionary movement; 2) competition with other national Capitals, resulting in war. When power is held by the "workers'" parties, only one thing is altered: workerist demagogy will be more conspicuous, but the workers will not be spared the most severe repression when this becomes necessary. The triumph of Capital is never as total as when the workers mobilize themselves on its behalf in search of a "better life". In order to protect us from the excesses of Capital, antifascism as a matter of course invokes the intervention of the State. Paradoxically, antifascism becomes the champion of a strong State; For example, the PCF asks us: "What kind of State is necessary in France today?... Is our State stable and strong, as the President of the Republic claims? No, it is weak, it is impotent to pull the country out of the social and political crisis in which it is mired. In fact it is encouraging disorder." (6) Both dictatorship and democracy propose to strengthen the State the former as a matter of principle, the latter in order to protect us - ending up in the same result. Both are working towards the same goal - totalitarianism. In both cases it is a matter of making everyone participate in society: "from the top down" For the dictators, "from the bottom up" for the democrats......... ------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------- From jeebesh at sarai.net Wed May 8 14:30:16 2002 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 14:30:16 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] re-new lost ideas Message-ID: <0205081430160B.00594@pinki.sarai.kit> dear All, We all seem to acknowledge that we are living in a very disturbing period. Now no longer is there the framework of `inferiorised cultural difference` (like the racial politics of 19th C). The new framework is a fetishised discourse of identity around `irreconcilable cultural differences`. Increasingly, the accepted norm is becoming `lets live our lives seperately`. We all seem to recognise certain echos of earlier historical times (remember PolPot?). The construction of `we` & `our` and `them` and `theirs` seems to have engulfed more and more of thinking and speech. But I am sure we will be able to interpret and act within this milieu with a different language and imagination. Let's re-new the ideas of `commons'. Let's find new language that talks to our nomadic selves, our complicated and mulitple inheritance routes. We need a new interpretative framework to discover and invent solidarities and recognitions. I am enclosing few paragraphs from an article that I find very illuminating in cautioning us about familiar traps of thinking about fascism and anti-fascism. The full text is very insightful. If time permits please do go to the url and check it. best Jeebesh ------------------------------------- FASCISM / ANTIFASCISM by Jean Barrot http://www.spunk.org/texts/antifasc/sp000833.htm .....Fascism has the following characteristics: 1) it is born in the street; 2) it stirs up disorder while preaching order; 3) it is a movement of obsolete middle classes ending in their more or less violent destruction; and 4) it regenerates from outside the traditional State which is incapable of resolving the capitalist crisis...... ......With World War II, the mythology of Fascism was enriched by a new element. This conflict was the necessary solution to problems both economic (crash of 1929) and social (unruly working class which, although non-revolutionary, had to be disciplined). World War II could be depicted as a war against totalitarianism in the form of fascism. This interpretation has endured, and the constant recall by the victors of 1945 of the Nazi atrocities serves to justify the war by giving it the character of a humanitarian crusade. Everything, even the atomic bomb, could be justified against such a barbarous enemy. This justification is, however, no more credible than the demagogy of the Nazis, who claimed to struggle against capitalism and Western plutocracy. The "democratic" forces included in their ranks a State as totalitarian and bloody as Hitler's Germany: Stalin's Soviet Union, with its penal code prescribing the death penalty from the age of twelve. Everyone knows as well that the Allies resorted to similar methods of terror and extermination whenever they saw the need (strategic bombing etc.). The West waited until the Cold War to denounce the Soviet camps. But each capitalist country has had to deal with its own specific problems, Great Britain had no Algerian war to cope with, but the partition of India claimed millions of victims. The USA never had to organize concentration camps in order to silence its workers and dispose of surplus petits bourgeois, but it found its own colonial war in Vietnam. As for the Soviet Union, with its Gulag which is today denounced the world over, it was content to concentrate into a few decades the horrors spread out over several centuries in the older capitalist countries, also resulting in millions of victims just in the treatment of the Blacks alone..... The development of Capital carries with it certain consequences, of which the main ones are: 1) domination over the working class, involving the destruction, gentle or otherwise, of the revolutionary movement; 2) competition with other national Capitals, resulting in war. When power is held by the "workers'" parties, only one thing is altered: workerist demagogy will be more conspicuous, but the workers will not be spared the most severe repression when this becomes necessary. The triumph of Capital is never as total as when the workers mobilize themselves on its behalf in search of a "better life". In order to protect us from the excesses of Capital, antifascism as a matter of course invokes the intervention of the State. Paradoxically, antifascism becomes the champion of a strong State; For example, the PCF asks us: "What kind of State is necessary in France today?... Is our State stable and strong, as the President of the Republic claims? No, it is weak, it is impotent to pull the country out of the social and political crisis in which it is mired. In fact it is encouraging disorder." (6) Both dictatorship and democracy propose to strengthen the State the former as a matter of principle, the latter in order to protect us - ending up in the same result. Both are working towards the same goal - totalitarianism. In both cases it is a matter of making everyone participate in society: "from the top down" For the dictators, "from the bottom up" for the democrats......... ------------------------------------------------------- From dfontaine at fondation-langlois.org Wed May 8 01:23:05 2002 From: dfontaine at fondation-langlois.org (Dominique Fontaine) Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 15:53:05 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] 15 projects selected by the Daniel Langlois Foundation Message-ID: Pour la version française : http://www.fondation-langlois.org/f/informations/nouvelles/comm_projets_2002 .html [ Veuillez excuser les envois multiples / apologies for cross-posting ] ____________________________________________________________________________ ________________ **Press Release** THE DANIEL LANGLOIS FOUNDATION GRANTS NEARLY HALF A MILLION TO 15 PROJECTS Research Grant Program for Individual Artists or Scientists Montreal, May 7, 2001 - The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology has just granted nearly half a million dollars to 15 projects by artists dedicated to merging art and science through the use of new technologies. The Foundation received 302 applications during its 2002 call for projects for The Research Grant Program for Individual Artists or Scientists. Its international jury examined 129 of the projects, selecting 15 to benefit from the Foundation's program for individuals. Of the projects chosen, seven are from the United States and six from Canada. Other projects also come from India, the Netherlands and Yugoslavia. Besides Mr. Daniel Langlois, the jury included Ms. Pat Binder (Argentina/Germany), Mr. Andreas Broeckmann (Germany), Mr. Luc Courchesne (Canada) and Mr. Jean Gagnon, the Foundation's director of programs. This year, grants range from $9, 454 to $57,200. *Below is a list of the grant recipients. A detailed description of each project will be posted on the Foundation's Web site: http://www.fondation-langlois.org, in July.* -30- SOURCE: Jean Gagnon, Director of Programs Jacques Perron, jperron at fondation-langlois.org Program Officer for individual artists or scientists T: (514) 987-7177 F: (514) 987-7492 E: info at fondation-langlois.org W: www.fondation-langlois.org ____________________________________________________________________________ _________________ We've sent you this press release to keep you abreast of activities at the Daniel Langlois Foundation. If you wish to be taken off our mailing list, simply reply to this message with the words REMOVE from mailing list in the subject line. Thank you. ____________________________________________________________________________ _________________ PROJECTS SELECTED BY THE DANIEL LANGLOIS FOUNDATION FOR 2002 Research Grant Program for Individual Artists or Scientists Jim Campbell (San Francisco, California, United States) **Representing Simultaneous Images** **Representing Simultaneous Images** involves creating a series of artworks, each incorporating multiple video feeds to produce a single dynamic image. The goal is to explore different ways to display connected streams of information simultaneously without losing the subtlety contained in the original streams. Alan Dunning (Calgary, Alberta, Canada) **Representations of the Body in Liquid Media Spaces** Alan Dunning conducts technical and conceptual research into visualizing the human body's biological output. This output is represented by patterns in moving liquid surfaces generated by the effect of a magnetic field on a ferrofluid. Beatrice Gibson (Mumbai, India) Beatrice Gibson investigates the teleworker's disembodied proximity by using a recording and poetic rearticulation of the teleworker's voice in the acoustic space of an on-line environment. Trevor Gould (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) **Three Dimensional Blur with Digital Wind and Accessories** This experimental project focuses on the development of existing mould-making materials enhanced through digital manipulations in 3-D printing and through muscle wire manipulations. The project also reflects on what constitutes a human figure when this figure is reproduced as blurred movement arrested in 3-D space. John Klima (Brooklyn, New York, United States) **Terrain Machine** **Terrain Machine** is an analogue mechanical device interfaced to a digital computer, creating a physical representation of the Earth's surface. Relying on accurate, scientific data sources, this project addresses issues surrounding the representation and construction of our reality in its various forms. Chico MacMurtrie (Brooklyn, New York, United States) **Skeletal Reflections** **Skeletal Reflections** is an autonomous humanoid robotic sculpture that mimics gestures using only the basic structure of the human form, the skeleton. This machine without a skin represents the significant merger of sculptural practice with modern machine technology. Thomas McIntosh (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) **Ondulation** **Ondulation** explores a synesthetic relationship between air, water, sound and light. The work investigates a set of physical phenomena at the point where they overlap. The aim is to produce an audiovisual performance and a stand-alone installation. David Rokeby (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) Common sense gathering and discursive structure for **The Giver of Names** project This project builds on the research involved in **The Giver of Names** (1998). First, the system is provided with unsupervised ways to accumulate a sort of common sense through reading electronic texts. Then, an open mechanism is developed to generate discursive structure so that the system can construct paragraphs with some sort of coherent trajectory of ideas. RTMark (Loudonville, New York, United States) **CORPSE** (Corporate Organism Replication and Patterning in a Simulated Ecosystem) RTMark will create a Web-based, single- and multi-player computer game that treats corporations as organisms. Called **CORPSE**, the game engages players in a generative discourse about the consequences of allowing corporations to exist with minimal regulations. As well, the game serves as a home laboratory for exploring the legal conditions that might lead to entirely different emergent behaviour. Thecla Schiphorst and Susan Kozel (Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada) **whisper**: wearable body architectures **whisper**, a participatory installation, uses wearable computers and wireless computer communication, builds on physical practices such as dance improvisation, and manifests cultural and scientific theories of embodiment. Bill Seaman and Ingrid Verbauwhede (Los Angeles, California, United States) **The Poly-sensing Environment** (toward the development of an integrated distributed technology exploring poetic/informational grammars of attention and functionality) This interdisciplinary project seeks to develop research aimed at creating a poetic/informational interactive IT system that relies on multi-modal sensory devices. These devices collaborate in a distributed fashion and are linked to a dynamic virtual imaging environment and the Internet. Geoffrey Smedley (Gibsons, British Columbia, Canada) **Descartes' Clown: the Roulette** **Descartes' Clown: the Roulette** is a sculptural installation in the mode of the absurd. Like Descartes' celebrated dream that lies at the foundation of modern science, the project is drawn from the unconscious, from dream fragments of great acuity. Stealth Group (Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and Rotterdam, the Netherlands) **3/4 process + 1/4 matter** The foundation is supporting the development of **3/4 process + 1/4 matter**, a responsive design procedure in the boundary zone between fields of digital/media technologies and architecture. Igor Vamos (Troy, New York, United States) **Grounded** **Grounded** will be a location-triggered random-access documentary that reveals histories of abandonment and conflict in a remote desert town. Viewers will experience this documentary on site, like a walking tour. The project involves developing a Web browser plug. Steina Vasulka (Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States) **Seven Spheres** (working title) After completing **Of the North**, the artist is now pursuing her obsession with round images by planning a large project with spherical images projected onto round, translucent screens. From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Thu May 9 00:21:37 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 19:51:37 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] What should I do sir/madam? In-Reply-To: <20020507044605.82647.qmail@web12907.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20020508185137.42766.qmail@web8103.in.yahoo.com> Dear Rehan A, and all, Thank you for walking me through Bombay (i prefer that to Mumbai, for whatever's my preference worth). As prelude to the walk, you wrote: "Now pratap tells us that his jamia student's fathers > and mothers are dreaming about Pakistan. He is not > sure what their children can dream about." Sticking to the prelude, let me "walk" you through what I posted. Referring to parents of students, I wrote: "I am not sure they are not dreaming about Pakistan". As far as the kids who come and talk to me are concerned, I wrote: "I don't understand their parents. But I do understand their children." In the context of the first clarification, the quote from Benjamin is extremely instructive. But not the bit about "boredom". In Benjamin, the experience of being "bored" is part of a larger performative game of "identity" that the Benjamite narrator constantly seeks to create/construct, and deny/destroy. Part of the game of reading the "arcades" is precisely to identify yourself (the reader) as the one who is walking ("deriving"). As a derivist, this narrator performs its power to be able to consistently represent that which has been seen, visualised. The Benjamite narrator enjoys this power. At the same time, it is uncomfortable about the location of this power; it is uncomfortable about how it has managed to possess this power of representation. The "Arcades" text therefore positions you as one ready to be seduced into the textuality of the One who is walking, deriving. It also defers the pleasure of being so seduced, of the pleasure of entirely deriving. Everytime it affords you entry into its "matrix", it ironically signifies to you: "aha, you are bourgeosie enough!". Or, "bored enough to walk about in order that you know". The point is: to what purpose? Your walk through Bombay. "The first time I > came to Bombay, and roamed in the Fort and Colaba > area, I felt I was walking in the city of my > ancestor". [You say "ancestor", and not ancestors". I am tempted to read cathexis here! I like this slippage, this purely typographical "error"! It is the sign of a love, a knowing, a recognition, but not a boredom.] This is like the walk through Karachi, the city of my ancestors, that I have never taken. Karachi is a city (thanks to you) that I can imagine, precisely because you have imagined Bombay. In fact, I can imagine both the cities, precisely because I have never been to either of them, but have lived for twenty years in Calcutta. [Should we include Lahore in this list? What about Kipling's violent NWFP short stories, or M M Kaye?] All of these cities display an ambition. "Karachi is to Bombay what a potted plant is to the nursery it came from". Cal is to Karachi is to Dhaka is to Lahore is to Bombay is to Madras is to...no, not Delhi. I should like to think, in the spirit of your posting, that the ambition these cities display (and this is a crucial word: this word has been put in by one who has never done the fox-trot at Firpo's in Cal, recently burnt down), or signify, is the ambition or the desire to be read as spaces of civility. Certainly these are spaces where you and I can anonymously circulate, feeling civil. At the same time, are you sure that these are not spaces where we live (and re-live) the FANTASY of being civil? [like the "bored" Benjaminite narrator, whose "modern"?] Is Pakistan a fantasy of being civil, which is why I am not sure my students' parents don't dream about it? In this context, you have written this absolutely fascinating sentence: "I can tell you their dreams if their parents had > indeed come to pakistan." Tell me. Please tell me. Tell all of us. Maybe Kashmir can be better understood. Gujarat, too? What happens if we replace the word "dreams" in your quote from Benjamin with the word "fantasy"? The Jamia students who talk to me are not interested in Pakistan. They think Pakistan is a needless pain up their asses; its a Dulcolax capsule wedged in past the sphincters to ensure a proper crap. At the same time, they are bewildered. They feel the force of identifying to the notion of a "kaum", like this MA Final student of mine from Bangladesh who has discarded the shirts and trousers he used to wear for an ankle-length pajama and kurta, and lace cap. The cricketer Saeed Anwar is his latest idol (as he told me before a paper he appeared for, and that I was an invigilator for). In the exam hall, when he finishes a paper, he prays over it, drawing glances from other students who exchange glances and looks and expressions of incredulity, who begin to giggle, and shake their heads. Somewhere, there is exhibited a wish to reject the past and move on to the future. Like the first-generation General English students I teach, and deeply interact with. These students think that "English" (a word they never misspell, never ever, not in the class, not in the General English exam answer sheet) is inseparable from being "morden", "modren", "moder" "famus", "peeple", "poepal", "peopl", "statoos", "walth", "welth", "goodlife". yours, pp PS: Please tell me, and all of us --- rehan ansari wrote: > Dear Pratap, Dr Reyhan Chaudhry and others, > > There was some talk earlier, with pratap and dr. > reyhan chaudhri about english, and i found myself > substituting "modern" for "english," throughout the > conversation. We heard voices in our head in Karachi > that learning English was going to make us Modern. > > Now pratap tells us that his jamia student's fathers > and mothers are dreaming about Pakistan. He is not > sure what their children can dream about. > > I can tell you their dreams if their parents had > indeed come to pakistan. > > I am reading a writer who says the relationship > between those who walk the streets of a city like > Mumbai and those who built those streets is like the > relationship between descendants and their > ancestors. > Of course, I am from Karachi, but the first time I > came to Bombay, and roamed in the Fort and Colaba > area, I felt I was walking in the city of my > ancestor. > I could feel it as I turned street corners, sat in > Irani cafes or went into a cinema. A preposterous > idea > grew in me even as I was engaging in ordinary, even > boring, activity, walking in the heat, failing in > cooling myself off with a Fanta in a café, watching > a > bad film at The Regal. Karachi is to Bombay what a > potted plant is to the nursery it came from. > > What madness to remember Elphinstone Street, Karachi > when walking towards Flora Fountain from whichever > direction! It was a slow madness, coming at me at > the > pace at which I was walking. At that time I blamed > the > afternoon heat and the boredom of my tourism. > Everyone > walking these streets was there because they had to. > Just as I would not be found on the streets of > Saddar, > Karachi unless I had work. > > I was pursuing, more truthfully I was being pursued, > by insanity: I felt I was back in Karachi > encountering > a feeling from all those years of driving through > Saddar facades that Karachi will someday grow up. > Or, > that it was supposed to grow up a certain way and > didn’t. > > The gloom of the evening. In the silhouette of > Bombay > University I saw my school Karachi Grammar School, > the > old building that has been around since 1847. > Walking > listlessly, the school silhouette still visible, > past > pavements full of books, much thumbed Harold > Robbins, > arcane programming books, I came across a grey > statue, > I had seen several in the day but had not paused to > read the print. In a city where I knew no one, no > one > at all but where walking the streets brought me > ungrounded joy, I saw the name Dadabhai Naoroji. > > This then is my ancestor! Along with the rest of the > grey statues of Parsis the captains of commerce and > law, responsible for these streets, and whose hand I > could now see behind Karachi facades. Its not the > dust > and fallen facades of Saddar, Karachi that this > statue > was recalling, it was the Karachi in my mind, a city > I > was trained to aspire to. > > I laughed, feebly: any ustaad of Jinnah is good > enough > for me. > > Akbar S. Ahmed's feature film on Jinnah is not worth > speaking about but there is a documentary he has > produced in which there is generous use of footage > of > Jinnah in Bombay: his Savile Row suits, two toned > brogues, snookeering at the club, all his friends > Parsi, and Ratti wearing sleeveless at receptions. > This documentary has now been shown several times on > PTV, including on Pakistan Day 14th August. Everyone > approves of this image of Jinnah, the posterchild of > Muslim modernity. It is young Jinnah, modernity > resplendent, the Savile Row image not > old-man-Jinnah-in-a-sherwani idea that hangs in the > disused National Assembly in Islamabad. > > Ashis Nandy says the great journeys of the twentieth > century were of the mind, but I really do think that > for a Pakistani nothing, not even television, beats > walking Bombay streets, stumbling across Parsi > statues. I thought of my school, Karachi Grammar > School, ill afforded by my parents, an establishment > Macaulay, Naoroji and Jinnah would have approved of. > I > thought of my father who went to a school in Jamia > Millia Islamia in Delhi, an other enterprise to make > modern the Muslim boy. All of this kaleidoscoping in > front of the suited booted statue that is father to > Jinnah's modernity! > > I recalled Rohinton Mistry's novel's title Such a > Long > Journey and thought of the journey of Muslim boys > and > could not associate it with destinations (villages, > cities, nations, schools, clubs, saddars, silicon > valleys) or self transformations. I could only feel > exhaustion. I could only associate with our journeys > the great, a great deal of, energy expended. > > I'll end with a quote from the book Arcades Project, > by Walter Benjamin. He was walking in Paris. His > ideas > speak to me, with an accent. > > "Boredom is a warm gray fabric lined on the inside > with the most lustrous and colorful of silks. In > this > fabric we wrap ourselves when we dream. We are at > home > then in the arabesques of its lining. But the > sleeper > looks bored and gray within his sheath. And when he > later wakes and wants to tell of what he dreams, he > communicates by and large only this boredom. For who > would be able at one stroke to turn the lining of > time > to the outside? Yet to narrate dreams signifies > nothing else. And in no other way can one deal with > arcades structures in which we relive, as in a > dream, > the life of our parents and grandparents, as the > embryo in the womb relives the life of animals. > Existence in these spaces flows then without accent, > like the events in a dream." > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness > http://health.yahoo.com > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and > the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to > reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the > subject header. > List archive: ________________________________________________________________________ For live cricket scores download Yahoo! Score Tracker at: http://in.sports.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From mir_taqi_mir at hotmail.com Thu May 9 03:14:47 2002 From: mir_taqi_mir at hotmail.com (Mir Taqi Mir) Date: Thu, 9 May 2002 03:14:47 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: Reader-list digest, Vol 1 #509 - 2 msgs References: <200205080448.GAA21317@mail.waag.org> Message-ID: Dear Zainab, Shuddhabrata Sengupta and all others, Across the jhelum, where baramulla burns today in the cluster of old houses burning is an empty house of my grandmothers younger sister widowed early she died old of incurable heartache her husband he married a azad kadshmiri in azad kashnir in 1948. As a Kashmiri, i can say with the humbleness of my past and present..... It is not about the statistics of death and killings the issue at hand is about the politics of which we have become unwitting (or willing) accomplice, the politics of "cleansing of the opposition" (religious, ethnic, sub nationalistic and ideological) YOU WILL FIND ALL THE VARIOUS KINDS OF VICTIMS IN KASHMIR (Kashmir is not only about the victims of State Repression, as Mr. Sengupta would like us to believe by his perverse statistics) The issue at hand, as never before, is not only about Muslims in Gujarat, but also about Sikhs in Delhi and the Pandits/Nationlistic Kashmiris of Kashmir and Bangladeshi Hindus, Pakistani Hindus, who WE all have all kept so silent about, because TV did not not impinge on our senses then as powerfully as it does in the case of Gujarat.(I am willing to be as crude as this) I am really repelled by the thought that anybody can 'consciously and perversely' collate an entire statistics of death and political killings (a selective collation to suit his own political ideology) without even making a mention of the 'terrorist' killings, the killings of muslims by muslims, the killings of Pandits, the killing of communists, the killing of pacifists, the killings of MY indian soldiers.......by 'hired guns' from across the border of Kashmir. At the same time, i find it 'communal in thought' that anybody can even say that because a particular community is only a refugee in their own country, so it's less a pain for them than the killings of 'muslims' in Kashmir. How do you measure pain Mr. Sengupta? in number of deaths, in tears? or simply as unequivocal pain? The crisis of my country is not about Muslims. It is not about Hindus. It is about POWER. Relegious conflicts/ Caste conflicts/Ethnic conflicts/ Sub-national conflicts are the only excuse and the source for a rich harvest of votes.The hesterically and the 'genetically privileged' want to perpetuate their feifdom at any cost, in Delhi and in Kashmir. In case of Kashmir, the Abdullah Family, (with 5% puiblic vote, promoted by NDTV, AAJTAK and all the Indian English Newspapers) the second most blatant family after the Nehru's may already be on its way to becoming yet again, the future ruler of J&K . Did it ever strike anyone, that both, the Nehru and Abdullaha dynasty, owe their origins to the same RISHIVAR? What i want to stress is, the present crisis of my India, is really not about Gujarat or about the 'Hindus and Muslims' or about a 'minority and a majority' or about 'sub - nationalities' (As in the case of jammu & kashmir and Assam, Mizoram, Nagaland, Manipur, Arunachal- you may say) , But the crisis is about the 'politics' of violence so actively practiced by our political class, implemented by our beaurucratic class and OVELOOKED by people like you and me. How long do you think, can we be selective in our protests and condemnation of 'the impact of Mullahs and Acharyas's on our political life? (both constitute our respectible political class now, they are twins, didnt you know?) Are we only going to wake up when innocents in Godhra and Gujarat actually start to die? Why has nobody actually had anything to say about some religious head of Lucknow proclaiming 'a fatwa' against Muslim MLA's of BSP for being part of the present UP government???? Are they only Muslims and not anything else beyond their religious identity? Why has nobody protested against the terroroist attack on a hindu temple in Jammu? or about the physical assault by the Jammu head of Shiv Sena on A.G. Lone of Hurriyet Conference? To Zainab, i would say, - why is any menifestation of Hindu religiousity or hindu assertion (bhajans. aartis, jagratis whatever...... ) ever a threat to you? India IS a Hindu majority country, no? We have chosen to be part of a HIndu Majority secular state in 1947. And Zainab, how can You so easily condone loudspeaker announcements of azan and friday congregations on the main roads of Bombay and not feel ever so threatened by the religious assertion of people of our own faith, without thinking of the consequences (similar as ours) on the majority public? All my life in Kashmir, the only religious sound i have heard is the sound of 'azan' loudspeakered FIVE times a day into my consciousness. It is really the only religious sound i ever heard in KASHMIR. I did not ever hear a peal of a temple bell in Kashmir, till i came down to the plains. Only then did i realise that we have done some serious damage to our own people in Kashmir who remained Hindu. They hate me, Zainab! because i am a kashmiri muslim..... To you Zainab and to all my friends i say, i need help. I need some better solution than i have. My own solution is very simlple. I need people who can go along with me to Gujarat to offer ourselves as Indians, in place of innocent Muslims and Hindus being stabbed and burnt to death there. Hai Koi? my dad hates all Hindus, when a good friend calls and I am not home he says to me "some Hindu called for you", or "that Hindu girl from Delhi." Mir. ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 10:18 AM Subject: Reader-list digest, Vol 1 #509 - 2 msgs > Send Reader-list mailing list submissions to > reader-list at sarai.net > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > reader-list-request at sarai.net > > You can reach the person managing the list at > reader-list-admin at sarai.net > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Reader-list digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Call for volunteers (Jeebesh Bagchi) > 2. To Zainab - Gujarat and Elsewhere (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) > > --__--__-- > > Message: 1 > From: Jeebesh Bagchi > To: reader-list at sarai.net > Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 17:05:32 +0530 > Subject: [Reader-list] Call for volunteers > > Dear All, > > Please pass on this appeal. Maybe someone on this can move into Ahmedabad and > post from there. > > best > Jeebesh > ---------------------------------------- > From: majlis [mailto:majlis at vsnl.com] > Sent: Monday, May 06, 20026:58 PM > > Appeal for Volunteers & Funds to Set Up Short Term Centers > in Relief Camps in Ahmedabad > > The communal holocaust, which has ravaged Gujarat, has left in its wake > colossal loss of life and property and displacement of people. While the > number of dead and injured is at least countable, the number of missing > people who have vanished without a trace is much larger. The relief dole > promised by the government is a mere trickle. In most cases it adds insult to > the injury. > > At the other level, the plea to punish the guilty has fallen on deaf ears. > Even the minimum requirement of filing FIRs against the offenders has become > a herculean task. A whole community is trying to cope with loss of dignity > and self-respect. In addition, women are trying to cope with sexual > violations and police brutalities. The few NGOs who have been struggling with > the enormous task of recording statements, collecting data and registering > FIRs are overworked and getting burnt out. > > To cope with this reality, Majlis, along with two grass root level groups in > Ahmedabad, Sanchetana and Vikas Adhyayan Kendra, will co-ordinate support > initiatives in three areas in Ahmedabad ? Gomtipur, Shah-e-Alam and Daria > Khan. We will co-ordinate batches of ten volunteers to go to Ahmedabad for > one week each, over a period of next two months. > > St. Xavier?s Institute in Ahmedabad has volunteered to provide accommodation. > The host groups will arrange for a vehicle to take the volunteers from the > hostel to camps and the volunteers will work along with the local activists > in each area. The expenses to be incurred by the volunteers would be the > train fare and food. For those volunteers who cannot afford, train fare and > minimum daily expenses will be provided. > > The volunteers will be placed in one of the centers for the entire period and > will be assisted by members of the local group. The work will be specified by > the local group and would include recording statements of victims, filing > FIRs, obtaining hospital reports, ensuring that the relief declared by the > government reaches the recipients, making a list of missing persons and > ensuring that the declared requirement for availing compensation is adhered > and helping out with other legal initiatives. > > The working conditions are harsh, the heat is killing and coming face to face > with human tragedy of such magnitude is emotionally draining. Knowledge of > Hindi is essential and knowledge of Gujarati will be of great help. It is > important to mention that a schedule for less than seven days will not be > practical. The volunteers may contact us with personal details and the time > frame during which they are available for this project at the earliest. > > E-mail: majlis at vsnl.com Telephone: (022) 6160252 Fax: 022-6148539 > > This appeal is also for funds for relief work and to sustain local > initiatives. With the impending monsoon and the threat of closing down the > relief camps, the displaced people are faced with even greater hardships. > Hence time becomes a very important factor in this initiative. The donation > for relief can be made by Money Orders, a/c payee cheques, or DDs to Majlis > payable at Mumbai. > > Hope to hear from you soon. We shall appreciate if you could spread this > message to the widest circle. > > Flavia Agnes / Veena Gowda > > Majlis, A-2/4 Golden Valley, Kalina, Mumbai ? 400 098 > > --__--__-- > > Message: 2 > From: Shuddhabrata Sengupta > Reply-To: shuddha at sarai.net > Organization: Sarai : The New Media Initiative > To: reader-list at sarai.net > Date: Wed, 8 May 2002 01:46:36 +0530 > Subject: [Reader-list] To Zainab - Gujarat and Elsewhere > > Dear Zainab, (and Pratap, Jeebesh and others) > > I have been thinking about a lot of the issues raised by you (Zainab, and the > responses to them) . I am writing this also in order to connect with a whole > lot of similar issues that faced me in the autumn of 1984, when I saw my city > (Delhi) go up in flames, and when more violence (in terms of the number of > people being killed) was unleashed within three days, than has occurred in > Gujarat over the last two months. > > This is not to belittle the violence in Gujarat, but to try and see it not as > an exception, but as a part of a larger pattern. Many people have reacted > indignantly, and rightly so, at George Fernandes's trivialization of the > violence done to women in Gujarat in the course of the debate in Parliament, > But in another sense, what really disturbs me is the fact that he has not > spoken untruly. (And lets make no mistake about the fact that i detest him > entirely for his defence of the ruling dispensation and the regime that > carried out the pogrom in Gujarat). But, in a perverse sense, what he said is > true. Gujarat is not an exception, the kind of violence that we have seen > there, happens everyday, in many places. And hardly anyone talks about them. > > This does not mean that we should see the suffering of the women in Gujarat > as "less worthy of attention". Rather, it means that we should seriously > think about what makes it so normal that these things can happen, and that we > can pretend that they don't, or ignore them, or be silent and embarassed > about them. Why does it take a Gujarat to make us sit up and think about the > complicity of the state and people in police and paramilitary uniforms in > violence? > > I started by talking about the anti-sikh pogrom in 1984, which was > orchestrated in Delhi by the then ruling secular party, which is spearheading > the opposition to Narendra Modi today. > > I remember 1984 very clearly. I shaved a young Sikh man who lived for those > few days in our house with his family, and over the years I have seen him > become a schrizophrenic, still stuck and lost in 1984. Gujarat will have its > own toll in the years to come in terms of the number of people who will > gradually find their sanity succumbing to their nightmares and their > memories. > > I saw, on my way home from school, mobs burn Sikhs to death with burning > tyres, and saw policemen protect the mobs, not the victims. I learnt early, ( > I was sixteen at that time) that no violence of this scale can ever take > place without the direct connivance of the power of the state, no matter who > or which party, controls the state. I learnt early, that the feeling of > insecurity, that violence of this order brings with it, is the most important > foundation of the consent we give to the power that the state has over us. > The situation returns to "normalcy" and we say (in relief) that the body > count could have been higher, and we thank the army for stepping in and > cleaning up, and life, well, goes on. Until the next time. > > But remember, some places in this country have lived through this for decades > on end.They haven't ever had the luxury of waiting for the "next time". > > Take Kashmir, for example. It made no difference whether you had a Congress, > NDA or Third Front (JD +/- Left) government in power. The pattern of violence > in Kashmir by the state has remained the same, and constant, for the last > thirteen years. > > The conservative estimate of non combatant (militant or military) civilian > casualties (deaths of ordinary people) in Kashmir is said to be 35,000 - > people since 1989. (this is from a coloumn by Chindu Sreedharan - "The Lost > Generation" on the impact of violence on Children in Kashmir that appears > regularly in Rediif.com at > http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/dec/11childin.htm ) > > That is roughly 2,692 people each year for the last 13 years. I am taking > these figures from sources that are not sympathetic to Kashmiri separatists. > Chindu Shreedharan is a fellow of the National Foundation of India. > > Figures given out by human rights organizations working in Kashmir, or by > Kashmiri separatist groups tend to be much higher and converge generally > around the apporximately '80, 000 dead since 1989' figure. > > The truth probably lies between the underevaluation of the conservative > figure and the exaggeration of the human rights actvists and separatists. But > let us, to err on the side of caution, stick to the conservative estimate. > > Now lets turn to missing people. According to the New York-based Human Rights > Watch, in September 1998, the non-governmental Association of Parents of > Missing People stated that 2,000 people had disappeared between 1990 and 1998 > alone after being taken into custody in Kashmir, and that there were no legal > remedies for discovering their fate. That's an average of 250 per year. If > you multiply that by 13 years you get an estimate of about 3,250 missing > persons. If you add that figure to the estimate of people dead you get - > 35,000 + 3,250 = 38,250 people. Estimate of people dead and missing each year > for the last 13 years - 2,942 people. > > The civilian casualty figures breakup between January and April this year in > Kashmir, taken from the Kashmir Live section of the Indian Express Website > (www.expressindia.com) is as follows > Total Civilians 133 > Men 78 > Women 23 > Children 32 > > Now, compare this to the casualties in Gujarat - official estimate - 822 > (including Godhra) dead. Unofficial estimate of the number of people dead - > 2,000. (source - Communalism Combat - Genocide Gujarat 2002 - March/April > 2002, Year 8, No.77-78) > > Let us compare compare the 'official' estimate in Gujarat, to the > 'conservative' estimate in Kashmir), so as to minimize any possibilty of > exaggeration in either case. > > If you look at the number of people living as 'internal refugees' as a result > of violence in India, than you get the figure of some some 350,000 Kashmiris > (Pandits and Muslims) and more than 157,000 others in Northeast India. > Additionally, there are about 17,000 refugees from the Indian held part of > Kashmir, who are currently living in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. (source - > WorldWide Refugee Information Website - Country reports for India and > Pakistan, 2000 - http://www.refugees.org/world/countryrpt/scasia/india.htm) > > The number of people living in 'relief and rehabilitation camps' in Gujarat > at the moment is - 113,697. (source - Communalism Combat - Genocide Gujarat > 2002 - March/April 2002, Year 8, No.77-78) > > I have not mentioned 'rape' because numbers are far harder to get, but the > ground realities suggest that the use of rape as a weapon of aggression has > been near perfected by the armed forces and paramilitaries of the Indian > state in Kashmir and the North East. > > Whatever we do, whichever set of numbers we take, we realize that a tragedy - > at least of the same proportions, if not higher, as what has happenned in > Gujarat, in terms of violence, killings, rape, arson and disappearances, has > been happening over the last thirteen years in Kashmir. > > Arguably, the situation that obtains in Kashmir is similar in many respects > to that which is true of the north eastern states of India as well. But > figures are less known. Partly, there is an active Kashmiri diaspora, which > keeps tabs on what is going on in Kashmir, and Pakistan of course has its own > axe to grind in the matter, but since there is less of a Naga or a Manipuri > diaspora, much less news gets out of these places. What we do know is that > the Indian State did not hesitate to use even its air force in bombings of > villages in Mizoram even as far back as in 1966. And the military has > (through the Armed Forces Special Powers Act) virtually had much of the north > east in the vice like grip of near martial law. > > Today, we recognize the violence in Gujarat as the manifestations of Fascism, > and rightly so. But I think, that many of us, who are not communal, not > Hindutva-vaadis, are comfortable with making the identification between > Hindutva and Fascism, which is un-deniable, while at the same time, we are > not ready or not prepared to make the identification when it comes to the > agencies of the Indian state in its more secular manifestations. > > Perhaps we should think carefully before assuming that this is the only > identification (in terms of 'fascism' ) that can be made. The abstract > machinery of the state in India (regardless of whether Hindutva-vaadis are in > power or not, acts just as brutally, when it wants to, and hardly anyone in > the 'secular' camp takes notice of the lethality of its actions). > > This is evident from the history of Kashmir. In both cases, Gujarat, and > Kashmir, the overwhelming majority of victims of organized violence have > happenned to be Muslims. (Kashmiri Pandits have sufferred at the hands of the > fascism of Kashmiri Muslim/seperatists militants, but the scale of their > suffering - in numerical terms, pales in comparison to the violence unleashed > by the Indian state's armed forces on the mainly muslim inhabitants of > Kashmir valley, that is why all numbers I have referred to are only of > civilain, non-miliant, non-military casualties). Now, it is a matter of fact, > that barring a few killings of informers, (and in an earlier phase of a few > prominent Kashmiri Pandits. amarnath pilgrims or other pro-India > personalities) militants in Kashmir, have a great deal to lose from killing > civilians because it ends up antagonizing the local population. > > There have been instances of civilan "collateral damage" in the instance of > bomb explosions. But the majority of killings that take place in Kashmir are > not due to bomb explosions. They are due to armed bodies of men coming into > neighbourhoods and villages, picking people and using them as 'human shields' > from behind whom they open fire , or taking them away and shooting them in > 'encounters'. It doesn't make tactical sense for Kashmiri militants to use > civilans as human shields, or to torch muslim majority villages, because > these "mass killings" cost them the little support they may have in the > civilian population. The Indian Army and paramilitary forces do this as a > matter of routine. The miliants on their part, take large numbers of > hostages, kill them and extort and inflict many other privations on the same > civilian population, but these have an incremental effect, and so are > affordable for the militants, in that the suffering they cause is immediately > offset by another set of sufferings with greater numbers on its side. Thus > retaining a perverse and macabre balance of terror between the state (army > and para-militaries) and the proto-state (militant outfits). I have > absolutely no sympathy for Kashmiri nationalism of any variety (Islamist or > secular), just as I have absolutely no sympathy for the Indian state's claim > on the people or territory of Kashmir. Both contribute to the body count. > > But, it seems to me, that one set of Muslim deaths and testimonies of > victimhood, are somehow seen as being more central, more traumatic, than > another. Kashmir, is sufficiently distant, sufficiently "other" for us not to > bother about. Gujarat isn't. It is India's most industrialized, most > urbanized, fastest growing state. It is as "mainstream India" as you can get. > It is impossible to ignore in a way that we have grown accustomed to ignore > or not care about Kashmir. The only reason why anyone says anything about > Kashmir is "it is an inalienable part of India". No one, has to say, Gujarat > is an "inalienable part of India" becase they know it is. It is the anxiety > about the Indian state's dubious record in Kashmir that makes people say "the > in-alienable part of India" statement, even as they ignore the mounting body > count in Kashmir. > > This "weighing" of lives and deaths, this banal decision to give a much > greater importance to the suffering of one set of people over another > (whether deliberately or by ommission) lies at the heart of fascism. In > telling us that some of us are more important than others, the fascist state > erects its most important edifice, the confidence that it imparts on a > section of the population that the state will enact, unleash or patronize a > violence unto others, unto a "them" whom "We" are never going to be. "We" are > given to believe that "we" will never have to suffer what people in Kashmir > suffer, because "we" are part of the Indian "mainstream". Then, when for > once, violence occurs in the heart of the "mainstream" at a comparable scale > to what happens outside it, "we" all get disturbed. When 'normalcy' finally > is restored, let us say if and when the present chief minister of Gujarat is > removed, the mainstream (secular and communal) of public life will return to > its hum-drum, "mainstream" pre-occupations. The margins, places like Kashmir, > will continue to exist as "Gujarat's" , but that is another matter. > > When the sangh parivar values the deaths of the Hindus who died at Godhra > over the deaths of the Muslims who died in Ahmedabad or Baroda, that is one > kind of everyday fascism. > > Similarly, when we value the deaths of people who happen to be Muslims who > died in Gujarat, (as victims of Hindu Fascism) even as we forget, ignore, are > indifferent to the equal number of deaths of people who happen to be Muslims > who die in Kashmir routinely, we may be guilty of another, > "secular-nationalist" variety of fascism. > > Or, forget whether people are Muslims or not, forget the whole arithmetic of > minority and majority, and think instead of the numbers who die in custody in > India. At the last count (year 2000) 1,143 people died in police custody in > prisons all over India - and the majority of these deaths is likely to have > been due to torture, and that there are at present close to 60 people > awaiting the death penalty all over India. (source - Amnesty International > Country report 2000). India has yet to ratify the UN Convention against > Torture which it signed in October 1997, nor had it invited the UN Special > Rapporteur on torture to visit the country. This means that there are no > remedies in International Law for any Indian citizen to appeal against the > violation of his/her right to be protected from torture, should the state in > India be the party that executes the act of torture. No political party > (right wing, left wing, centrists, secular, communal, pro-dalit, regional or > whatever) has ever made the ratification of the convention against torture, > or the abolition of the death penalty a public issue - and this silence means > that the broad spectrum of political parties are unanimous (by ommission or > commission) in their tacit or active support to the torture and executions > carried out by the Indian state. > > In this country, we all have skeletons in our respective closets, and the > uncounted dead to account for. In either case, some deaths are seen as more > deserving of commemoration than others. The truth is, every instance of > violent death, every disappearance, that takes place, no matter where, is > just as sad, just as much of a nightmare for those it leaves grieving. > > The resistance to fascism, can begin only when we stop devaluing other > peoples lives and deaths, no matter who those people are. The resistance to > fascism must begin with the recognition of the fact that the greatest > devaluation of the lives of people has occurred, routinely, at the hands of > the state that we submit to daily, through many acts of obedience. > > Who knows what remedies, what forms of association, how many little and > everyday solidarities we will have to build in the years to come to face this > fascism. I am not as sanguine as Pratap is about the "Mayawatis" of this > world, because I am sure that in the assertion of their 'identitiis' and in > the airing of their victimhood, they will create their own militias, and > their own neo-Buddhist/Ambedkarite fascism. If we can have Hindu, Sikh and > Muslim and Secular Fascism in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and Tamil > (Hindu and Christian) and Sinhala (Buddhist) Fascism in Sri Lanka, it only > points to the bewildering array of possible south asian sub-continental > fascisms that still lie in wait. A neo-Buddhist/Dalit fascism is just as > likely or unlikely as any other variety. > > The second most important lesson, to my mind, in terms of building a politics > that can combat fascism, is to give up the illusion that any one is innocent. > All our 'identities' are complicit in the everyday politics of fascism. Every > constrcution of "us" and "them" is equally guilty, whether it is made on > communal, secterian, ethnic, caste or national lines. It is only by moving > towards an everyday form of politics that has room for sckepticism about the > claims that "we" make on ourselves, and the claims that are made about us, or > on our behalf, that we can actually question the hold that 'everyday' fascism > has over us. > > I look forward to the gradual, corrosion of the certainties of who "we" and > they are by a sckepticism that is born of the > > This is why, I don't think, unlike Pratap, that the answer to Hindu fascism > is to create our own "shakhas". We will then have created our 'own' fascism. > If the right has successfully mimicked the left, I don't think that the > answer to it lies in re-mimicking the right ( or re-re-mimicking the left?). > > Rather, I want to think about what we can do to make all 'shakhas', all > uniforms, all anthems, all 'sangathans' equally unattractive and dull. So > that we do not even have to enter the tactical terrain of setting one kind > of identity as an antidote to another. Of saying "Indians" when we might be > uncomfortable saying "Hindus". > > This might require us to take the battle on to the register of a playful > irreverence towards all forms of authority and identity formation, per se. > That is one place where the fascists can never get. They have condemned > themselves to certitude and seriousness, they can never be heretics and > irreverential. They want to win. We must be prepared to subvert every > victory, including those of our own. This means that we might have to speak a > language that seeks to dissolve power rather than to take it over to make it > better, that seeks to reject rather than reform the state. > > Those of us who have no icons to defend, no identities to protect, no nations > to nurture, no faiths to believe in and no birthplaces to build temples for > might be well placed to initate a wave of non-serious heresy that may well be > the last (and only) stumbling block in the path of every kind of fascism, be > it of the riotous right, the lethal left, or of the dead centre. > > > > > > > > > --__--__-- > > _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > List archive: > > > End of Reader-list Digest > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020509/3db29868/attachment.html From zamrooda at sarai.net Thu May 9 16:21:19 2002 From: zamrooda at sarai.net (zamrooda) Date: Thu, 9 May 2002 16:21:19 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] I am Insecure Message-ID: <02050916211902.00649@legal.sarai.kit> Farmer by birth, civil servant by education, and a Muslim by religion. An Indian man of 56 years, satisfied and contented with life. Kashmir is his passion. Evening of December 1992 jolts his senses. He sits by his television set numb watching the mosque being torn apart brick by brick. Bombay riots followed soon after. Political situation in the country deteriorated. All that the politicians seemed to be interested only in `POWER.' This was not new. The only difference now was that earlier there was a sense of hiding or being conscious of keeping things under cover. This scene of shame seemed to have vanished. Yet somewhere the dream of democracy and secularism allowed this man to maintain his sanity. There were times when he wondered that was he the only one............ worried, scared, alone in this country ? Life continued........ February 27th the dream was shattered. The news of the burning of the train somewhere left a hollow feeling in his stomach. Sleep was not easy to come by. His apprehensions were proved right. What followed and continues to follow shattered his life. Farmer by birth, civil servant by education, and a Muslim by religion. An Indian man of 56 years. Did it hold any meaning? For the first time in life he senses insecurity . Retirement is round the corner. Delhi is where life is for him.................... Delhi where in Delhi ? The biggest question of his life is to find a house for himself. Where does he go. Which part of Delhi or for that matter India will be a safe haven for him ? Where will he be sure that he, his family and all that he has struggled for the last 56 years of his life will not be taken away in a matter of 5 minutes. Is there a place ? Delhi could have been the answer, but for the happening of 2nd May 2002. Morning dailies on the next day had pictures and report of traffic chaos on the outer ring road of Delhi for 3 hours due to which law students were not able to appear for their exam. There was no previous intimidation of this rally. No one had expected such a large gathering.....(as reported). A gathering of 10,000 people (estimate) of the minority community was not big enough to be able to capture the notice of our media. Trying to reach her destination 15 Km's away was a woman trapped in her car. The sight of crowds on the street in traditional Muslim attire with chains, bottles, lathis.... in their hands ran her imagination wild. Shops by the street were closing. The roads of Darya Ganj which are impossible to cross at this hour were empty. Looking around her for some solace all that she could see was her own fear being reflected in the eyes of the strangers. Pictures of Gujarat loomed in her face. The "helpless" policemen on the roads only increased her discomfort. She was able to maintain her sanity thanks to the cellular phone, with which she was able to maintain contact with her family. By the evening the rally was over with no signs of it. Evening news had no mention of it. If it had not been a solitary picture of the rally in the morning dally she had almost convinced herself to believe that it was all a nightmare. Is there a safe haven for the minority community anywhere in ................. From announcements-request at sarai.net Fri May 10 10:30:39 2002 From: announcements-request at sarai.net (announcements-request at sarai.net) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 07:00:39 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Announcements digest, Vol 1 #43 - 1 msg Message-ID: <200205100500.HAA23260@mail.waag.org> Send Announcements mailing list submissions to announcements at sarai.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to announcements-request at sarai.net You can reach the person managing the list at announcements-admin at sarai.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Announcements digest..." Today's Topics: 1. (no subject) (ravi vasudevan) --__--__-- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 10:02:41 To: announcements at sarai.net From: ravi vasudevan Subject: [Announcements] (no subject) THE SCHOOL OF SOUND 2003 The 5th School of Sound symposium will be held in London from the 23rd to 26th of April 2003 at the South Bank Centre's Purcell Room. Since its inception in 1998, the School of Sound has raised the profile of sound in audio-visual media through its unique programme that integrates practice with theory, and art with entertainment. At the heart of the School of Sound programme is variety. From Walter Murch's wide-screen, multi-layered sound designs to Peter Kubelka's deceptively primitive collages to Laura Mulvey and Michel Chion's provocative analyses and Carter Burwell's emotive, modern compositions, the presentations have provided the broadest possible perspective on screen sound. The School of Sound will not teach you equipment or software, but we will lead you along new paths through the creative use of sound in media and art. For information or to join our mailing list: email sos at schoolofsound.co.uk or visit our website, www.schoolofsound.co.uk. Full programme details will be available in Autumn 2002. Sponsored by Norwich School of Art and Design National Film and Television School Norwich School of Art and Design welcomes fulltime and part-time applications to a new MA in Animation and Sound Design. The course commences in October 2002. Enquiries: The Graduate Studies Secretary, email info at nsad.ac.uk, Tel: +44 (0)1603 610561. The National Film and Television School offers a two-year MA course in Screen Sound focusing on Sound Postproduction and Design and a one-year Diploma course in Production Sound. For further information, please log on to www.nftsfilm-tv.ac.uk, email admin at nftsfilm-tv.ac.uk or call +44 (0)1494 731413 for a prospectus. We apologise for double mailings. Please email sos at schoolofsound.co.uk if you wish to be removed from our mailing list. Ravi Vasudevan The Sarai Programme Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi-110054, India Tel. 395-1190/394-2199/396-0040 Fax. 394-3450 --__--__-- _______________________________________________ Announcements mailing list Announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements End of Announcements Digest From pankaj at sarai.net Fri May 10 15:32:36 2002 From: pankaj at sarai.net (Pankaj Kaushal) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 15:32:36 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Simputer Slashdotted Message-ID: <200205101015.MAA03354@mail.waag.org> Hi, Simputer was recently on Slashdotted. The remarks are worth reading. http://slashdot.org/articles/01/05/02/1822219.shtml -- Pankaj "Trompe Le Monde." From manisha at mlj.com.my Fri May 10 15:15:25 2002 From: manisha at mlj.com.my (Manisha Khosla) Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 17:45:25 +0800 Subject: [Reader-list] RE: Reader-list digest, Vol 1 #512 - 1 msg Message-ID: <4DA565E08A72D311889000508B02D47F0102C1B0@MLJMYNT001> What is happenning? Why is it happenning? When will it all end? Day after day, I can hear myself repeating these questions but is anyone listening....I have my doubts. And although the carnage and the gory stories upset me, what worries me more is the fact that not many people are bothered. Most Indians [ and especially the educated ones] seem to have developed the classic tortoise-like response to the situation. A lot of people have infact stopped reading the news altogether, as it has ceased to be new and hence no longer carries the appeal say of some socialite being found dead in a hotel. Zamrooda is anxious, as are the other members of the various minority communties inhabiting India ,and what we need today is a soul searching debate on the issue. But the problem confronting most of us is that our integrity, secularism and patriotism, will be determined on the basis of the opinions which we voice and so we choose to be quiet and look the other way--of course it helps that I am a Hindu!! Today's Topics: 1. I am Insecure (zamrooda) --__--__-- Message: 1 From: zamrooda Reply-To: zamrooda at sarai.net Organization: sarai To: reader-list at sarai.net Date: Thu, 9 May 2002 16:21:19 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] I am Insecure Farmer by birth, civil servant by education, and a Muslim by religion. An Indian man of 56 years, satisfied and contented with life. Kashmir is his passion. Evening of December 1992 jolts his senses. He sits by his television set numb watching the mosque being torn apart brick by brick. Bombay riots followed soon after. Political situation in the country deteriorated. All that the politicians seemed to be interested only in `POWER.' This was not new. The only difference now was that earlier there was a sense of hiding or being conscious of keeping things under cover. This scene of shame seemed to have vanished. Yet somewhere the dream of democracy and secularism allowed this man to maintain his sanity. There were times when he wondered that was he the only one............ worried, scared, alone in this country ? Life continued........ February 27th the dream was shattered. The news of the burning of the train somewhere left a hollow feeling in his stomach. Sleep was not easy to come by. His apprehensions were proved right. What followed and continues to follow shattered his life. Farmer by birth, civil servant by education, and a Muslim by religion. An Indian man of 56 years. Did it hold any meaning? For the first time in life he senses insecurity . Retirement is round the corner. Delhi is where life is for him.................... Delhi where in Delhi ? The biggest question of his life is to find a house for himself. Where does he go. Which part of Delhi or for that matter India will be a safe haven for him ? Where will he be sure that he, his family and all that he has struggled for the last 56 years of his life will not be taken away in a matter of 5 minutes. Is there a place ? Delhi could have been the answer, but for the happening of 2nd May 2002. Morning dailies on the next day had pictures and report of traffic chaos on the outer ring road of Delhi for 3 hours due to which law students were not able to appear for their exam. There was no previous intimidation of this rally. No one had expected such a large gathering.....(as reported). A gathering of 10,000 people (estimate) of the minority community was not big enough to be able to capture the notice of our media. Trying to reach her destination 15 Km's away was a woman trapped in her car. The sight of crowds on the street in traditional Muslim attire with chains, bottles, lathis.... in their hands ran her imagination wild. Shops by the street were closing. The roads of Darya Ganj which are impossible to cross at this hour were empty. Looking around her for some solace all that she could see was her own fear being reflected in the eyes of the strangers. Pictures of Gujarat loomed in her face. The "helpless" policemen on the roads only increased her discomfort. She was able to maintain her sanity thanks to the cellular phone, with which she was able to maintain contact with her family. By the evening the rally was over with no signs of it. Evening news had no mention of it. If it had not been a solitary picture of the rally in the morning dally she had almost convinced herself to believe that it was all a nightmare. Is there a safe haven for the minority community anywhere in ................. --__--__-- _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. Critiques & Collaborations To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. List archive: End of Reader-list Digest From announcements-request at sarai.net Sat May 11 10:28:43 2002 From: announcements-request at sarai.net (announcements-request at sarai.net) Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 06:58:43 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Announcements digest, Vol 1 #44 - 1 msg Message-ID: <200205110458.GAA28043@mail.waag.org> Send Announcements mailing list submissions to announcements at sarai.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to announcements-request at sarai.net You can reach the person managing the list at announcements-admin at sarai.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Announcements digest..." Today's Topics: 1. ./logicaland (maia/re-p) --__--__-- Message: 1 Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 16:18:26 +0100 To: announcements at sarai.net From: maia/re-p Subject: [Announcements] ./logicaland [./logicaland v0.1] a participative global simulation http://www.logicaland.net [./logicaland] is a project study for visualizing our world's complex economical, political and social systems. [./logicaland] tries to engage people into strategies of raising human sensibility and responsibility within the global networked society. the challenge is to develop ideas, tools and visualizations that fit the requirements of complex correlating systems and our world's complex participative environment. based on a scientific global world model of the mid-seventies, we developed a tool that facilitates people to take part in a simulation. the main idea is to provide a public web-based world-simulation within a participative environment, where all users have equal influence on the system. everyone with internet access should be able to participate in [./logicaland]. one user's influence on the system is minimal since it is a fraction of all participants' actions. only if a lot of users follow similar strategies, serious change can be achieved. [./logicaland] v0.1 is a work in progress, a prototype of a global simulation that is to be controlled by a community of unlimited participants. we invite users all over the world to take part in dealing with global interrelationships by contributing to logicaland's simulation. more info: http://www.logicaland.net io at logicaland.net --__--__-- _______________________________________________ Announcements mailing list Announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements End of Announcements Digest From sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com Sun May 12 09:43:58 2002 From: sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?q?Sagnik=20Chakravartty?=) Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 05:13:58 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Protest Statement against the Crackdown on the Students, Youths and Cultural Activists at Faizabad Message-ID: <20020512041358.87457.qmail@web20303.mail.yahoo.com> Protest Statement Against the Crackdown on the Students, Youths and Cultural Activists at Faizabad, UP We the undersigned, condemn the arrest of students, youth and other activists of All India Students Association, Revolutionary Youth Association and Jan Sanskriti Manch who had assembled in Faizabad to observe the anniversary of 1857 Revolt. The students and youth who had converged, from all over the country for a two day programme to reclaim the secular history of Ayodhya on 10th and 11th of May had been prevented by the District Administration from taking out a Sadbhavana March and organizing a Shaheed Mela and Convention for an amicable solution of the Ayodhya issue. This is a blatant violation of the democratic rights of the citizens to organize campaigns and movements for peace and harmony. It is a shame that it has become illegal to organize programmes in memory of 1857 and remember the secular struggles of our freedom fighters even while VHP is being allowed to hold the twin city of Ayodhya and Faizabad to ransom on communal grounds and openly violate court orders. The unreasoned and last minute withdrawal of permission for the Sadbhavana March, Shaheed Mela and Convention and subsequent crackdown on participants is a clear pointer to the fact that the BSP Chief Minister is acting at the behest of the communal forces spearheaded by the Sangh Parivar. This has serious implications for the democratic process in the state. We demand immediate release of all activists and leaders and restoration of democratic order in the state. NB: Consent to this statement has already been received from - Prabhash Joshi, Manglesh Dabral, Sumit Chakraborty, Kamal Mitra Chenoy, Anuradha Chenoy and Surendra Mohan. NB: Send this protest statement for more signatures and consents. __________________________________________________________ 11 May, 2002 FACT SHEET ON THE CRACKDOWN "Ayodhya Chalo" programme organised by All India Students Association (AISA), Revolutionary Youth Association (RYA) and Jan Sanskriti Manch on 10-11 May'02 on the anniversary of the 1857 Revolt to reclaim the secular legacy of Faizabad-Ayodhya met with uncalled for and unprecedented crackdown by the UP govt. The two-day programme of 10-11 May included a Sadbhavana March and Shaheed Mela (on 10 May) to uphold the anti-imperialist and secular legacy of 1857 martyrs belonging to the Awadh Faizabad region. This was to be followed by an "Ayodhya Convention" on 11th May to explore the possibility of an amicable solution to the Ayodhya issue. The entire programme had all the necessary permissions and venue booking from the District Administration of Faizabad. But without any meaningful reason cited, the administration cancelled the permission at the last moment and withdrew all the bookings. This happened when thousands of students, youth, women activists and cultural personalities had already converged to Faizabad. Clearly, this was a political decision taken at the highest level in the state and happened at the behest of the communal forces spearheaded by the Sangh Parivar. On 10th May when Sadbhavana Rally started, police arrested more than thousand processionists including AISA's National President Kavita Krishnan and RYA's General Secretary Lal Bahadur Singh. They are still under arrest in jails of Mau and Sultanpur. Inspite of this crackdown, the organisers proceeded with the Convention scheduled for 11th May. Though the original venue was cancelled, local support helped them organise the Convention at the Faizabad Press Club. The Convention started on 11th May at the Press Club in a situation of massive police siege. The police kept on threatening to arrest the participants throughout the process. When the Convention was more or less through, police entered the venue and snatched away the mikes in a bid to disrupt the event. But the Convention was duly concluded by passing several resolutions (summary of which are appended below). But after the Convention was over, six persons were arrested arbitrarily which included Dr. Suvendhu Ghosh (Head of the Deptt. of Biophysics, Delhi University, and well known singer and cultural activist), Student leaders from JNU Radhika Menon and Inteshar Ahmad, All India Progressive Women Association leaders from UP Ajanta Lohit and Snehalata, AISA leader from Lucknow University Kaushal Kishore. Dr. Suvendhu Ghosh was also assaulted by the police. They are in Faizabad jail. We appeal to you to protest against this absolutely uncalled for crackdown on this programme, whose basic purpose was to uphold our secular legacy and strive for peace and harmony. We appeal to you to join 'Citizen's Protest March' on Monday, 13 May '02 at Jantar-Mantar at 11 AM. Summary of the Resolutions adopted at the 'Ayodhya Convention' held at Faizabad on 11 May. 1. The Convention condemned in strongest of terms the banning of 'Sadbhavana March' and 'Shaheed Mela' organised on 10 May at Faizabad to uphold the legacy of united Hindu-Muslim resistance in the 1857 struggle for independence. The ban was politically motivated and was implemented by the Mayawati govt. at the behest of RSS-BJP-VHP-Bajarang Dal. The Convention considered the ban on this peaceful and democratic programme as a major attack on our minimum democratic rights and freedom and vowed to fight it back. 2. The Convention appealed to every common citizen to stand up and be counted in the effort to separate religion from politics. The Convention expressed confidence than once such communal elements as VHP-Bajarang Dal and other outfits of the Sangh Parivar are pushed out of the Ayodhya tangle, India's civil society has enough strength to sort out the issue amicably. Whether it is a court verdict or an out-of-court solution, the Convention believe that it is only a conscious and active mass movement committed to the cause of secularism which can ensure a just solution. And in this effort it would be welcome if various citizens, including such religious leaders of both communities, jurists and historians who declare their firm commitment to the principles of separation of religion and politics, were to form a panel to explore solutions to the Ayodhya issue through mutual dialogue. 3. The Convention urged upon Chief Minister Mayawati not to play second fiddle to BJP and reinitiate the cases (earlier struck down on technical grounds) against L.K. Advani, M.M. Joshi, Uma Bharati and others accused of Babri Masjid demolition. 4. The Convention demanded sacking of Modi govt. responsible for the state-sponsored cleansing of monorities in Gujarat, trial of all the guilty leaders and police officials and resignation of Home Minister LK Advani. The Convention decided to join the Rashtriya Ekta Abhiyan conducted by the left and democratic forces in the country and appealed to every democratic and peace loving citizen to be a part of this struggle. The declaration was signed among others by Com. Dipankar Bhattacharya (Ganeral Secretary, CPI(ML), Prof. MK Sherwani (All India Muslim Forum), Md. Salim Khan Pirzada (Indian Muslim Political Conference), Krishnavatar Pandey (former Education Director, UP and PUHR), Chittaranjan Singh (PUCL), Balram Yadav (Senior Advocate, Allahabad High Court, Lucknow Bench), Onkar Nath Patel (noted journalist), Sandip Pandey (NAPM). CONTACT: Ranjit Abhigyan, Ph. 222 1067. Tapas Ranjan, Ph. 786 6410. Radhika Menon, radhikamen at rediffmail.com AISA: aisadelhi at hotmail.com Inbox Reply Reply All Forward Delete Next Previous ________________________________________________________________________ Everything you always wanted to know about cars and bikes,now at: http://in.autos.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com Sun May 12 17:30:57 2002 From: sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?q?Sagnik=20Chakravartty?=) Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 13:00:57 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] A Review of Diploma Films of SRFTI Students (Courtesy: upperstall.com) Message-ID: <20020512120057.79451.qmail@web20301.mail.yahoo.com> The following information calls for an interesting reading as they are reviews of some of SRFTI's diploma films. These were screened in Mumbai last year. This information can be seen at www.upperstall.com/srfti.htm This also shows how SRFTI,Kolkata has equalled Pune Film Institute in terms of quality of diploma films produced and also film equipments. ======================================================= Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute Diploma Films The Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute (SRFTI), Kolkata recently screened the diploma films of the first batch of students who have passed out from the institute on May 24 at the Tata Theatre, NCPA in Mumbai. The package of 7 films (An eighth film, Y2K, was not screened as it had faced censorship problems but surely the SRFTI could have shown it as an institute showing its body of work without worrying about censorship restrictions) made for interesting and varied viewing. Considering the enormous teething problems this institute has faced since its inception in 1996, it is to the SRFTI's credit that in its very first lot of diploma films, its films picked up three National Awards in the Non-Feature category. The films screened ranged from the good to the ununderstandable to the disappointing. The two films that really stood out were the two National Award winners Bhor and Meena Jha, both of which made for extremely stimulating viewing while The Egotic Day in spite of some evocative imagery sailed way, way over one's head. Bhor, directed by Rituparna Chudgar, look at a brother and sister living in the unfriendly city suffering from abject poverty. Poor and unhappy, they recall the days when they were happy and content. This takes them to the old house they once lived in, in the suburbs. As they reach there they find the house deserted with only an old man living there. The old man allows them to spend a night there. The pair who have come to find happiness in their memories find instead the past has something else in store for them... Bhor won the National Award for The Best Short Fiction Film and according to its director Rituparna, it works because somewhere it is a story of very real people - it could be you and me, she says. Meena Jha, directed by Anjalika Sharma, is about two teenagers who study in a convent school in Kolkata.The girls are thrown together even though their dreams, realities and social set up are totally different from each other. Ayesha is easily bored and is always on the lookout for constant stimulation. In Meena she finds a listener, one who believes all her tales blindly, one who dreams and lives through her stories. The film which is warm, insightful and perceptive is a collage of shared expereiences, memories, dreams and realities held by what the director calls an 'unpredictable non-linear structure.'And herein lies the problem found in most of the films. As film students ae exposed to all kinds of film they always experiment with form and narrative structures. Not that it's anything negative, in fact its extremely healthy as they try to create their own brand of cinema, but on seeing films like Meena Jha one feels that it could have worked beautifully as a simple narrative film but its breaking of narrative flow and cutting to dream sequences and visual metaphors (student films all over the world are full of them!) seems too deliberate and contrived. However Meena Jha still engages you with its evocative camerawork by Amal Neerad C.R. and the inspired performances of the two girls playing Ayesha and Meena. The film won two National Awards - The Best Debut Film of a Director and a Special Mention for Cinematography. Apart from Mumbai, The SRFTI films are going to be screened at the Kerala International Film Festival and plans are also afoot for these films to be screened at other major Indian cities. This is extremely heartening for the students to not only have their work seen by varied audiences but also to gauge the reaction to their work which is equally important to see if the film communicates with its audiences or not as it is meant to. The Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune too used to screen their diploma films in the distant past but over the last many years this practice has unfortunately been stopped. Regular screenings like this certainly help in young film students getting exposure to their work and help in their growth as filmmakers and should definitely be encouraged and regularised. © Copyright Upperstall.com 2001 ________________________________________________________________________ Everything you always wanted to know about cars and bikes,now at: http://in.autos.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com Sun May 12 17:31:01 2002 From: sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?q?Sagnik=20Chakravartty?=) Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 13:01:01 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] A Review of Diploma Films of SRFTI Students (Courtesy: upperstall.com) Message-ID: <20020512120101.53656.qmail@web20309.mail.yahoo.com> The following information calls for an interesting reading as they are reviews of some of SRFTI's diploma films. These were screened in Mumbai last year. This information can be seen at www.upperstall.com/srfti.htm This also shows how SRFTI,Kolkata has equalled Pune Film Institute in terms of quality of diploma films produced and also film equipments. ======================================================= Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute Diploma Films The Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute (SRFTI), Kolkata recently screened the diploma films of the first batch of students who have passed out from the institute on May 24 at the Tata Theatre, NCPA in Mumbai. The package of 7 films (An eighth film, Y2K, was not screened as it had faced censorship problems but surely the SRFTI could have shown it as an institute showing its body of work without worrying about censorship restrictions) made for interesting and varied viewing. Considering the enormous teething problems this institute has faced since its inception in 1996, it is to the SRFTI's credit that in its very first lot of diploma films, its films picked up three National Awards in the Non-Feature category. The films screened ranged from the good to the ununderstandable to the disappointing. The two films that really stood out were the two National Award winners Bhor and Meena Jha, both of which made for extremely stimulating viewing while The Egotic Day in spite of some evocative imagery sailed way, way over one's head. Bhor, directed by Rituparna Chudgar, look at a brother and sister living in the unfriendly city suffering from abject poverty. Poor and unhappy, they recall the days when they were happy and content. This takes them to the old house they once lived in, in the suburbs. As they reach there they find the house deserted with only an old man living there. The old man allows them to spend a night there. The pair who have come to find happiness in their memories find instead the past has something else in store for them... Bhor won the National Award for The Best Short Fiction Film and according to its director Rituparna, it works because somewhere it is a story of very real people - it could be you and me, she says. Meena Jha, directed by Anjalika Sharma, is about two teenagers who study in a convent school in Kolkata.The girls are thrown together even though their dreams, realities and social set up are totally different from each other. Ayesha is easily bored and is always on the lookout for constant stimulation. In Meena she finds a listener, one who believes all her tales blindly, one who dreams and lives through her stories. The film which is warm, insightful and perceptive is a collage of shared expereiences, memories, dreams and realities held by what the director calls an 'unpredictable non-linear structure.'And herein lies the problem found in most of the films. As film students ae exposed to all kinds of film they always experiment with form and narrative structures. Not that it's anything negative, in fact its extremely healthy as they try to create their own brand of cinema, but on seeing films like Meena Jha one feels that it could have worked beautifully as a simple narrative film but its breaking of narrative flow and cutting to dream sequences and visual metaphors (student films all over the world are full of them!) seems too deliberate and contrived. However Meena Jha still engages you with its evocative camerawork by Amal Neerad C.R. and the inspired performances of the two girls playing Ayesha and Meena. The film won two National Awards - The Best Debut Film of a Director and a Special Mention for Cinematography. Apart from Mumbai, The SRFTI films are going to be screened at the Kerala International Film Festival and plans are also afoot for these films to be screened at other major Indian cities. This is extremely heartening for the students to not only have their work seen by varied audiences but also to gauge the reaction to their work which is equally important to see if the film communicates with its audiences or not as it is meant to. The Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune too used to screen their diploma films in the distant past but over the last many years this practice has unfortunately been stopped. Regular screenings like this certainly help in young film students getting exposure to their work and help in their growth as filmmakers and should definitely be encouraged and regularised. © Copyright Upperstall.com 2001 ________________________________________________________________________ Everything you always wanted to know about cars and bikes,now at: http://in.autos.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com Sun May 12 17:56:52 2002 From: sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?q?Sagnik=20Chakravartty?=) Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 13:26:52 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Bimal Ray Remembered in Kolkata Message-ID: <20020512122652.31976.qmail@web20305.mail.yahoo.com> This has been downloaded from the web - bengalonthenet.com ----------------------------------------------------- Bimal Roy Bimal Roy Memorial Committee (BRMC) recently celebrated a weeklong festival at Kolkata to commemorate the works of legendary filmmaker Bimal Roy. The organisation has hosted a seminar, a Tapan Sinha Film Festival at Chaplin and a special screening of Do Bigha Zameen at SRFTI. Though they had also planned to present a musical evening called Smriti Sandhya with Mumbai stars like Sonu Nigam, Abhijit, Shaan, Antara Choudhury, Sagarika at Nazrul Mancha, had to be deferred due to some management problem. In keeping with the liberal humanism of the filmmaker Bimal Roy, (BRMC), an association set up in early 1997, decided to champion the cause for good cinema and television committed to social reality. BRMC organised programs that recapture the magic, the nostalgia of an evergreen era. Speaking to the chairman of BRMC and daughter of late Bimal Roy, Smt. Rinki Bhattacharya she said: "We’ll not only focus on Bimal Roy’s classics, but revive memories of other evergreens from black and white era." The organisation felicitates living legends with Bimal Roy Trophy. Last year Rituparno Ghosh received the award for Bariwali. This year the award went to veteran actress Sova Sen, singer Supriti Ghosh, director Aurobindo Mukherjee, singer Dwijen Mukhopadhyay and director Tapan Sinha. Bimal Roy’s first film Udayer Pathe was also screen on this occasion at Chaplin theatre. Regarding Bimal Roy’s Udayer Pathe noted director Satyajit Ray said, "With his very first film Bimal Roy was able to sweep aside the cobwebs of the old tradition and introduce realism in cinema. He was thus undoubtedly a pioneer. He reached his peak with a film that still reverberates in the minds of those who saw it when it was first made. It refer to Do Bigha Zameen, which remains one of the landmarks of Indian Cinema." Internationally acclaimed director Mrinal Sen had also stated that, "Udayer Pathe (Humrahi in Hindi) took the city by storm. As the film started, the statue with the arrogance of imperial might flashed on the screen and instantly characterised the time and place in which the story was set. What was striking was the remarkable way it was shot, the incredibly precise moment of the camera gave the image a very special distinction." R.K. Mitra 5.4.2002 ........................... ________________________________________________________________________ Everything you always wanted to know about cars and bikes,now at: http://in.autos.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com Sun May 12 17:32:13 2002 From: sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?q?Sagnik=20Chakravartty?=) Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 13:02:13 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] A Review of Diploma Films of SRFTI Students (Courtesy: upperstall.com) Message-ID: <20020512120213.7924.qmail@web20307.mail.yahoo.com> The following information calls for an interesting reading as they are reviews of some of SRFTI's diploma films. These were screened in Mumbai last year. This information can be seen at www.upperstall.com/srfti.html This also shows how SRFTI,Kolkata has equalled Pune Film Institute in terms of quality of diploma films produced and also film equipments. ======================================================= Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute Diploma Films The Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute (SRFTI), Kolkata recently screened the diploma films of the first batch of students who have passed out from the institute on May 24 at the Tata Theatre, NCPA in Mumbai. The package of 7 films (An eighth film, Y2K, was not screened as it had faced censorship problems but surely the SRFTI could have shown it as an institute showing its body of work without worrying about censorship restrictions) made for interesting and varied viewing. Considering the enormous teething problems this institute has faced since its inception in 1996, it is to the SRFTI's credit that in its very first lot of diploma films, its films picked up three National Awards in the Non-Feature category. The films screened ranged from the good to the ununderstandable to the disappointing. The two films that really stood out were the two National Award winners Bhor and Meena Jha, both of which made for extremely stimulating viewing while The Egotic Day in spite of some evocative imagery sailed way, way over one's head. Bhor, directed by Rituparna Chudgar, look at a brother and sister living in the unfriendly city suffering from abject poverty. Poor and unhappy, they recall the days when they were happy and content. This takes them to the old house they once lived in, in the suburbs. As they reach there they find the house deserted with only an old man living there. The old man allows them to spend a night there. The pair who have come to find happiness in their memories find instead the past has something else in store for them... Bhor won the National Award for The Best Short Fiction Film and according to its director Rituparna, it works because somewhere it is a story of very real people - it could be you and me, she says. Meena Jha, directed by Anjalika Sharma, is about two teenagers who study in a convent school in Kolkata.The girls are thrown together even though their dreams, realities and social set up are totally different from each other. Ayesha is easily bored and is always on the lookout for constant stimulation. In Meena she finds a listener, one who believes all her tales blindly, one who dreams and lives through her stories. The film which is warm, insightful and perceptive is a collage of shared expereiences, memories, dreams and realities held by what the director calls an 'unpredictable non-linear structure.'And herein lies the problem found in most of the films. As film students ae exposed to all kinds of film they always experiment with form and narrative structures. Not that it's anything negative, in fact its extremely healthy as they try to create their own brand of cinema, but on seeing films like Meena Jha one feels that it could have worked beautifully as a simple narrative film but its breaking of narrative flow and cutting to dream sequences and visual metaphors (student films all over the world are full of them!) seems too deliberate and contrived. However Meena Jha still engages you with its evocative camerawork by Amal Neerad C.R. and the inspired performances of the two girls playing Ayesha and Meena. The film won two National Awards - The Best Debut Film of a Director and a Special Mention for Cinematography. Apart from Mumbai, The SRFTI films are going to be screened at the Kerala International Film Festival and plans are also afoot for these films to be screened at other major Indian cities. This is extremely heartening for the students to not only have their work seen by varied audiences but also to gauge the reaction to their work which is equally important to see if the film communicates with its audiences or not as it is meant to. The Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune too used to screen their diploma films in the distant past but over the last many years this practice has unfortunately been stopped. Regular screenings like this certainly help in young film students getting exposure to their work and help in their growth as filmmakers and should definitely be encouraged and regularised. © Copyright Upperstall.com 2001 ________________________________________________________________________ Everything you always wanted to know about cars and bikes,now at: http://in.autos.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From sbreitsameter at berlin.snafu.de Sun May 12 21:10:43 2002 From: sbreitsameter at berlin.snafu.de (Sabine Breitsameter) Date: Sun, 12 May 2002 17:40:43 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] New on Audiohyperspace Message-ID: A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 681 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020512/37f211a8/attachment.bin From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Tue May 14 05:22:35 2002 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 19:52:35 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Sign the Gender Petition Message-ID: > >gujrat pogroms > >please read it >you all know what to do > >-----Original Message----- >From: Raja Harish Swamy [mailto:swamyraj at pilot.msu.edu] >Sent: Friday, May 10, 2002 1:34 PM > >take a minute to visit >http://www.PetitionOnline.com/gujwomen/ in order to add your signature to >the >actual petition. > >Please farward this url far and wide to individuals and organizations >stating >the need for individual signatures. Also, if a physical copy of the >petition >is >required, in order to get real signatures, please contact Anu at >asharma at wesleyan.edu > >Please share ideas on how to get the maximum using both electronic and >regular >tactics. > >raja.. > > > >-------------------------------------------------------------------- > _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx From zamrooda at sarai.net Wed May 15 10:05:08 2002 From: zamrooda at sarai.net (zamrooda) Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 10:05:08 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] legal infobook Message-ID: <02051510050801.00647@legal.sarai.kit> Dear All, sarai is planning to bring out a legal infobook by the end of July 2002. For this we will like all help that is possible. The infobook will be a part of the sarai website along with being availabe in hard copy. Here is the plan: We first thematise the book....around topics that are both general interests and specific Sarai interest. Topics could be Human rights (it gives a huge sweep), Gay-lesbian rights, General legal info, Public domain debates within law, Media laws (specific details on copyright), Right to Information, Legal help, Databases on law, others (we all will think of more). The book will essentially provide resources and links (Here online and offline) to these thematics. Looking forward to contributions and suggestions. A peep into the work that has begun: http://www.supremecourtonline.com  site for the referances on the judgements of the supreme court. http://www.nic.in/lawmin/Legis.htm#CHRONOLOGICAL  chronoligical list of the various Indian Acts. http://indiacode.nic.in/incodis/acts.html  Alphabetical List - Central Acts http://indiacode.nic.in INDIA CODE INFORMATION SYSTEM (INCODIS) containing all the STATUTES of INDIA enacted by the PARLIAMENT http://indianpatents.org/  Free Online Access to First Indian Patent Searchable Database http://www.naukri.com/lls/tm/caselaw/nl.htm i mportant decisions on Intellectual Prperty Rights. http://www.scatindia.com/contactpage.htm Satellite and Cable TV: Indias largest magazine exclusively for satell ------------------------------------------------------- From shajijohnk at yahoo.co.in Wed May 15 11:02:23 2002 From: shajijohnk at yahoo.co.in (shaji john) Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 22:32:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Microsoft convicted of software piracy Message-ID: <20020515053223.56081.qmail@web8004.mail.in.yahoo.com> Hi All, Just in case if you all haven't seen it already. CheersShaji Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 19:43:37 -0700 (PDT) From: portsideMod Subject: Microsoft convicted of software piracy Wednesday May 08, 2002 - [ 09:32 AM GMT ] by Tina Gasperson - Did you know Microsoft was convicted of software piracy last year by a French court? Not many people do. The Commercial Court of Nanterre fined Microsoft 3 million francs because it illegally included another company's proprietary source code in SoftImage 3D, a top-of-the- line animation package. The only authoritative report on the event was written by Lionel Berthomier and first published in the French paper, Le Monde Informatique. An English version was reprinted at PCWorldMalta on November 28, 2001 -- about two months after the court's decision. Both Le Monde Informatique and PCWorldMalta are affiliated with IDG, the parent of InfoWorld and LinuxWorld. Yet, neither of these sites published a word about Microsoft's conviction on September 27, 2001. And nobody else in the segment of the tech media that's traditionally anti-Microsoft picked up the story, either -- not Slashdot, nor LinuxToday, nor NewsForge. Neither did any of the mainstream tech outlets. Nobody noticed this news. Nobody except Peruvian congressman Edgar David Villanueva Nu�ez. He's the man who is being hailed by some as Free Software's version of St. Thomas Aquinas because of his "Summa Compulogica" reply to a recent letter sent by Microsoft's Peru general manager, Juan Alberto Gonz�lez. That letter was deemed necessary by Microsoft because of a Peruvian bill that if passed would require its government to buy and use only Free Software. Buried within the brilliant missive penned by Nu�ez is this arrow: "Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one's own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity)." Nanterre? Microsoft? Violation of intellectual property? Piracy? Yes, the corporation that created the term "software piracy" was actually found guilty of committing that crime. Using the facts in our reference article at PCWorldMalta, we put together a basic timeline of the events leading up to the court decision: Late 1980s: Syn'X Relief, a Paris-based CGI animation company, develops Character, a proprietary animation tool, and registers it with the French National Intellectual Property Institute. 1992: SoftImage signs a contract with Syn'X to integrate the unique functions of Character into SoftImage 3D in exchange for royalties. 1994: SoftImage presents Syn'X with some nasty changes to the agreement: sign over your rights to the Character source code, or the deal's off. Syn'X refuses, and shortly after that, the news breaks that Microsoft has acquired SoftImage. 1995: The contract term between Syn'X and Microsoft/SoftImage is over, and Microsoft asserts that "some or all" of Character has been removed from SoftImage 3D. According to Syn'X, Microsoft/SoftImage has only removed one function, and there are at least eight others still remaining. Syn'X sends cease and desist letters and toward the end of the year files suit in the French courts. 1996: Syn'X, drained of resources, files for bankruptcy and goes out of business. 1997: "Character" authors join the fight to preserve their rights against SoftImage. Sept. 2001: The court issues a verdict: Microsoft is fined 3 million francs (a paltry USD $422,000). Microsoft says it will appeal the decision. What the article doesn't mention is that in 1998, shortly after the trial started, Microsoft rid itself of the burden of SoftImage by passing it on to Avid, an entity in which MS ended up owning a minority share as part of the deal. Avid now owns the trademark for and sells the product that was once known as Microsoft SoftImage 3D. Avid's published legal information shows that it claims to own all copyright for all software on the site. The biggest mystery is the obscurity of the story until now. "It looks to me as if the whole U.S. press missed the story," says Joe Barr, a technology journalist who frequently writes for IDG's LinuxWorld. "IDG has never held me back in writing stories about Microsoft, and I have written a few." Officials from IDG and SoftImage were not available for comment. --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020514/d35d0418/attachment.html From supreet at sarai.net Thu May 16 21:23:36 2002 From: supreet at sarai.net (Supreet Sethi) Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 11:53:36 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] My Ergonomic Nightmare Message-ID: <200205160511.HAA31814@mail.waag.org> A article in freshmeat.net. Interesting read: http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/407/ Supreet From sharan at sarai.net Fri May 17 11:40:24 2002 From: sharan at sarai.net (Awadhendra Sharan) Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 11:10:24 +0500 Subject: [Reader-list] I am Insecure In-Reply-To: <02050916211902.00649@legal.sarai.kit> Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20020517111024.007d2a80@mail.sarai.net> In response to Zamrooda: It's taken me some time to respond to this mail, precisely because I had to be certain about what can be an appropriate response. Despite all doubts, all 'ifs' and 'buts' about the 'reality' of secularism in India, I have no doubt that the place for minorities (and all others) is here. It is in the confidence to celebrate difference without prejudice, to struggle together to obtain decency & security and in the desire for a peaceful way of life. This is not an agenda for a programme. It is a reiteration of faith in the future of a country and its people. Awadhendra Sharan From announcements-request at sarai.net Sat May 18 10:30:39 2002 From: announcements-request at sarai.net (announcements-request at sarai.net) Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 07:00:39 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Announcements digest, Vol 1 #49 - 1 msg Message-ID: <200205180500.HAA15479@mail.waag.org> Send Announcements mailing list submissions to announcements at sarai.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to announcements-request at sarai.net You can reach the person managing the list at announcements-admin at sarai.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Announcements digest..." Today's Topics: 1. conference cfp (Kajri Jain) --__--__-- Message: 1 Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 15:26:53 -0700 From: "Kajri Jain" To: Subject: [Announcements] conference cfp NEW CITIES/NEW MEDIA Interdisciplinary Conference November 15-17, 2002 University of Southern California Los Angeles, California By way of photography, cinema, television and other visual media, urban space is communicated and made meaningful-be it from the effect of photography and cinema on the Modernist City to the impact of new technology on contemporary urban planning. Accordingly, with each paradigm shift in the aesthetics and form of mass media, our conceptualization of cities become transformed and altered. NEW CITIES/NEW MEDIA seeks to explore the ways in which urban landscapes have transformed new media production and how new media has played a role in transforming our urban landscapes-both historically as well as in current production. The conference is intended to bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners to address the inter-play between media, the production of cities and our collective urban experiences. The conference will take place on the University of Southern California campus the weekend of November 15-17, 2002. Please send a 500-1000 word abstract that addresses any aspect of the relationship between new cities and new media to the below address by July 30, 2002. Also include a one page curriculum vitae or short biography. Notification for acceptance by September 1, 2002. New Cities/New Media Conference c/o Amy Murphy, Assistant Professor University of Southern California School of Architecture Watt Hall, Room 203 Los Angeles, CA 90089 Or email abstract and CV/bio to: almurphy at usc.edu Kajri Jain Getty Fellow c/o Research and Education Getty Research Institute 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100 Los Angeles, CA 90049-1688 USA phone: +1-310-440-6900, ext. 1265 fax: +1-310-440-7782 email: --__--__-- _______________________________________________ Announcements mailing list Announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements End of Announcements Digest From brainstorm at i-love-u.ch Sat May 18 17:27:21 2002 From: brainstorm at i-love-u.ch (brainstorm) Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 13:57:21 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] [i love u] eurovision - may 2002 Message-ID: <3CE641A0.E03D81A0@i-love-u.ch> http://www.i-love-u.ch http://www.i-love-u.tv Last night my dear, I saw you on stage. Afterwards I took a woman up to my room. I had to. She sat herself upon me rocking back and forth violently, laughing, shaking her hair, a bottle of champagne in on hand, a broken glass in the other. But a light beam from the halogen lamp at the ceiling got caught in the sharp fragments. It caught my eye. And I remembered yours. How they were sparkling from the stage lights, applause all around, a rain of flowers showering down covering the floor with a carpet of roses. And you opened your arms wide, the light changed from red to blue, as if moonlight. And you sang. Crystal clear your voice, glasses exploding. I suddenly pushed the woman of me because my tears had began to flow and I heard myself sobbing. It lasted for about two minutes and then stopped. The woman down on the floor went quiet, staring at me in surprise. So I closed my eyes, threw the broken glass with its glitters, lights and tingles out of the window and went on making love to her, trying to forget it was not you. Maybe I will succeed some day. may issue 2002: "grand prix de la chanson de l'eurovision" monthly appearing e-zine for multimedia art, monthly changing subject, no-commerce platform for cyber-artists, photographers, screen-designer, e-musicians, movie-makers, comic-developers... visit http://www.i-love-u.ch http://www.i-love-u.tv die redaktion see editorial at http://www.i-love-u.ch Next month's theme: mona. in memory of our friend feel free to join us and to send contributions to response at i-love-u.ch From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Sun May 19 08:20:15 2002 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 22:50:15 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Edward Said - Crisis for American Jews Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020518/d66fd486/attachment.html From sumayar at freemail.absa.co.za Sat May 18 18:22:37 2002 From: sumayar at freemail.absa.co.za (sumayar) Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 14:52:37 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Fw: HoffmanWire: Leaking the 9/11 Charade Message-ID: <000801c1ff11$0c504a80$189bcba3@default> ----- Original Message ----- From: Michael A. Hoffman II To: Sent: Friday, May 17, 2002 9:15 PM Subject: HoffmanWire: Leaking the 9/11 Charade > THE HOFFMAN WIRE > Dedicated to Freedom of the Press, Investigative Reporting and Revisionist History > > Michael A. Hoffman II, Editor > http://www.hoffman-info.com/news.html > ******************************************* > > ============================================================ > Send the World's most popular eCards: birthdays, holidays, > and more. Send as many eCards as you want all YEAR long. > Click here to join Blue Mountain Unlimited! > http://click.topica.com/caaalNRa2iTuca3cac2a/BlueMountain > ============================================================ > > May 17, 2002 > > Leaking the 9/11 Charade > > by Michael A. Hoffman II > > http://www.hoffman-info.com/inferno.html > > It was an FBI operative who furnished the bomb that demolished a portion > of the World Trade Center in 1993. Two days ago, on May 15, we learned > that in August of 2001, an FBI agent in Minneapolis met with alleged > 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and discussed flying a plane into > the World Trade Center. > > Cryonic freeze/thaw style, we are also now told that an FBI "memorandum" > reveals that the president's Intelligence agencies had advance knowledge > of the Sept. 11 terror attacks attributed to "Osama" bin Laden. "Several > lawmakers have expressed disbelief that the memorandum failed to set off > alarms at FBI headquarters." > > Last December, journalist Carl Cameron told Brit Hume of Fox News about > Israelis "tracking" al-Qaida agents in the U.S. in the weeks and months > before Sept. 11. On March 5 Le Monde newspaper in Paris published a > report about an "Israeli spy network" consisting of secret agents posing > as "art students." Le Monde reported that the Israeli "art students" > met with FBI and Justice Department operatives. > > Many of these undercover Israelis lived in Florida, in the Hollywood > and Fort Lauderdale areas where ten of the alleged 9/11 hijackers > resided. In Hollywood, several Israeli agents were in residence at 4220 > Sheridan St. They just happened to be living there at the same time > that accused 9/11 "mastermind" Mohammed Atta and some of his aides were > living down the street at 3389 Sheridan St. in Hollywood. > > Up until May 15, the cover story intended for consumption by conspiracy > researchers and investigators was that the Israeli spy ring knew about > the planning for the Sept. 11 attacks but, "failed to share this > knowledge with U.S. Intelligence." > > But after taking office, President Bush ordered the FBI to thwart > Intelligence probes into the domestic activies of the bin Laden family, > which had been initiated during the Clinton administration. Until Sept. > 11, the bin Ladens had been doing business in the U.S. with the Carlyle > Group, an elite investment firm in which former President George Bush > Sr. served as an executive. > > As reported in the October issue of this writer's Revisionist History > newsletter, prior to involvement with Carlyle, the bin Ladens were in > business with George W. Bush, who made his first million in partnership > with Usama bin Laden's elder brother, Salim, in the Arbusto Energy > Corporation. Salim bin Laden was subsequently killed in a plane crash in > Texas. > > The notion that the United States in the year 2002 is a sovereign nation > is false.The fact is, beginning with U.S. Intelligence, the Federal > government has devolved in recent years into a virtual Israeli colony. > Dual-loyalty Jewish-American Israeli partisans occupy command posts at > the Department of Justice (no. 3) and the Department of Defense (no. 2). > > > Highly compromised gentiles such as Secretary of the Army Thomas White > serve at the sufferance of the CIA's Zionist-dominated, NC-9 > counter-intelligence section. White is subject to indictment at any time > for his former involvement with Enron Energy Services' $10 billion > "Ricochet" and "Loadshift" swindles in the California electricity > market. Blackmail and bribery maintain "discipline" among U.S. > officials not otherwise inclined to betray the American people for the > sake of the Master Race. > > > ============================================================ > Sponsor a child today through Children International. Give > a desperately poor child hope for a brighter future. For > only $15 a month you can make a difference! > http://click.topica.com/caaajW9a2iTuca3cac2f/ChildrenInternational > ============================================================ > > Hoffman is a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press > > The HOFFMAN WIRE is a public service of Independent History and Research, Box 849, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho 83816 USA > > 24 Hour Revisionist News Bureau: http://www.hoffman-info.com/news.html > > Subscribe: HoffmanWire-subscribe at topica.com > > Disclaimer: The Hoffman Wire is a controversial and politically incorrect e-mail letter intended only for those who have requested it. We have a strict anti-spamming policy. The views expressed in the Hoffman Wire are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of advertisers or the transmitter. > > Freedom of the Press: A hallowed right. > Responsible Dissent: A contribution to understanding and dialogue. > > ==^================================================================ > This email was sent to: sumayar at freemail.absa.co.za > > EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a2iTuc.a3cac2 > Or send an email to: HoffmanWire-unsubscribe at topica.com > > T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! > http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register > ==^================================================================ > From info at art-action.org Sun May 19 21:20:09 2002 From: info at art-action.org (Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 17:50:09 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] IMPORTANT ::: CALL FOR ENTRIES ::: APPEL A PROPOSITION ::: References: <200205190448.GAA26766@mail.waag.org> Message-ID: <3CE7C9B1.1136979F@art-action.org> Please foward this information / Merci de faire suivre cette information ||||| festival #6.7 ||||| RENCONTRES INTERNATIONALES PARIS/BERLIN 2002 ||||| 2002's PARIS/BERLIN INTERNATIONAL MEETINGS ||||| http://art-action.org ||||| cinema_video_installation_performance_audio_multimedia CALL FOR ENTRIES: until the 30th of June, 2001 APPEL A PROPOSITION: jusqu'au 30 juin 2002 in Paris: autumn, 2002 / in Berlin: spring, 2003 à Paris: automne 2002 / à Berlin: printemps 2003 TEXTE EN FRANÇAIS PLUS BAS DANS LE MESSAGE ______________ ENGLISH TEXT _____________ Please foward this information A complete festival’s presentation is available on our web site: http://art-action.org Please feel free to contact us for all question. The International Paris/Berlin festival is a transdisciplinary action, favoring contemporary creation in different fields: film, video, visual arts and multimedia, to create a meeting space for exchanges between various forms of artistic language and their audiences. By bringing together the diverse mediums of creation and their respective audiences and allowing them to communicate, the Rencontres becomes an open event in which the specificities and links between languages and gazes can emerge within evolving contemporary production. THE CALL FOR ENTRIES is open for film cycles, 35mm, 16mm, super 8, and video, without any restriction of length or type ; for installation, performance, multimedia and sound creation cycles. Proposals are free, without any limitation of country. All individual or organism can send one or several proposals to the Meetings' programming. The next festival will take place in Paris in Autumn 2002, and in Berlin in Spring 2003. This non-commercial event is organized by roARatorio, a non-profit organization within artistic and cultural aim. CINEMA AND VIDEO CYCLES ** Fiction / short, medium, full length films - 35 mm, 16 mm, super 8 and video ** Experimental film - 35 mm, 16 mm, super 8 ** Video art / Experimental video - All video formats ** Documentaries - All formats ** Animation movie - All formats OTHER CYCLES ** Intervention - performance art, happening ** Installation - sound, video and multimedia ** Interactive writing - Network happening, online work, net art, forum, CD-rom ** Sound creation - Lecture, sound poetry, experimental music, concert projection Cinema and video proposals are received on VHS videotape. All proposals are received by mail, enclosing the ENTRY FORM filled, dated and signed, UNTIL THE 30th OF JUNE, 2002. The entry form, and all infomations about the festival, are available on our web site http://art-action.org (follow links to "call for entries" - the website is posted in English, French, German ann Spanish), or by email info at art-action.org (on request, entry form sent in the message body or in attachment), or by fax 33 1 42 33 36 44. TO DOWNLOAD THE ENTRY FORM (in english, german and french) pdf format (310Ko): http://www.art-action.org/entry_form_paris_berlin_2002.pdf If pdf format downloading is too slow, the entry form is available in html format (quick load 19Ko) : Entry form in english: http://www.art-action.org/site/en/ripb/fiche.htm Entry form in german: http://www.art-action.org/site/de/ripb/fiche.htm Entry form in spanish: http://www.art-action.org/site/es/ripb/fiche.htm Entry form in french: http://www.art-action.org/site/fr/ripb/fiche.htm Please feel free to contact us for all question. Best regards, For the festival's staff Nathalie Hénon ___ roARaTorio ___ 51 rue Montorgueil ___ 75002 Paris - France ___ tel: 33 1 40 26 66 34 ___ fax: 33 1 42 33 36 44 ___ email: info at art-action.org ___ web: http://art-action.org In 2001, supported by : DRAC Ile-de-France - French Ministry for Culture and Communication, the Regional Council of Ile-de-France, the City of Paris, the french-german cultural channel Arte, the Goethe Institute in Paris, The National high school for arts in Paris, the National high school for design, the Canadian Embassy in Germany, the Neederland Embassy in France and Germany, the Belgium Ministry of the Flemish community, the Japanese Fondation, Citroen, Philips France, the Ratp. The Meetings receive the patronage of the German Embassy and of the Unesco. ________________________________________ __________ TEXTE EN FRANÇAIS ___________ __________ TEXTE EN FRANÇAIS ___________ APPEL A PROPOSITION: jusqu'au 30 juin 2002 à Paris: automne 2002 / à Berlin: printemps 2003 ________________________________________ Merci de faire suivre cette information Une présentation complète des Rencontres est disponible sur notre site http://art-action.org N'hésitez pas à nous contacter par email pour toute question. Les Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin proposent une action transdisciplinaire en cinéma, vidéo, arts plastiques et multimédia, visant à ouvrir un espace où se croisent et se rencontrent différents langages, différents publics. Notre volonté de décloisonner différents milieux de création, différents espaces, ainsi que leurs publics, et de les faire se rencontrer, accompagne notre action pour un événement ouvert, à même de faire émerger spécificités et correspondances des langages, des regards, au sein d'une création contemporaine en mouvement. L'APPEL A PROPOSITION est ouvert pour les cycles cinéma 35 mm, 16 mm, super 8, et vidéo, sans restriction de genre et de durée ; et en arts plastiques pour les installations, performances, créations multimédias et créations sonores. Les propositions sont gratuites, sans limitation de provenance géographique. Tout individu ou organisme peut effectuer une ou plusieurs propositions à la programmation des Rencontres. Les prochaines Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin auront lieu à Paris à l'automne 2002, et à Berlin au printemps 2003. Cet événement non commercial et sans compétition est mis en place par roARaTorio, association à but culturel. CYCLES FILMS ET VIDEOS ** Fiction / Court, moyen et long métrage - Tout support film et vidéo ** Cinéma expérimental - 35 mm, 16 mm et super 8 ** Art vidéo / Vidéo expérimentale - Tout support vidéo ** Documentaire - Tout support film et vidéo ** Film d'animation - Tout support film et vidéo AUTRE CYCLES ** Intervention - Performance, projection-performance, intervention ** Installation - Installation sonore, installation vidéo, installation multimédia ** Ecriture interactive, multimédia - Action en réseau, œuvre en ligne, net art, forum, CD-rom ** Création sonore - Lecture, poésie sonore, musique expérimentale, projection-concert Les propositions cinéma et vidéo sont reçues sur cassette VHS. Toutes les propositions sont reçues, par courrier, accompagnées d'une FICHE DE PROPOSITION remplie, JUSQU’AU 30 JUIN 2002. La fiche de proposition, ainsi que toutes les informations relatives aux Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin sont disponibles sur notre site web http://art-action.org (suivre le lien vers "appel à proposition" – le site est accessible en français, anglais, allemand, espagnol), ou par email info at art-action.org (à la demande, fiche incluse dans le message ou en document attaché), ou par fax au 33 1 42 33 36 44. TELECHARGER LA FICHE DE PROPOSITION trilingue (français, anglais, allemand) au format pdf (310Ko): http://www.art-action.org/entry_form_paris_berlin_2002.pdf Si ce format est trop lent à ouvrir ou télécharger, la fiche de proposition est également disponible au format html (chargement rapide 19Ko) : Fiche en français : http://www.art-action.org/site/fr/ripb/fiche.htm Fiche en anglais: http://www.art-action.org/site/en/ripb/fiche.htm Fiche en allemand: http://www.art-action.org/site/de/ripb/fiche.htm Fiche en espagnol: http://www.art-action.org/site/es/ripb/fiche.htm N'hésitez pas à nous contacter par email pour toute question. Cordialement. Pour l'équipe des Rencontres Nathalie Hénon ___ roARaTorio ___ 51 rue Montorgueil ___ 75002 Paris - France ___ tel: 33 1 40 26 66 34 ___ fax: 33 1 42 33 36 44 ___ email: info at art-action.org ___ web: http://art-action.org En 2000-2001 avec le soutien de la DRAC Ile-de-France - Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, le Conseil Régional d'Ile-de-France, la Ville de Paris, le Goethe Institut-Paris, la chaîne culturelle franco-allemande Arte, l'Ensci-Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle, Ensba-Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, l'Ambassade du Canada en Allemagne, l'Ambassade des Pays-Bas en France et en Allemagne, le Ministère de la Culture de la Communauté Flamande de Belgique, la Fondation du Japon, Citroën, Philips France, la Ratp. Les Rencontres reçoivent le parrainage de l'Ambassade d'Allemagne en France et de l'Unesco. From bhrigu at sarai.net Mon May 20 04:33:26 2002 From: bhrigu at sarai.net (bhrigu at sarai.net) Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 23:03:26 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Nationalism after Social Science Message-ID: <200205192303.BAA31846@mail.waag.org> Nationalism after Social Science --------------------------------------- "It's taken me some time to respond to this mail, precisely because I had to be certain about what can be an appropriate response. Despite all doubts, all 'ifs' and 'buts' about the 'reality' of secularism in India, I have no doubt that the place for minorities (and all others) is here. It is in the confidence to celebrate difference without prejudice, to struggle together to obtain decency & security and in the desire for a peaceful way of life. This is not an agenda for a programme. It is a reiteration of faith in the future of a country and its people." Awadhendra Sharan -------------------------------------- I felt I should respond to Deepu (Awadhendra Sharan)'s mail, which I see as something new and interesting that has been said in the context of this reader list. It can be read and perhaps even criticised as a na� 'reiteration of faith' in something a lot of people have developed the profoundest doubts about, but I choose to read it otherwise. What excites me about the posting are two things - who says it and where it has been said. Let me begin with the second. The speech context is that of this reader list (and that is of central importance. I don't think there is any other forum, where I would be confident enough of the politics of the community of speakers/listeners to make the sort of argument I am making here. Neither would i have paid as much attention to the above posting as i do now, had it been said anywhere else). Within this reader list, I would say that the critique of the nation-state has been variously understood and espoused. The political position that 'solutions' will follow once we dismantle the ideology of nationalism, has often been taken - sometimes a bit too easily. Let me move back to the first question - who made the utterance? This further interests me since I know the speaker personally. The stance taken in the posting is not wholly 'rational'. Strictly speaking, it is somewhat untenable within the framework of contemporary social science. And I find that exciting - someone who is very aware of Dalit Politics, who knows very well that in the most progressive circles of intellectual and activist discourse, this is the day and age of transnational solidarities, the rainbow coalition - a person who has read Partha Chatterjee, Subaltern Studies, the works - and understood each of these better than I probably ever will, can still say something like this. How do you categorise and think about this sort of sentiment? Hesitantly, since anything to do with the nation has been misunderstood and misused to such disastrous effect, I would call this 'residual nationalism' i.e. nationalism after social science (let me also clarify that I am using 'social science' to signify a set of ideas that critique the nation-state. Meaning you need not even be aware of the existence of Benedict Anderson or Partha Chatterjee, you can also have experienced those ideas or lived them in ways very different from that of reading). In the context of the sub-continent, this 'residue' would mean holding on to some notion of the 'idea of India', after that idea and its practice have taken a severe beating, and that beating has been fully deserved - politically, theoretically and morally. I would give this residual nationalism a self-critical, pragmatic, and positive tone. This is a nationalism which is aware of the seething inequalities and conflicts which make up the real and imagined space of India. It is a careful nationalism, which knows that any form of identity, when over-privileged, can rise, like an A.R.Rahman crescendo and leave violent silences in its cymbal crashing climax. At its best, it is a situated form of openness - one that supports the transnational coalition against practices within itself but knows that the members of that coalition need a place to stay once the Durban conference is over, and that place can, within the present political geography that makes up the world, only be within the constructed boundaries of particular nation-states. This is not an argument for the maintenance of the status quo. Instead, it is the confidence in oneself (and the ability to redefine what constitutes oneself) that undergirds useful, transformative politics. I experienced 'residual nationalism' a few weeks ago when writing an email, the relevant section of which I have attached below. The background for the email is as follows: A Pakistan born, British national who was, and still remains, one of my closest friends wrote me the following statement - "I have been following the events in Gujrat and it is my conclusion that India is a racist country." In the one year I spent studying in London I had spent many evenings with him and on several occasions he had mentioned the 'plight' of Muslims in India to me. He was also quite upset because the parents of the Hindu girl he was seeing, had recently expressed their strong displeasure at their relationship on the grounds that he was Muslim and was born in Pakistan. He told me how surprised he was that urban, educated and well-to-do Indians could hold such prejudices. Here is the mail I wrote him: Dear yyy, You know, I was thinking about what you said, about xxx's parents being hostile to you and actually, I am not that surprised. What I have slowly begun to realise is that if there is any 'tradition' in the subcontinent, then it is one of mutual hostility over any kind of difference - caste, class, region, language and above all, religion. I am beginning to think that Secularism, and communal harmony is something that has been a myth or more accurately, a dream. Not only a liberal, modernist one but one that has existed in different strands of thought for the past many centuries (recorded for instance in various genres of poetry dating back hundreds of years). This dream unfortunately, has never been able to acutalise itself in the face of recurrent suspicion and hostility between Hindus and Muslims alike. But there is a difference between a more harmless kind of mutual dislike and active murderous violence (ashis nandy's new book deals with precisely this question. He has written about Cochin where according to him, 3 different religions have co-existed, disliking each other for the past many centuries without a recorded riot or violence of any sort). Riots, like in Gujrat are shocking and shameful and the present situation in India under the BJP and the Sangh Parivar is particularly horrifying and increasingly so in the last few months where we have seen government inaction quite clearly in the face of maddening amounts of evidence. For instance, the mainstream media, the National Human Rights Commission, and many many other organizations have blacklisted the police force, the Chief minister and other members of the Gujrat government and demanded its immediate dismissal in various reports. This has not been done at all. Instead the BJP has started using even harder rhetoric. A law has recently been passed called the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which gives it the freedom to pretty much arrest anyone they want to. Despite all the protests from mainstream opposition parties, dharnas by schools, universities, NGO's (some of which I took part in) things have been getting worse and worse. Having said all this I would still strongly disagree with what I think you mentioned in your mail which suggested some kind of endemic 'racism' in India against Muslims. The word 'Racism', as a kind of sustained situation of disadvantage in various spheres of life can be used to some extent I think in relation to Dalits, who have faced discrimination over several centuries, but not so easily for others. I might have made an argument for some form of secularism about a year ago, but post-Gujrat I don't think I would. This, despite the fact that in private and government schools in India, you still are taught to believe that all religions are equal, the constitution guarantees freedom to practice whatever religion blah blah. What I mean is that I grew up thinking that secularism is the natural way of things and religion is a very minor thing, slowly to realise that wasn't exactly how it worked. I would however, also argue that this form of wished-for-equality and goodwill is not a complete lie - there have been presidents, prime ministers and political leaders in India of various genders and religions, as opposed to say, the U.S. which has never had a non-white, non-protestant, non-male president. Anyway, to get back to the point, firstly, it would be more accurate, I think to talk about it in sheer numbers. The only country with a larger number of Muslims in the world is Indonesia. As has been said many times before, India has more Muslims than Pakistan. Given the density of this population, it would be quite difficult to talk about 'Muslims' as any one kind of people. But that is a common social science argument that we are both well aware of, so I won't use a tack that I know you would expect me to use. At a very basic and somewhat obvious level, if we were to look at the singular category of 'Muslims', we could say that in India, the leading films stars and scriptwriters (and at the popular level, these are perhaps the most 'public' of all personalities) are Muslim without anyone referring to or thinking about them as such, there are muslim TV personalities, leading academics, news anchors and reporters in all the leading newspapers and channels, industrialists, well-to-do upper-middle class people and people in all sorts of classes, vocations and geographical areas within the country. Most of these people have as much in common with the people killed in Gujrat as I do, and have lived reasonably stable lives without threat and have continued to have as much freedom of speech as anyone else. If I was to leave aside all social science warnings against categorising people with any one identity or using a term such as 'common man' (and you know how much I dislike that term) the question I would ask is this - is the hypothetical Muslim person in India any worse off than the hypothetical Muslim person in say Pakistan or Afghanistan or Iran or Iraq? I would think probably not and it could even be argued that this 'average' person in India would be freer to do and say things in terms of criticising the government than in many of these other places which have had shaky democracies, weak economies, very strict codes of conduct and an extremely exploitative and small elite class. Also consider what is usually referred to as the polar opposite of the countries I named above - U.S.A, with the privileges in terms of freedom of speech and demeanour afforded to most of its citizens. The first 100 years of its existence, and subsequent periods when it consolidated and amassed a great deal of wealth were characterized by two of the most heinous crimes ever known to humanity - the genocide of the Native American population (and we wonder why they support Israel!) and the enslavement of the African-Americans, which continued for well over 2 and a half centuries. Consider also (and this is a history you are much more aware of than I), the indignities that continue to be handed to immigrants in European countries and the struggles for the recognition of 'difference' there. Consider then, that the subcontinent has had just slightly over 50 years of self-government. Anyway, returning to India at present. I could also argue that a party as lumpen as the BJP feels the need to have Muslim members in important posts and in its cabinet (Omar Abdullah, Sikander Bakht) but that can be quite an eyewash so let me not stretch that too far. I think at present where things become really dicey is on the margins of political activity, as soon as it can be subsumed under the rhetoric of 'security'. And that is one of the problems with the BJP that no one knows how to deal with and which is becoming increasingly worse. What I mean is that under the BJP, a jehadi in Kashmir or any sort of Muslim 'dissident' (and the BJP has been able to stretch the definition of a dissident quite liberally) has a far far greater chance of being arrested than an equally violent RSS or Bajrang Dal member in Orrisa. However, we should also consider that the BJP and Hindutva in its more mainstream avatar, is a relatively recent phenomenon, not more than about 10 years old. Before that there was a 40 year period when the government and state policy tried quite hard to propagate a kind of modernist secularism as the 'correct' form of belief. This has not always been easy because the more insidious Hindu Right has a much longer history. There were pressures for instance, even on Nehru to declare India as a 'Hindu' state after Pakistan was formed as an Islamic nation but these pressures were resisted at the level of state politics until relatively recently. Further, even in the present situation it is not as if the BJP has some kind of uncontested, dominant rule. At the state level, they are now only in power in 3 states - Gujrat, Himachal Pradesh and Goa. What one hopes is that they will lose the next general election and some kind of backlash to their form of identity politics will start. I mean, I have no great conclusion to make but what I would say is that on the whole things are pretty bad, probably worse than they ever have been but I would certainly argue against the fact that India as a whole is 'racist' towards 'Muslims'. Islam, in many different forms, has and always will be an intrinsic part of India (Hindi, the national language, to take one of a 1000 examples, was pretty much invented by Amir Khusrau in conversation with Nizamuddin Aulia). What is much harder to deal with is the phenomenon of the riot, in all its devastating horror. Historically, there have been periodic riots, on not necessarily 'religious' grounds, in Gujrat and other parts of India and Pakistan for centuries. What is scary at present in India is that a party like the BJP has managed to gain a lot of ground and help organise a lot of the violence (on the other hand, what is encouraging is that the much larger media presence, particularly TV has made it much harder for them to pretend that nothing happened, which was the case with the Congress anti-sikh riots in 1984 and the emergency in the 70s). Believe me, there has been widespread shock, disbelief and anger within India about what has happened and there are many people trying to fight against it. In whatever small and inconsequential way, I consider myself one of them. Love, Bhrigu From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Mon May 20 14:30:34 2002 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 20 May 2002 09:00:34 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Slavoj Zizek in LRB Message-ID: <20020520090034.26111.qmail@webmail20.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020520/f0e6b7fc/attachment.pl From shohini at giasdl01.vsnl.net.in Mon May 20 07:58:34 2002 From: shohini at giasdl01.vsnl.net.in (shohini) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 07:58:34 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Autobiographical Fim by Tareque Message-ID: <000401c1ffb2$6e4baf80$9879c8cb@shohini> Filmmakers from Bangladesh Tareq and Cathrine Masud, makers of Muktir Gaan (The Songs of Freedom) have recently made their first feature film Matir Moyna. The government of Bangladesh has banned the film. I am sending three news items relating to Matir Moyna (The Clay Bird) that inaugurated the Director's Fortnight at Cannes. 1) MATIR MOINA GETS STANDING OVATION AT CANNES 2) VARIETY REVIEW 3) LETTER TO EDITOR MATIR MOINA GETS STANDING OVATION AT CANNES Cannes, France Last Thursday May 16th, the Directors' Fortnight section of the world renowned Cannes Film Festival opened with "Matir Moina". Marie-Perez Macia, the Fortnight Director, called director Tareque Masud, producer Catherine Masud, artists Jayanto Chattopadhyay and Rokeya Prachy, and Marin Karmitz, chief of the French distribution company MK2, to the stage. Macia, who wore an urna and salwar kamise in honor of the occasion, gave the official opening address in French and English. Rokeya Prachy announced the opening of the festival in Bengali, which was followed by thunderous applause. At the end of the screening, there was an emotional ovation from the audience. Andience members embraced the artists with warm and tearful reactions. In response to public demand, three special additional screenings have been organized by the Festival, two on May 18th at 11:30 AM and 3:30 PM, and one on May 19th at 7:30 PM. On May 17th MK2's commercial release of the film was launched in cinema halls in Paris, in conjunction with a nationwide release of the film through major French distributors UGC and Gaumont. ---- VARIETY REVIEW VARIETY, May 18th, 2002 Cannes Special - Day 4 The Clay Bird (Matir Moina) By David Rooney Documaker Tareque Masud makes a confident transition to narrative drama with "The Clay Bird". The filmmaker returns to his childhood in the politically turbulent period before East Pakistan gained independence and became Bangladesh. This accomplished, emotionally involving film-an intimately observed story of divisions within a family that reflect the wider clash between moderate and extremist views-will have universal resonance as it echoes other secular and political conflicts throughout the world. Its wealth of cultural and folkloric detail also should help secure festival interest as well as modest exposure on the arthouse fringe. Joint opener of the Directors' Fortnight marks the sidebar's first-ever selection from Bangladesh. Action takes place in the late 1960's as a democratic movement gained force in its bid to overthrow military rule. The attempt succeeded in 1969 but the martial law government that followed disregarded the subsequent democratic election results. This led to a violent civil war that brought an estimated 3 million casualties among Bengali freedom fighters and created almost 10 million refugees before independence was finally achieved in 1971. Against this backdrop, stern orthodox Muslim Kazi (Jayanto Chattopadhyay) becomes increasingly concerned about the influence of his free-thinking young brother on the former's preteen son Anu (Nurul Islam Bablu). Disturbed by the boy's enthusiasm for the village Hindu festivities, Kazi packs him off to a madrasah, or Islamic school, where he is trained in the rigorous ways of monastic life. Miserable and lonely, Anu befriends underdog Rokon (Russell Farazi), feeling a kinship with his outcast status. When Anu's younger sister takes ill and dies after homeopathic doctor Kazi refuses to have her properly treated, the children's grieving mother Ayesha (Rokeya Prachy) grows further apart from her stubborn but confused husband, who has forced a life of traditional confinement upon her. The increasing divide between them parallels the political clash in the country and the emergence of opposing views within the madrasah. Bittersweet final act takes place as the Army descends on the village, comma Ayesha's decision for her own and her son's future transmitting a spirit of hope and independence. Ideas such as the conflict between and Islamic beliefs and armed violence occasionally are addressed in slightly didactic dialogue. But the script-written by the director and his American wife Catherine Masud-deftly uses the family drama to mirror the nationwide political ferment, outlining the historical context clearly and accessibly stating its case for tolerance with subtle eloquence. Music also is used resourcefully for the central themes, via Bengali oratorical duets and other songs performed in village concerts. The drama builds a gentle, fluid rhythm, shifting between family's home life and Anu's time in the madrasah while keeping the political picture in focus through street protests and radio broadcasts. Pic is handsomely shot in soft natural light and warm interiors with a leisurely, graceful camera style. Showing a strong personal connection to the material, director Masud coaxes lovely, natural performances from the inexperienced child cast as well as poignant work from the adult leads. --- LETTER TO EDITOR (Sent to DAILY STAR, BANGLADESH for publication) There They Go Again. The American Judge Potter Stewart once wrote, "Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself." Judging by the recent actions of the Bangladeshi government, the last 6 months marked a supremely unconfident time in its history. First, the government rashly banned the "Cocoon of Terror" issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review. As Afsan Chowdhury waggishly noted, "We, the national media, criticize the government and say everything against them but they end up banning the FEER for a story that has nothing original in it." Then came the action against ETV television channel. Now the censor board has refused a certificate to Tareq Masud's new film "Matir Moina" The timing of this ham-handed attempt at censorship could not have been worse for the government. The ban was announced two days before the film was due to open the prestigious Director's Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. Now the government will have to face the firestorm of bad publicity that will follow this action. In the end, after receiving the inevitable protest letters and condemnation from free-speech groups, the powers-that-be will have to retreat (egg on their face) and grant the certificate. The result will be another public relations disaster for a government that already risks becoming an international pariah due to global negative publicity about attacks against Hindu community, inclusion of two Jamaat members in their cabinet and the infamous FEER cover story. Why do Bangladeshi governments (both the AL and the BNP) keep doing these things? The list of failed censorship attempts by various governments is endless (Farhad Mazhar's "Ansar Rebellion" article, Badruddin Umar's language movement, etc.). In almost every case, after repeated national and international protests, the government has had to retreat from an announced ban. But none of our politicians seem to learn anything from past fiascos. This is not Tareq Masud's first brush with the censors. In 1996, I first met him while he was being interviewed by BHORER KAGOJ. In that interview, he lamented the refusal of the censorship board to grant the certificate to his documentary MUKTHIR GAAN (Song of Freedom). When the documentary was finally released, it won hearts and minds across the country and several international awards. In the end, MATIR MOINA will also prevail, and this government will learn the hard way that attempts at censorship will always backfire. Naeem Mohaiemen, New York Editorial Government bans Matir Moina, hopefully for the moment Are we becoming what some quarters are accusing us of? MATIR Moina, the film by Tariq and Catherine Masud which depicts the experiences of a young boy from a highly conservative family in a madrassah and his interactions with his family, school and society in the back drop of the 6-point and 11-point movements of the late sixties. The film ends where our Liberation War begins, with the mass killing by Pakistan Army and the beginning of our armed struggle. The film is going to be screened at the Cannes Film Festival tonight. This is a unique honour for Bangladesh and the film has already received positive reviews at home and abroad. Just at this juncture, Bangladesh Film Censor Board has banned the film. Given that the Board had earlier greenlighted it and chose to withdraw its consent afterwards displays that a malaise deeper than cinematic ethics is at work. Out of the total eight members who saw the film first time around at the Board, six members decided in favour of an uncut version while one dissented and the other agreed to a qualified consent. But now the ban has come saying that it is "religiously sensitive". Given that the film depicts madrassah education in a very sensitive light and presents the socio-religious contradictions in any society trying to adjust to the modern world, one is left wondering what caused the ire of the censors. In fact the film takes a very sympathetic view of madrassah education which contrasts radically with Western depiction of Muslim religious education in such institutions. Whatever has been shown in the movie would be critical of any religion based education system in any society in any part of the world. The Censor Board is confusing depiction of madrassah education as a criticism of our religion. The government is aware that Bangladesh was billed as "cocoon of terror" and as a fundamentalist country. On our part we have proclaimed ourselves as a tolerant, liberal and democratic Muslim majority society. Independent international observers also endorsed the idea of a liberal Bangladesh not run by a narrow minded theocracy. The latest decision on Matir Moina will definitely influence world opinion against us and give fodder to those who malign our image. The film has been a personal and articulate rendering of memories on a subject which has never been dealt with appropriately. There is no evidence of the reasons for which the film has been banned. Which leaves us to ponder what reasons led the Film Censor Board to withdraw an official go ahead. We cannot also understand why some specific "cuts" were not suggested before refusing permission altogether. Just as the Censor Board reversed its original positive decision to a negative one, we urge them now to reconsider their decision once again for the sake of our national interest, which is to establish ourselves as a tolerant, liberal and democratic country in the eyes of the international community. Matir Moina director to appeal with Censor Board Staff Correspondent Director of feature film Matir Moina Tareque Masud has said he would appeal to the Censor Board for certification of his film, banned by the government recently. In a press statement sent from the Cannes Film Festival in France yesterday, he said the film has already earned the honour of being the inaugural movie of "Directors' Fortnight" session at the festival and through positive response of the media, it was creating a positive image of Bangladesh. Tareque expressed his surprise at the government refusal to certify his movie without giving any hint which parts of it the Censor Board found objectionable. "As a former madrassah student, I have portrayed not only the religious tolerance and broadmindedness of Bangladeshi society but also a positive, credible and objective picture of the country against the negative propaganda of western media about madrassahs," he said. The director said his film portrayed his actual experience that there were broadminded and non- political persons in a madrassah, who had a positive role in the freedom struggle, contrary to popular perception. His portrayal of madrassah education contrasts radically with western depiction of such institutions, he noted. Referring to earlier decision of the Censor Board, he said, "The full quorum of the Censor Board saw the film in my presence and through majority votes decided to certify it. The print of the film was returned to me and I was told that the certificate would be ready by the next day." Two days later,Tareque was told that the higher authorities would promptly issue the certificate and he arranged screening of the film again. Later, the Censor Board verbally told him to reduce a scene showing processions of the 1969 mass movement. "In the bigger interest, I reduced the sound level," he added. Tareque observed that some over- enthusiastic political activists have influenced a section in the government to ban the film-- a decision that would actually lower the image of the government abroad. He expressed the hope that the government will re-evaluate the film and see it for what it is, a very sensitive portrayal of a multi-cultural and a multi-religious Bangladesh. Matir Moina Tintin, Dhaka I really don't think it's the place for the government to tell me what I can or cannot watch. I should be allowed to watch Matir Moina if I so wish and from the reviews I have read so far it doesn't sound the least bit communal. Just because a film addresses issues of religion should not make it too sensitive for our poor eyes, especially since we are starved of good Bengali films anyway. The irony is that people in Cannes will be watching a movie made in my country while my government denies me the right to do so as well. I think the censors spend too much time watching buxom women swinging their hips in bad parodies to Hindi films. So much so that anything out of that stereotype is too sensitive for them. Matir Moina denied certificate Staff Correspondent The government has banned the feature film "Matir Moina", terming it religiously sensitive. The film has qualified for screening at the Cannes International Film Festival on May 16. On April 27, the majority of the Film Censor Board members suggested that the film be released uncut. It was expected to be given certificate within a day or two, sources said. The 98-minute film that portrays childhood of the director of the film, Tareque Masud, who grew up in a village and was educated in a madrassah, in the backdrop of the rising mass movement of the late sixties. "I made the movie as a fellow Muslim and wanted to inform people about the life in a madrassah that has both strict and liberal teachers," director Tareque Masud told The Daily Star late April. But on May 9, the Film Censor Board (FCB) of the Ministry of Information in a letter to Tareque Masud said the film should not be projected in the public as it contains materials religiously sensitive. The letter said the film's prayer for censor certificate has been cancelled under the Section of FCB Code 16(5). It, however, said an appeal for further consideration could be submitted. Director Tareque Masud and Producer Katherine Masud are now on a visit to France. Tareque was notified about the FCB's refusal to issue certificate. Tareque and Katherine will appeal for reconsideration of the FCB's decision, the sources said. Information Secretary Mirza Tosaddak Hossain Beg meanwhile told the BBC Bangla service that there would be no problem, if the film is screened at the Cannes festival. "I did not find anything objectionable that could hurt religious sentiments," a member of the censor board, who watched the film during its first screening on May 27, told The Daily Star. During the first screening, eight board members watched the film. Six members suggested that the film be released uncut, one refrained from commenting on it and the other gave a note of dissent for verification of recitation of the verses from the holy Qur'an in the film. Later, the board decided that the film must be screened before the full board. However, the board did not take any step to re-screen it. Information Minister Toriqul Islam, Secretary Mirza Tosaddak Hossain Beg, Vice-Chairman of the FCB, Director General of the Film Development Board and other officials on Monday watched the film. The film was placed before the FCB on April 21 for certificate, sources said. Meanwhile, the film has received tremendous response from the French media and film critics at the Cannes. They praised the film for depicting Bangladesh as a land of religious tolerance and tremendous cultural diversity. Contrary to the image of Bangladesh, as recently portrayed by a section of western media, the film depicts Bangladeshi society as a liberal Muslim one, they observed. The movie has been acclaimed for its technical excellence at the Cannes Film Festival, the sources added. Film-maker recalls his past to take Bangladesh to Cannes Matir Moina or The Clay Bird, which on Thursday inaugurates the directors' fortnight at Cannes, marks a journey into the past for Bangladesh's Tareque Masud, who hopes his film will show the world a nuanced view of Islamic religious schools. The film, portraying a Bangladeshi boy attending a madrasa against the backdrop of political turmoil, is deeply personal for Masud, who spent eight years in such a seminary until the bloody 1971 independence war against Pakistan. "The making of Matir Moina was not only a return to my own childhood, but also a journey into the deep heart of my own country and my own soul," Masud said. Masud, the first Bangladeshi to be so honoured at Cannes, grew up in a middle-class family in the country's central Faridpur district. His father, an English teacher and musician who turned devout, sent him off to a madrasa. "I didn't have to invent a story as almost every event and character are actual," he said. In the film, the boy is torn between a madrasa teacher who believes in political action and a moderate instructor who feels students should not be used for ideological ends. The plot is timely, as critics around the world denounce madrasas as the breeding grounds for Afghanistan's hardline Taliban regime and Pakistani extremists. But in Matir Moina Masud does not take a confrontational tone but instead tries to present a sympathetic picture of life at an Islamic school. "It had been a long dream to share this experience with my fellow countrymen, many of whom like Western people, are completely ignorant and misinformed about madrasas," Masud said. "When you see something from afar it has a very flat and simple appearance, but when you see it from a closer perspective you perceive its complexity and diversity, beyond stereotypical impressions" he said. For Masud, the 1971 war in which the Bangladeshi government says three million people were killed by Pakistani forces, ended in liberation in more ways than one. "My father... emerged as a transformed man after the nine-month war, having seen the atrocities carried out by his fellow Muslims and the genocide carried out in the name of Islam," he said. Masud says the lessons of the war bore heavily on modern Bangladesh, where Islamists came to power last year as part of the ruling coalition and human rights groups have reported attacks on the Hindu minority community. "Being victims of the war ourselves, we have learned the hard way what kind of violence and genocide can be committed in the name of religion. "I don't think Bangladesh is potentially vulnerable to any extremism, not only due to the fact that the state is founded on secularist principles, but also because of the great syncretic and mystic tradition among the population. "What many other countries are learning today though bloody strife and conflict, Bangladeshis learned that 32 years ago," he said. Masud, 45, came to the limelight with two short films about the independence war, Mukti Gaan and Muktir Kotha, which like Matir Moina, he produced and edited with his American wife, Catherine. "I feel more than honoured that our film is selected as the opening film of the Directors' Fortnight of Cannes 2002. It is not only a great moment in my film-making career but also a good opportunity to project a different image of Bangladesh," he said. Masud says increasingly accessible technology was making work easier for Bangladesh's independent filmmakers. With his wife, he runs a Dhaka production company called Audiovision. They have introduced computer-based film editing and digital sound dubbing and mixing. "I hope that the film's selection will also inspire my fellow film-makers, particularly the younger generation, to strive for a better cinema and to try to bring our vision of our rich culture and heritage to the rest of the world," he said. ---------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020520/ee273963/attachment.html From sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com Mon May 20 19:02:50 2002 From: sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?q?Sagnik=20Chakravartty?=) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 14:32:50 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Shabana Azmi to be Targeted Message-ID: <20020520133250.36017.qmail@web20307.mail.yahoo.com> ajayway at hotmail.com, alamcts at del6.vsnl.net.in, bguha20 at yahoo.co.in, Chhabrand at aol.com, chitrita_sanyal at rediffmail.com, deeba_z at rediffmail.com, deekshabhardwaj at hotmail.com, dhanda at nda.vsnl.net.in, amitabharoychowdhury at hotmail.com, enable at vsnl.com, gangadd at yahoo.com, gauhar_raza at yahoo.com, heatherjmclean at netscape.net, Heatherluv640448 at aol.com, ganesheashwar at vsnl.com, johndayal at vsnl.com, Kaamnaprasad at hotmail.com, kms at wiw.org, kashif_999 at sify.com, kumichandra at hotmail.com, madhuchopra at hotmail.com, mnstrm at nda.vsnl.net.in, maya_joshi at vsnl.net, mona at istreamz.com, natyakal at hotmail.com, nirmalageorges at hotmail.com, namitaunnikrishnan at yahoo.com, npani at hotmail.com, poonatish at hotmail.com, puneetabha at vsnl.com, rai_anil at rediffmail.com, mbehal at ndb.vsnl.net.in, razaim2002 at yahoo.co.in, raza.mohd at timesgroup.com, rehanabbas2001 at hotmail.com, rekhasahay at hotmail.com, saachijain at hotmail.com, sabdosthain at hotmail.com, sabihashmi at hotmail.com, just_a_sadia at yahoo.co.uk, Sahmat at vsnl.com, samina at vsnl.com, sabz007 at yahoo.com, schat at bol.net.in, seedling at cyber.net.pk, nfiwdelhi at yahoo.com, amarfarooqui at hotmail.com, shabhashmi at hotmail.com, shankar_chandra at mail.com, shrimali at del3.vsnl.net.in FROM: forshashmi at hotmail.com Save Address SUBJECT: Fwd: Fw: Shabana Azmi to be targeted Date: Sun, 19 May 2002 18:33:43 +0000 Inbox Reply Reply All Forward Delete Next Previous >From: "Rainbow Publishers Ltd." >Reply-To: "Rainbow Publishers Ltd." >To: "Sohail Hashmi" , "Sehba- Amar Farooqui" , "Raza Imam" , "Nivedita" , "Maya Joshi" , "Kalyani Menon Sen" , "Iqbal Jameel" , "Vasanthi Raman" >Subject: Fw: Shabana Azmi to be targeted >Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 23:45:42 +0530 > >Shabana Azmi to be targeted >----- Original Message ----- >From: Hari Sharma >To: Recipient List Suppressed:; >Sent: Friday, May 17, 2002 9:59 PM >Subject: Shabana Azmi to be targeted > > >Dear friends: > > >Can we allow this to happen? > > >Please read through the following. It came to my screen yesterday. > > >It is absolutely essential that this kind of activity must be stopped - by whatever means possible. > > >Can the people in New York city, all the secular democratic forces, all the taxi drivers some of us have been working with, and all our academic/intellectual contacts, can we all please make sure that several hundred people show up on site, to counter the poison these fascists intend to spew out there. > > >Are there laws in the US which prohibit dissemination of hate? In Canada, there are. Could some people please look into it. Talk to lawyers. Drag these fascists in court. > > >Please, please do something. While Gujarat is still suffering, there are trying to divert our attentions, our energies, from the crimes that were and are being committed there. > > >hari sharma >president, INSAF >(International South Asia forum) >******************** > >INDIAN AMERICANS FOR TRUTH AND FAIRNESS IN MEDIA >41-67 Judge Street (#5P)Elmhurst, N.Y. 11373(718) 478-5735 > >PROTEST DEMONTRATION AGAINST SHABANA AZMI IN NEW YORK > >Shabana Azmi has been invited by some of her Communists-Islamists friends to talk about Ayodhya, Gujarat and Babri Maidan. We have decided to stage a boisterous demonstration against her with a view to expose her anti-Indian activities. > >You are kindly requested to participate in the demonstration. We have obtained Police permission to do so. The date, time and location of the demonstration are as under: > >Date: May 21st (Tuesday)Location: 65 Fifth Avenue, between 13th and 14th Street >Time: 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. > >If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call the undersigned. > >Brotherly yours, > > >Narain Kataria > >Shabana's bio-data >SHABANA AZMI UNMASKED > >Shabana Azmi, daughter of Kaifi Azmi and Shaukat Azmi, both hard core Communists, is again in USA. Last time, when she was here, there were protests in many cities against her. Ostensibly, she has come to read a passage from "Riot" a book written by infamous Hindu-hater, Shashi Tharoor . [Mr. Tharoor has done more damage to Hindu society and India than Pakistan by publishing anti-Hindu and anti-Indian articles in mainstream media.] But behind this façade, there is an ignoble intent and a hidden agenda hatched by deadly combine of Marxist-Islamists to denigrate Hindus, discredit India and strain Indo-American relations. This time, she has come to wash dirty linen in public at the invitation of her leftist friends, having closer links with Islamic fundamentalists in this country. In the interest of national security, both, Government of India and FBI should keep a watch on the contacts of this sophisticated woman. > >This notorious woman has soft corner for Islamic militants and Talibans. In order to protect Islamic terrorists, she unsuccessfully tried to block the passage of Prevention of Terrorist Act in Indian Parliament. For the same reason, she condemned American attack on Talibans. She is a very controversial and cunning person. This time, it seems, she is on a mission to create communal conflict and discord between Hindus and Moslems living in peace and harmony in this country. > >Being a professional actress, she is very good at acting. She uses her charm to hoodwink gullible Indian-Americans in believing that she is a liberal Moslem woman. She practices sophistry and stratagem with equal vehemence. In India, she hobnobs with followers of Lenin and Stalin. When in USA, she struts around as a progressive Moslem women. It may sound paradoxical, but, in fact, at heart, she is a strange blend of a fundamentalist Moslem woman and a diehard Communist, out to defame Hindus and tarnish the image of India. > >This crafty woman suffers from Hindu phobia and needs urgent counseling. At the mention of the word "Hindu", Shabana plunges into spontaneous rage and starts hurling scurrilous innuendoes on Hindus. She uses her dramatic skills to belittle and denigrate Hindu civilization. All her so called cultural and social activities (including Narbada Bachao Andolan and upliftment of slum-dwellers in Mumbai) are calculated to slander Hindus and create disdain in the younger generation for their Hindu heritage. With a view to insult Hindus, in the movie "Tumhari Amrita", Shabana played the role of a characterless Hindu woman addicted to drinking and many other vices, begging a married Muslim man to have sex with him. In "Fire", the two lesbian girls were deliberately and mischievously named Radha and Sita. In "Earth", she played the role of a Hindu widow in Varanasi 100 years ago. > >She is always in the forefront of anti-Hindu activities. She had taken a leading role in Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust ("SAHMAT", a fundamentalist Islamic group) exhibition, in which Hindu deities were ridiculed and Bhagwan Ram and Mother Sita were depicted as brother and sister. > >Shabana is born with an animus against Hindu society. She is a hypocrite. Whenever Hindus are terrorized by Islamic militants, she either goes underground or maintains sphinx like silence. The following are a few examples: (a) when more than 500,000 Hindus and Sikhs were ethnically cleansed from Kashmir and Afghanistan, (b) in 1993, when more than 400 Hindus were blown to bits in Bombay, (c) in 1998, 50 Hindus were bombed in Coimbatore, India, and (d) on February 27, 2001, 60 innocent Hindu women and children were burnt alive by Islamic terrorists. > >In the backdrop of what has been said above, it is crystal clear that Shabana is a very dangerous woman and has the potential to create trouble in the society. It is not understood on what grounds this vicious lady has been allowed by American Embassy to come to this country and pollute the peaceful atmosphere. ________________________________________________________________________ Everything you always wanted to know about cars and bikes,now at: http://in.autos.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Tue May 21 00:48:47 2002 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 15:18:47 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Shabana Azmi to be Targeted Message-ID: there is a counter demonstration that is going to held for those who are interested. i guess they are just showing up at the GF (65 fifth ave) and shouting louder. i saw the email being generated from the salaam theater ppl in nyc. (salaamtheater.org) i work in this building..it seems that every week there is some shouting going on outside...but that is why i chose to be at the new school for social research. karzai was here just a little while back not to mention students who are constantly yelling about bob kerrey and his weekly assholic-ness. (ameircan prospect carried an article about kerrey and the new school for those who are interested in reading more about him) z.rizvi >From: Sagnik Chakravartty >To: reader-list at sarai.net >Subject: [Reader-list] Shabana Azmi to be Targeted >Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 14:32:50 +0100 (BST) > > > > > > > >Can we allow this to happen? > > > > > >Please read through the following. It came to my >screen yesterday. > > > > > >It is absolutely essential that this kind of activity >must be stopped - by whatever means possible. > > > > > >Can the people in New York city, all the secular >democratic forces, all the taxi drivers some of us >have been working with, and all our >academic/intellectual contacts, can we all please make >sure that several hundred people show up on site, to >counter the poison these fascists intend to spew out >there. > > > > > >Are there laws in the US which prohibit dissemination >of hate? In Canada, there are. Could some people >please look into it. Talk to lawyers. Drag these >fascists in court. > > > > > >Please, please do something. While Gujarat is still >suffering, there are trying to divert our attentions, >our energies, from the crimes that were and are being >committed there. > > > > > >hari sharma > >president, INSAF > >(International South Asia forum) > >******************** > > > >INDIAN AMERICANS FOR TRUTH AND FAIRNESS IN MEDIA > >41-67 Judge Street (#5P)Elmhurst, N.Y. 11373(718) >478-5735 > > > >PROTEST DEMONTRATION AGAINST SHABANA AZMI IN NEW YORK > > > > >Shabana Azmi has been invited by some of her >Communists-Islamists friends to talk about Ayodhya, >Gujarat and Babri Maidan. We have decided to stage a >boisterous demonstration against her with a view to >expose her anti-Indian activities. > > > >You are kindly requested to participate in the >demonstration. We have obtained Police permission to >do so. The date, time and location of the >demonstration are as under: > > > >Date: May 21st (Tuesday)Location: 65 Fifth Avenue, >between 13th and 14th Street > >Time: 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. > > > >If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to >call the undersigned. > > > >Brotherly yours, > > > > > >Narain Kataria > > _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Tue May 21 02:25:03 2002 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 16:55:03 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] film festival Message-ID: for those in the area...(karachi). im not using this as an annoucement but rather as info as to what desi film makers and content is out there...( i swear monica, thats really the reason :)) z ---- Original Message ----- From: Ajmal Kamal To: ajmalkamal at hotmail.com Sent: Friday, May 17, 2002 10:04 PM Subject: Traveling Film South Asia: A Documentary Film Festival Travelling Film South Asia at Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture May 21 to May 24, every day from 5 pm to 8 pm. The Festival, organized by Himal, the South Asian Magazine based in Kathmandu, is part of an endeavour to promote non-fiction films from the South Asian region throughout the world. The films are on a 'travelling tour'. Fifteen of the best documentaries from the region were hand picked by a jury chaired by the maestro film-maker Shyam Benegal at the Annual South Asian Film Festival 2001. The films are from India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The makers of these films are a good mix of amateur and professional film-makers. Many have worked on several projects and have gone on to win prestigious awards. Like Anjali Montiero and K.P. Jayasankar who together present the film "The Loom" in this festival. They have won ten national and international awards between them including the Prix Futura Berlin in 1995 and Best Innovation Award at Astra Film Festival 1998 in Romania. For others like Dhruba Basnet, "The Killing Terraces" is his first independent documentary. The collection of films comprises a vast canvas of themes and techniques. "The Bee, the Bear and the Kuruba" is about the Kuruba people who have been forcibly evicted from their ancestral home in India. "A rough cut on the life and times of Lachuman Magar" is the personal recounting of this man's relationship with women. To add to this already varied and wondrous body of work, 5 silent documentaries have been added. These are short films, each not more than 6 minutes long. Extending over four days, the Documentary Film Festival promises to be an enriching viewing experience for the casual viewer as well as the avid movie buff. Day 1: 21 May 2002 The Bee, the Bear and the Kuruba (63 minutes) India Director: Vinod Raja The tribe, the forest and modern man. King for a Day (33 minutes) Bangladesh Director:Alex Gabbay Clinton is coming.so what? Born at Home (60 minutes) India Director: Sameera Jain North Indian Midwifery Naheed's Story (22 minutes) Pakistan Director: Beena Sarwar She wants to dance but. Day 2: 22 May 2002 Between the Devil and the Deep River (65 minutes) India Director: Arvind Sinha Woe, the embanked river A sun sets in (45 minutes) Pakistan Director: Shahid Nadeem The bishop's ultimate sacrifice My Migrant Soul (35 minutes) Bangladesh Director: Yasmine Kabir A Bangladeshi worker in Malaysia dies Ramlila (28 minutes) India Directors: Ananta Sridhar, Sanjay Pande, Subhash Kapoor Street theatre in Delhi Day 3: 23 May 2002 Jari Mari: Of Cloth and Other Stories (74 minutes) India Director: Surabhi Sharma Mill workers in Bombay are laid off Colours Black (30 minutes) India Director: Mamta Murthy Child abuse in Bombay The Killing Terraces (62 minutes) Nepal Director: Dhruba Basnet Face to face with the Maoist insurgency Day 4: 24 May 2002 The loom (49 minutes) India Director: J.P. Sankar A poet and a painter on Bombay We home chaps (70 minutes) India/Nepal Director: Kesang Tseten Old students talk about school A Rough Cut on the Life and Times of Lachuman Magar (39 minutes) Nepal Director: Dinesh Deokota A naughty old man Silent films Keyhole (6 minutes) Pakistan Director: Abuzur Khan Looking through the eyes of a child I, Ranu Gayen (6 minutes) India Director: Shaymal Karmakar Saving a pet fish The Godfather IV (3 minutes) Pakistan Director: Ahmad Ali Manganhar This one will blow your mind Play.Stop.Rewind (4 minutes) India Director: Sudesh Unni Raman X is waiting for a phone call Voice Vendor (6 minutes) Pakistan Director: Sikandar Mufti Voices are sold in wrong bottles _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx From rahulj at glide.net.in Tue May 21 04:36:57 2002 From: rahulj at glide.net.in (Rahul Jindal) Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 04:36:57 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] India brushes aside EU resolution on Gujarat riots Message-ID: <003901c20053$112c59c0$34f70b3d@rahul> Apropos Shuddhabrata's mail about comments by EU and others regarding handling of the Gujarat situation by India, here's the latest http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/may/20guj.htm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020521/9937914d/attachment.html From VinitaNYC at aol.com Tue May 21 11:01:28 2002 From: VinitaNYC at aol.com (VinitaNYC at aol.com) Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 01:31:28 EDT Subject: [Reader-list] Shabana Azmi to be Targeted Message-ID: I agree we must be there be witness carry cameras and be loud. also, about bob kerrey and his assholic-ness -- the nation (last week?) also had a good piece about him (and the irony of the 'crimes against humanity' conference, chaired by bob and held at the new school.) Vinita From anilbhatia at indiatimes.com Wed May 22 18:29:20 2002 From: anilbhatia at indiatimes.com (anilbhatia) Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 18:29:20 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The peon has the nuke trigger Message-ID: <200205221252.SAA05430@WS0005.indiatimes.com> The peon has the nuke trigger ABHEEK BARMAN TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2002 12:08:38 AM ] WHY is the government so keen to fight Pakistan? The ostensible answer, dinned deafeningly into our ears by India�s ineffectual home minister, L K Advani, is �cross border terrorism in Kashmir.� Wait a minute. Is the government saying that it�ll risk one billion lives in India because it can�t police J&K? It�s also suggesting that J&K will live happily ever after if we just have another war with Pakistan � the fifth in 52 years. This is bunkum. One, the troubles of Kashmir won�t get over by taking a swipe at Pakistan. Two, the risks of war are too horrendous to bear thinking about. Three, remember, no matter how much Advani froths at the mouth, terrorism is never �cross border�. The roots of militancy are the failure of politicians to do the right thing by their constituents. After they fail and frustrations boil over into violence, the same wretched politicos point across the border and yell, �they did it.� For nearly 20 years, politicians told us that militancy in Punjab was fuelled and inspired by Pakistan. Yes, many militant outfits were funded and supplied by Islamabad, which likes watching India squirm. But Punjab�s militancy was wiped out without going to war with Pakistan. It was wiped out with efficient policing, lots of back-breaking political negotiation and finally, because folks on the ground, exhausted by terror, preferred peace to violence. No Indian government can end trouble in Kashmir by attacking Pakistan, because the root of trouble is squarely back home in the Valley. But the Hindu fundamentalist BJP, a failure at governance, wants something to airbrush its dreadful image. In 1999, a war with Pakistan just before elections seemed to work wonders for the party: it won 182 seats in Parliament and came to head today�s ruling NDA. Since then, it has lost every state, municipal and panchayat election and looks certain to lose the next general elections whenever that is held. Why not have another lovely war? The BJP�s limited intelligence and its anti-Muslim prejudices blind it to the risks of war. There�s no guarantee that a limited military adventure won�t spiral out of control, that crazy generals on either side won�t run berserk, and no evidence to show that India and Pakistan have the maturity, sense of responsibility and institutional controls that nuclear powers need. In fact, nobody knows whether India and Pakistan have functioning control systems for their nukes. Somewhere in a bunker, minutes after a Pakistan nuclear strike: Georgeji: �Atalji, wake up and press the button.� Atalji: �What button? How dare you ask me to press some button? D�you know I was in Parliament before you were born? Go press your own!� Advaniji: �Arre bhai, where�s the button?� Generalji: �Sir, Jokhanlal the peon was bringing it over.� Advaniji: �And where�s Jokhanlal?� Generalji: �He�s off, sir. The Union says No Work After First Strike.� Acharyaji: �The Dharmsansad must meet to determine an auspicious day for our counter-strike.� Georgeji: �Never mind. Lemme see if I can cut a quick deal with Westend for a button lookalike. A million dollars, cheap. Blinking lights and batteries for free.� Get the picture? I�m amazed at people who say that mutually assured destruction (MAD) � a Cold War game theory model that predicts nuclear powers won�t use the weapons because that would finish everybody off � will keep New Delhi and Islamabad from annihilating each other. These complacent cretins, therefore, goad us to war: without nukes, our limitless supply of cannon fodder is supposed to guarantee victory over Pakistan. These guys don�t have a clue. The no-nuclear-war prediction of MAD works only if a very stringent assumption holds: both sides are fully rational and equally accountable to their people. Here, you have a bunch of incompetent Hindutva fanatics on one side and a military dictator hemmed in by Islamic fanatics on the other. I wouldn�t trust these guys with a tricycle in a park, and we�re talking nukes! Thank your stars that US troops are stationed in Pakistan, that Musharraf is forced to talk peace, that the BJP risks the wrath of the world by pushing for a war. Because what this regime is pushing you towards is the most cynical, mindless and destructive gambit that any Indian government has ever tried to pull off. Stand up, say no to war. Get Your Private, Free E-mail from Indiatimes at http://email.indiatimes.com Buy Music, Video, CD-ROM, Audio-Books and Music Accessories from http://www.planetm.co.in -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020522/bc10ea67/attachment.html From anilbhatia at indiatimes.com Wed May 22 18:29:20 2002 From: anilbhatia at indiatimes.com (anilbhatia) Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 18:29:20 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The peon has the nuke trigger Message-ID: <200205221252.SAA05430@WS0005.indiatimes.com> The peon has the nuke trigger ABHEEK BARMAN TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2002 12:08:38 AM ] WHY is the government so keen to fight Pakistan? The ostensible answer, dinned deafeningly into our ears by India�s ineffectual home minister, L K Advani, is �cross border terrorism in Kashmir.� Wait a minute. Is the government saying that it�ll risk one billion lives in India because it can�t police J&K? It�s also suggesting that J&K will live happily ever after if we just have another war with Pakistan � the fifth in 52 years. This is bunkum. One, the troubles of Kashmir won�t get over by taking a swipe at Pakistan. Two, the risks of war are too horrendous to bear thinking about. Three, remember, no matter how much Advani froths at the mouth, terrorism is never �cross border�. The roots of militancy are the failure of politicians to do the right thing by their constituents. After they fail and frustrations boil over into violence, the same wretched politicos point across the border and yell, �they did it.� For nearly 20 years, politicians told us that militancy in Punjab was fuelled and inspired by Pakistan. Yes, many militant outfits were funded and supplied by Islamabad, which likes watching India squirm. But Punjab�s militancy was wiped out without going to war with Pakistan. It was wiped out with efficient policing, lots of back-breaking political negotiation and finally, because folks on the ground, exhausted by terror, preferred peace to violence. No Indian government can end trouble in Kashmir by attacking Pakistan, because the root of trouble is squarely back home in the Valley. But the Hindu fundamentalist BJP, a failure at governance, wants something to airbrush its dreadful image. In 1999, a war with Pakistan just before elections seemed to work wonders for the party: it won 182 seats in Parliament and came to head today�s ruling NDA. Since then, it has lost every state, municipal and panchayat election and looks certain to lose the next general elections whenever that is held. Why not have another lovely war? The BJP�s limited intelligence and its anti-Muslim prejudices blind it to the risks of war. There�s no guarantee that a limited military adventure won�t spiral out of control, that crazy generals on either side won�t run berserk, and no evidence to show that India and Pakistan have the maturity, sense of responsibility and institutional controls that nuclear powers need. In fact, nobody knows whether India and Pakistan have functioning control systems for their nukes. Somewhere in a bunker, minutes after a Pakistan nuclear strike: Georgeji: �Atalji, wake up and press the button.� Atalji: �What button? How dare you ask me to press some button? D�you know I was in Parliament before you were born? Go press your own!� Advaniji: �Arre bhai, where�s the button?� Generalji: �Sir, Jokhanlal the peon was bringing it over.� Advaniji: �And where�s Jokhanlal?� Generalji: �He�s off, sir. The Union says No Work After First Strike.� Acharyaji: �The Dharmsansad must meet to determine an auspicious day for our counter-strike.� Georgeji: �Never mind. Lemme see if I can cut a quick deal with Westend for a button lookalike. A million dollars, cheap. Blinking lights and batteries for free.� Get the picture? I�m amazed at people who say that mutually assured destruction (MAD) � a Cold War game theory model that predicts nuclear powers won�t use the weapons because that would finish everybody off � will keep New Delhi and Islamabad from annihilating each other. These complacent cretins, therefore, goad us to war: without nukes, our limitless supply of cannon fodder is supposed to guarantee victory over Pakistan. These guys don�t have a clue. The no-nuclear-war prediction of MAD works only if a very stringent assumption holds: both sides are fully rational and equally accountable to their people. Here, you have a bunch of incompetent Hindutva fanatics on one side and a military dictator hemmed in by Islamic fanatics on the other. I wouldn�t trust these guys with a tricycle in a park, and we�re talking nukes! Thank your stars that US troops are stationed in Pakistan, that Musharraf is forced to talk peace, that the BJP risks the wrath of the world by pushing for a war. Because what this regime is pushing you towards is the most cynical, mindless and destructive gambit that any Indian government has ever tried to pull off. Stand up, say no to war. Get Your Private, Free E-mail from Indiatimes at http://email.indiatimes.com Buy Music, Video, CD-ROM, Audio-Books and Music Accessories from http://www.planetm.co.in -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020522/bc10ea67/attachment-0001.html From shuddha at www.sarai.net Wed May 22 20:20:09 2002 From: shuddha at www.sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 14:50:09 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Worries about war from afar Message-ID: <200205221450.QAA30323@mail.waag.org> Dear all at Reader List I am sitting right now in a city a few time zones away from Delhi, which was once devastated by war. Its factories, its roads and its houses were once made into cratered into nothingness by intensive aerial attack. Me and some of us from Sarai, inhabitants of this list, are installing a work in a far away exhibition replete with images of our city, Delhi, the city of Sarais, the city of Sarai. There are cyclists breaking through the winter fog on the ISBT bridge, there are the strange bleak landscapes of a city that postpones its existence on to a perennial tomorrow. Our work goes by a name that recalls the co ordinates of our city � 28.28 N/77.15 E � this is how you can find delhi on any map of the world. But a map, whether in a book , or in a bomber aircrafts navigational system is only a set of co ordinates, it says nothing about people, about lives, about houses, lived in, recently demolished by the municipal authorities or waiting to be bombed and flattened into a void. I am worried that the images in our work might be the last of a Delhi that is yet to know the reality of what war, and especially what a war of the cities is like. Perhaps there is in me only the anxiety of great distance, an uncanny feeling of foreboding that makes me see and anticipate war engulf my city, everytime I switch on the TV in my antiseptic hotel room. Perhaps that makes my fears and my worries exaggerated and unrealistic. I would like you to be able to say to me, Shuddha, you are talking nonsense. Today I read in the website of a newspaper that I read each day in the morning in delhi that the Indian government had pulled out the war book. This is the set of guidelines that the state works on in a state of war. This is the document where the state lays down how to set out blackout procedures, how to put black paper on windows, how to hand out gas masks. But imagine the task of putting out a million fires. Imagine the horror of a moderately sized nuclear weapon just a little more powerful than Hiroshima, frozen suspended over the sky of Delhi, or Lahore, hanging in a nanosecond�s interval away from full impact. There is a voice in my head that says that there cannot be and will not be war, that even the most cussed fascist prime minister, and the worst adventurist general will think twice before sending us rushing into this madness, that there are American troops on both sides of the international border that divides the countries that have amassed a million men on the border in full battle preparedness. I hope this is the case. But honestly, for the first time in my memory I am really worried. And perhaps my worries are compounded by distance. For the first time in my memory Delhi is a city that is beginning to have a conversation with itself. Sometimes lackluster, sometimes heated, sometimes tepid, but we are talking, and we have things to think about in a way I don�t recall us having had in a long time. And I really worried that this tiny space in the imagination that we have laid claim to might disappear in a way that none of us are prepared to face the consequences of. I am hoping that someday soon this list, the city it animates (dimly) and all of us can step back and say that all this talk of war between India and Pakistan was just alarmist nonsense, and that we can get on with life and talk about other things, other places, other times. Noticing, for instance, how brightly the glare of war has cast the killings in Gujarat into a dark shadow of amnesia. If war happens, the only thing that I hope we will learn is, not to forget so easily. -- Shuddhabrata Sengupta SARAI:The New Media Initiative Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110 054 India Phone : (00 91 11) 3960040 From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Thu May 23 01:06:33 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 20:36:33 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Worries about war from afar In-Reply-To: <200205221450.QAA30323@mail.waag.org> Message-ID: <20020522193633.3043.qmail@web8103.in.yahoo.com> Dear Shuddha, Please enjoy yourself. You are a few time zones away from Delhi, that ffffffff! place. Don't bother about the fffffffff! place. As traffic red-lights in Delhi used to put it, RELAX. Tell us about where you are. You are eloquently concerned about imminent War. I had hoped you'd be concerned about War-Mongering. That is to say, the Logic of Fascist Governance. You are in a place where, once (oops! how can I use that word? But funnily enough, sitting in a place where War has never happened, I can!), war happened. In the ffffffffff! place, War has never happened. The traders who support this fascist government want this war to happen. They will profit from it, for God's sake! How can you tell them to not profit? How else will they sell their surplus? Elsewhere, War rages. Lone has been gunned down. The media didn't go to the meeting, to find out what it was that Lone had to say. They swooped down only after he was shot. (it seems that after the meeting finished, he was walkingaway, and then a Gunman appeared, and sprayed bullets.) It SEEMS: It seems because I don't know! Nobody's TELLING me! I don't think anybody will tell me. Rajdeep, what are you doing? The atmosphere here is very, very cynical. In such an atmosphere your thoughts, Shuddha, sound sentimental. "I would like you to be able to say to me, Shuddha, you are talking nonsense." Shuddha, you are talking nonsense. So am I. Like you, I have no control over what this fascist government is doing. We have absolutely no control. This government has transformed our thoughts into so much "waffle". They know we are dis-organised. More importantly, they know we are just not in touch with the fascisised proletariat they have managed to create. There exists today, a "dominant" ideology, and a "dominant". This "dominant" has been created despite you and me. This "dominant" has been created not to spite you and me, but to exist inspite of us. Not in spite of us. But inspite of us. Your posting speaks from a position of "unlearning" the dominant. You have "unlearned" the dominant. Who else is "unlearned"? There will be no war. The traders that support the war will make sure that there will be no war. That is to say, against Pakistan. About the other wars (you spoke of them in your May 8, 2002, posting), I am not so sure. So enjoy yourself. You are in a place that experienced war and then managed to create a civil society where, for the first time in the history of nations, a party got votes because it had a merely environmental agenda. Pray, from that place, that War happens here so that, AT LAST, civil society stops waffling and starts doing something. yours unworriedly, pp --- Shuddhabrata Sengupta wrote: > Dear all at Reader List > > I am sitting right now in a city a few time zones > away from Delhi, which was > once devastated by war. Its factories, its roads and > its houses were once made > into cratered into nothingness by intensive aerial > attack. Me and some of us > from Sarai, inhabitants of this list, are installing > a work in a far away > exhibition replete with images of our city, Delhi, > the city of Sarais, the city > of Sarai. There are cyclists breaking through the > winter fog on the ISBT > bridge, there are the strange bleak landscapes of a > city that postpones its > existence on to a perennial tomorrow. Our work goes > by a name that recalls the > co ordinates of our city – 28.28 N/77.15 E – this is > how you can find delhi on > any map of the world. But a map, whether in a book , > or in a bomber aircrafts > navigational system is only a set of co ordinates, > it says nothing about > people, about lives, about houses, lived in, > recently demolished by the > municipal authorities or waiting to be bombed and > flattened into a void. I am > worried that the images in our work might be the > last of a Delhi that is yet to > know the reality of what war, and especially what a > war of the cities is like. > > Perhaps there is in me only the anxiety of great > distance, an uncanny feeling > of foreboding that makes me see and anticipate war > engulf my city, everytime I > switch on the TV in my antiseptic hotel room. > Perhaps that makes my fears and > my worries exaggerated and unrealistic. I would like > you to be able to say to > me, Shuddha, you are talking nonsense. Today I read > in the website of a > newspaper that I read each day in the morning in > delhi that the Indian > government had pulled out the war book. This is the > set of guidelines that the > state works on in a state of war. This is the > document where the state lays > down how to set out blackout procedures, how to put > black paper on windows, how > to hand out gas masks. But imagine the task of > putting out a million fires. > Imagine the horror of a moderately sized nuclear > weapon just a little more > powerful than Hiroshima, frozen suspended over the > sky of Delhi, or Lahore, > hanging in a nanosecond’s interval away from full > impact. There is a voice in > my head that says that there cannot be and will not > be war, that even the most > cussed fascist prime minister, and the worst > adventurist general will think > twice before sending us rushing into this madness, > that there are American > troops on both sides of the international border > that divides the countries > that have amassed a million men on the border in > full battle preparedness. I > hope this is the case. But honestly, for the first > time in my memory I am > really worried. And perhaps my worries are > compounded by distance. For the > first time in my memory Delhi is a city that is > beginning to have a > conversation with itself. Sometimes lackluster, > sometimes heated, sometimes > tepid, but we are talking, and we have things to > think about in a way I don’t > recall us having had in a long time. And I really > worried that this tiny space > in the imagination that we have laid claim to might > disappear in a way that > none of us are prepared to face the consequences of. > > I am hoping that someday soon this list, the city it > animates (dimly) and all > of us can step back and say that all this talk of > war between India and > Pakistan was just alarmist nonsense, and that we can > get on with life and talk > about other things, other places, other times. > Noticing, for instance, how > brightly the glare of war has cast the killings in > Gujarat into a dark shadow > of amnesia. If war happens, the only thing that I > hope we will learn is, not to > forget so easily. > > -- > Shuddhabrata Sengupta > SARAI:The New Media Initiative > Centre for the Study of Developing Societies > 29 Rajpur Road > Delhi 110 054 > India > Phone : (00 91 11) 3960040 > > > _________________________________________ > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and > the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to > reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the > subject header. > List archive: ________________________________________________________________________ Everything you always wanted to know about cars and bikes,now at: http://in.autos.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From rehanhasanansari at yahoo.com Thu May 23 03:25:22 2002 From: rehanhasanansari at yahoo.com (rehan ansari) Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 14:55:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] R-Cades Project (or, The In Sanity Chronicles) Message-ID: <20020522215522.26305.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> Dear Pratap, Your response has reminded me of walks, and talks, through karachi, bombay, lahore and delhi (delhi cannot, alas, be ignored) in the 90s that I have taken, and hope to not take again, who wants to walk in circles forever. Sorry for the delay in response, my problem has been considering how much detail can be packed in a letter. After all a letter, like a suitcase, can only take that much. Though often enough, people have had to fantasise that they can take their all with them� When you write, about the parents of students, that you are not sure they are not dreaming about Pakistan, I read that and claim two negatives can cancel each other: they are dreaming about Pakistan. Is that such a fantastic claim? And can I tell you that this has happened before, this dreaming in Okhla, in Pahar Ganj, in Darya Ganj, in Karol Bagh. This no fantasy. I can tell you about those parent's dreams, but more important I can tell you their children's dreams, your student's, if their parents were to come to Pakistan, and they were kids in Pakistan, and hence not your students. I can tell you because it has all happened before. A perfect circle. Perfect circles. Homelessness is a bad thing, you have to grit your teeth forever, that will be the only way to remember the grit. In 1997 when my father visited Delhi after 50 years, on a magical trip, he visited Okhla, met his uncle: "Rehan," he told me later, "Muzaffar bhai cannot forget Purana Qila. As if it is still happening. And he talked about Babri Masjid. I said ek masjid hai, aur bahut masjiden hehn, aur banjayngi," said my Pakistani father. "Magar nahin, he can�t let it go." In the 90's I have been surprised at finding so many from my generation dreaming about Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta. I, in Lahore, who would have been a student of one like you, if we had never left, dreamt about Delhi. After I first came to Delhi, with a fellow writer from The Frontier Post, in 1992 (of all years, it didn�t take long in the year for fantasies to wash). With Murtaza Rizvi, Sunny to friends, walking about in Greater Kailash 1, looking at gates upon gates which bore sign plates, Khanna, Malhotra, Kumar, Singh, I said I could be walking in Mohammed Ali Society, PECHS, in Karachi, same gates, plot sizes, family sedans, except the houses are not the properties of Haq, Rashid, Khan, Akhtar. A mirror image, which shows us (not yours and not mine), our vanities, our aspirations, exactly, except� All Sunny and I, wanted, was a break from newsprint, maybe work for Newstrack for a while, share a barsati. That's a reasonable, non-fantastic, non-circular, alternative isnt it? A tv show in Delhi as a break from a newspaper in Lahore. We fingered our green passports. We don�t want to change the world really, we are not giddy imagining we can walk a zebra crossing of Khanna, Haq, Malhotra, Rashid, Kumar, Khan, Singh, Akhtar. We are separate and equal. We just want non-reporting, non city-specified, six month visas. The first Ansari to leave Sahranpur for Delhi, recently died. He was also the first Ansari to leave Delhi for Karachi. And the first to leave Karachi for London. None of the Ansaris who followed him to Karachi, and most stayed on in Karachi, became babus, none of them claimed property as blood money. They all became accountants. Un cheezon ka hisaab lagatay rahey jin ka hisaab lag sakta hai. My first memory of "Hindu" is when my father teaching me arithmetic says hindu hisaab main achay hotay hehn.Years later when I remembered to ask him he said, he was taught by a pandit, hisaab, in a school, in Paharganj. One claim property in exchange for what she lost. But her story I will betray another time. They never told stories of Delhi, none of them, not one. I would not have believed them if they had. If they had told stories of massacres in schools, of machine-gun firing in Paharganj, of burning houses in Daryaganj, I would not have believed them. They only started telling stories after I started visiting Delhi. The prior silence was good for me, or was it not. I had to learn for myself, or I did not. Pratap, you wonder whether Pakistan is a dream of a civil place. I grew up in the late 70s and 80s and forever will be mindful of a martial place. Karachi I also will tell you teems with refugee colonies. New Hyderabad, New Paharganj� Obituaries, these days, it is time for those original refugees to die, are full of birthplaces, well all of UP. I know UP qasbahs, not by visiting any, or a map, but from circling Karachi obituraries, and Hyderabad, but also Maharashtra, M.P, Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu? I asked our "family" doctor, why did you have to leave. He shrugged his shoulders. ---- As troops pull out of Gujarat, for the border, towards the Indus, moving from the site of one communal riot, which they were summoned to police, to another, where they will participate-- how mad is our world!--I think of my gestures at sanity: I am the most traveled Pakistani-to-India of my generation. Here is another adventure from the (in)sanity chronicles. A conversation with Shuddha on his rooftop, in Old Rajendra Nagar. We were trading school stories. I told him of a debating competition from 1982 in my school Karachi Grammar School, my first one as a spectator, watching the seniors. A teacher (a judge in the competition) stopped the speechmaking, she forbid a senior from quoting Salman Rushdie. His name will not be taken here. Shuddha told me at that time Shame was serialized in The Illustrated Weekly of India. I don�t know if you can imagine what that revelation from Shuddha did inside my head. What it is like to grow up under martial rule, how it makes vacuous so much in print. How unimaginable Dawn, of 1982, carrying Shame? That night became brighter. Shuddha told me how in his school in old Delhi the principal of his missionary school told the girls that their skirts were too long. I told him of the principal of my school, also missionary, who was compelled to defend coeducation one morning in a speech before the student body. Ours was the only school in the city that had coeducation back then, give or take the American school, more isolated with the General Zia inspired hot winds of Islamization blowing around us. Our principal was quoting an Englishman and former principal from the 30s, who said men and women have to live together, they might as well start early. Back and forth, the objects and their reflections. Delhi and Karachi. In Old Rajendra Nagar, Shuddha's neighborhood in Delhi, a community of mostly Punjabi refugees, there is so much new, so many additions, of terraces, of gates, of roofs, of floors, added on. Shuddha told me about how for the roof, or a wall or some construction they hired two carpenters, they were Muslim. His neighbor, from right across the street, whose family I can see now on their added on floors, walked across that thin lane, which is exactly as wide as two Ambassadors side by side, don�t hire them. Shuddha's parents shooed them away. I heard that story as about the flora and fauna of Old Rajendra Nagar. The night becomes longer. Shuddha talks of attending Jamia Millia Islamia and I ask him about muslboys in his class. He tells stories. In one story, someone refers to someone as katwa. Katwa: I didn�t recognize the term immediately. It was missing in me. I had escaped it in Karachi, completely. I can put that in one column of the ledger, opposing put Shame in daily newspaper, short skirt encouraging principal and so on. ---- Dear Rehan, yeh tumhaara bina alvida kay jaane ka andaaz bhi mast hai, mujhey musal boys ki tarha jasbati honay ka mauka bhi nahin mila. Khair is baar nahin, to aur kabhi. Main to tumhay airport le jaaney wala tha, but this is delicious too, your disappearance was as sudden as your appearance, ab urran chuu to ho, magar ghaib hogay to bahut bura hoga. Ab to aana jaana jari rakhen gay hum, ke nahin? Anyway your plane is probably taking off as I write, and after your thirty-five minutes you will make a soft landing and see me in your email mailbox when you get home. If I look back on this year then the serendipitious month you spent in my house was a major highlight. Who hamaari der raat duniya bhar ki ool jalool batein, wo Dilli sheher ke do nawabzadon ki tarha ghoomna phirna, and the occasional dawat hosted by the occasional haseena. And our wandering long drives into the long night of Delhi. Love, Shuddha __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com From hopa65 at yahoo.com Thu May 23 03:51:35 2002 From: hopa65 at yahoo.com (Hope) Date: Wed, 22 May 2002 15:21:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] where are you Shuddha? In-Reply-To: <200205221450.QAA30323@mail.waag.org> Message-ID: <20020522222135.95943.qmail@web20605.mail.yahoo.com> Greetings all, I confess I am (have long been) a lurker- reading everything, enjoying the poetry and debate, but never compelled to post. Here, now, is something far more mundane: Shudda, you do not reveal exactly where you are, but your letter reminds me of the Documenta event happening in Kassel, Germany, this summer; are you there? I remember wishing I could have been in Delhi for the "platform 2" part of the 5-year project, in May of last year- I read so much about it... I will be in Kassel for a few days in July for this, the "final" Platform; if anyone else from the reader list will be there then, well, perhaps it would be nice to meet, face-to-face, rather than in this virtual space. I have had some difficulty getting specific information about exhibits there- if anyone knows of worthwhile events, lectures, or exhibits, please let me know. Hope Childers hopa65 at yahoo.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com From kanti.kumar at oneworld.net Mon May 20 17:25:32 2002 From: kanti.kumar at oneworld.net (Kanti Kumar) Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 17:25:32 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Digital Opportunity Channel: New initiative to elevate voices from developing nations Message-ID: New Digital Opportunity Web Initiative To Elevate Voices From rathin10 at hotmail.com Tue May 21 18:26:07 2002 From: rathin10 at hotmail.com (rathin roy) Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 12:56:07 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Shabana Azmi to be Targeted Message-ID: I have just come to NYC and am working at the UN. I got this message below and I would also like to be there. please let me have the details? RathiN Roy _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com From henk at waag.org Wed May 22 00:51:30 2002 From: henk at waag.org (Henk) Date: 21 May 2002 21:21:30 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: I LOVE YOU Message-ID: <1022008891.941.5.camel@beheer> The following article is written by Jaromil, an [net-]activist and coder of opensource software that i know for some time. -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: jaromil Subject: I LOVE YOU Date: Fri, 17 May 2002 09:27:08 +0100 Size: 10248 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020521/b9bef341/attachment.mht From sanjeev.chandra at icicibank.com Thu May 23 09:47:23 2002 From: sanjeev.chandra at icicibank.com (SANJEEV CHANDRA /PFS/CRP) Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 09:47:23 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] RE: The peon has the nuke trigger Message-ID: <34795240C59CC4449061690884373AD75119CC@CRPEX01> This is Bull shit. -----Original Message----- From: anilbhatia [mailto:anilbhatia at indiatimes.com] Sent: 22 May 2002 18:29 To: reader-list at sarai.net Subject: The peon has the nuke trigger The peon has the nuke trigger ABHEEK BARMAN TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2002 12:08:38 AM ] WHY is the government so keen to fight Pakistan? The ostensible answer, dinned deafeningly into our ears by India's ineffectual home minister, L K Advani, is 'cross border terrorism in Kashmir.' Wait a minute. Is the government saying that it'll risk one billion lives in India because it can't police J&K? It's also suggesting that J&K will live happily ever after if we just have another war with Pakistan - the fifth in 52 years. This is bunkum. One, the troubles of Kashmir won't get over by taking a swipe at Pakistan. Two, the risks of war are too horrendous to bear thinking about. Three, remember, no matter how much Advani froths at the mouth, terrorism is never 'cross border'. The roots of militancy are the failure of politicians to do the right thing by their constituents. After they fail and frustrations boil over into violence, the same wretched politicos point across the border and yell, 'they did it.' For nearly 20 years, politicians told us that militancy in Punjab was fuelled and inspired by Pakistan. Yes, many militant outfits were funded and supplied by Islamabad, which likes watching India squirm. But Punjab's militancy was wiped out without going to war with Pakistan. It was wiped out with efficient policing, lots of back-breaking political negotiation and finally, because folks on the ground, exhausted by terror, preferred peace to violence. No Indian government can end trouble in Kashmir by attacking Pakistan, because the root of trouble is squarely back home in the Valley. But the Hindu fundamentalist BJP, a failure at governance, wants something to airbrush its dreadful image. In 1999, a war with Pakistan just before elections seemed to work wonders for the party: it won 182 seats in Parliament and came to head today's ruling NDA. Since then, it has lost every state, municipal and panchayat election and looks certain to lose the next general elections whenever that is held. Why not have another lovely war? The BJP's limited intelligence and its anti-Muslim prejudices blind it to the risks of war. There's no guarantee that a limited military adventure won't spiral out of control, that crazy generals on either side won't run berserk, and no evidence to show that India and Pakistan have the maturity, sense of responsibility and institutional controls that nuclear powers need. In fact, nobody knows whether India and Pakistan have functioning control systems for their nukes. Somewhere in a bunker, minutes after a Pakistan nuclear strike: Georgeji: "Atalji, wake up and press the button." Atalji: "What button? How dare you ask me to press some button? D'you know I was in Parliament before you were born? Go press your own!" Advaniji: "Arre bhai, where's the button?" Generalji: "Sir, Jokhanlal the peon was bringing it over." Advaniji: "And where's Jokhanlal?" Generalji: "He's off, sir. The Union says No Work After First Strike." Acharyaji: "The Dharmsansad must meet to determine an auspicious day for our counter-strike." Georgeji: "Never mind. Lemme see if I can cut a quick deal with Westend for a button lookalike. A million dollars, cheap. Blinking lights and batteries for free." Get the picture? I'm amazed at people who say that mutually assured destruction (MAD) - a Cold War game theory model that predicts nuclear powers won't use the weapons because that would finish everybody off - will keep New Delhi and Islamabad from annihilating each other. These complacent cretins, therefore, goad us to war: without nukes, our limitless supply of cannon fodder is supposed to guarantee victory over Pakistan. These guys don't have a clue. The no-nuclear-war prediction of MAD works only if a very stringent assumption holds: both sides are fully rational and equally accountable to their people. Here, you have a bunch of incompetent Hindutva fanatics on one side and a military dictator hemmed in by Islamic fanatics on the other. I wouldn't trust these guys with a tricycle in a park, and we're talking nukes! Thank your stars that US troops are stationed in Pakistan, that Musharraf is forced to talk peace, that the BJP risks the wrath of the world by pushing for a war. Because what this regime is pushing you towards is the most cynical, mindless and destructive gambit that any Indian government has ever tried to pull off. Stand up, say no to war. _____ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from Indiatimes at http://email.indiatimes.com Buy Music, Video, CD-ROM, Audio-Books and Music Accessories from http://www.planetm.co.in -- "This e-mail message may contain confidential, proprietary or legally privileged information. It should not be used by anyone who is not the original intended recipient. If you have erroneously received this message, please delete it immediately and notify the sender. The recipient acknowledges that ICICI Bank or its subsidiaries and associated companies, (collectively "ICICI Group"), are unable to exercise control or ensure or guarantee the integrity of/over the contents of the information contained in e-mail transmissions and further acknowledges that any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender and no binding nature of the message shall be implied or assumed unless the sender does so expressly with due authority of ICICI Group.Before opening any attachments please check them for viruses and defects." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020523/700481eb/attachment.html From ohm at zedat.fu-berlin.de Thu May 23 21:51:01 2002 From: ohm at zedat.fu-berlin.de (Britta Ohm) Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 18:21:01 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: A few words from the same time zone Message-ID: Dear Shuddha, dear PP, dear all, I spent yesterday's afternoon at a big demonstration in this time zone, in Berlin, only two train-hours away from where Shuddha, Monica and Jibesh are installing the images of Delhi, and as war-torn as Kassel once was. The demonstration was set out to protest against the American global war strategy and Bush in particular, who happens to be in town till today, and it was one of the most peaceful demonstrations we ever had in Berlin, with more than 20 000 people less voicing their protest and not in the least getting violent but showing ('demonstrating') how a peaceful existence can be lived (I'm very sentimental here, and am more than happy to be so, as it is far from self-evident that this is Germany, it felt like another time zone). It was just the police having to rush in at the end, obviously driven by it's own image that Berlin has to turn into a civil war-zone in the anticipation of every US-President after Kennedy. This was exactly what CNN had projected beforehand and it were just these few minutes of aggressive and manufactured police-raid which were aired on the same channel in self-fulfilling prophecy in the evening, conveniently neglecting a whole day of a completely different message, or rather: of the actual message itself. It is in this that the cynicism lies, and in it's flip-side which showed in an interview the day before on German public television. President Bush gave his first interview ever to a German correspondent (I could not believe it myself), in which he managed to treat the chap like a mentally retarded representative of a far-away country (to avoid the no longer existing or rather about to be re-invented term "Third World-country"). Asked about what he thinks about the mounting protests in Berlin anticipating his visit, he said: "I have never been to Germany (well, that's no news, he's hardly been anywhere), and I'm looking forward to seeing a country in which different voices can be raised. That's democracy." Really? Is that all that democracy is about? Isn't there quite a difference between pluralism and democracy? So whatever form the protest takes, and the variety of forms are inherently limited, it will fit into the anticipation and justification of current US-policy which will go ahead with what it is planning to do one way or the other, but definitely. Bush made it very clear that Germany has just appeared on his map by coincidence and will disappear as quickly - he has not come to visit Germany anyway, it's a stopover on his way to Putin. Germany is a 'dealt with'-country and Third World in a re-defined world order (and is struggling to become a 'proper partner' again with a right-conservative candidate for chancellorship in the pipeline), there are no lessons to be learned from here which would have any influence on a global scale now. The even bigger cynicism - or rather tragedy - lies in the obvious dependency of the sane (and unfortunately very cynical) voices facing the unfolding horror-scenario in India on an invention or a prevention by a US-policy which is war- and not peace- or dialogue-driven, which has no knowledge of and interest in the finer truths of life and politics and which might by now know better where India is situated on the map than it knows where Germany is, but hasn't got a clue in what context to set the latest developments and what forces it is actually dealing with. The Hindutva-led NDA-government is caught in the same contradiction of wanting desperately US-attention whilst at the same time shouting that it does not need any interference which is the safest way to a war happening. No different from the US-government in this respect, it is able to turn protest as well as support into a legitimisation for this war. This is the cynisism of conservative post-modern governance which seems to have refined the modern Divide-and-Rule-Concept beyond democratic control. Yet there is a difference and a hope which I think lies in two aspects of democracy (apart from many others like the protection of minority rights etc.): the right to resistance (which very much includes the resistance to pollution of the mind) and the concept of majorities, political majorities that is. I know that you all know that and that this does not seem to help in the momentary situation where the world and India in particular is heading for disaster with nations round the globe sheepishly assembling behind a leafless Bush promising protection and victory through 'final solutions' (none of our h'ble politicians today had the guts to utter even one critical word after Bush's utterly mediocre and 'Axis of Evil'-loaded speech in parliament) and India that in parts has changed beyond recognition as far as the re-definition of the majority along cultural and religious lines is concerned and where 26 or so coalition partners as sheepishly assemble behind a saffron hawk barely able to stand who promises the same. But I have seen the same people I saw in the streets of Berlin yesterday at peace marches in Bombay and Delhi in the past weeks; they may not be organised enough, they may not be enough in number still, some of them may talk nonsense, but the last thing that helps at this very crucial point in time is to become cynical oneself, no matter how cynical the cynisism is, and by that reproduce the cynicism that is prevailing in the political arena. The idea of purification through war is the most grotesque of ideas commonly entertained by intellectuals and is itself part and parcel of fascist thought. India and Delhi might not have been through a war like Germany has, thank God, but weren't 1984 or Gujarat now enough to show that anything but purification is happening that way? That there will be no relief unless it is achieved in negotiation and acceptance of complexities? Civil society in Germany has lost far more through the war than it is since trying to regain under big efforts and frequent setbacks. There is no guarantee of set-free positive forces after cruelty, the loss is always bigger, and the problems do not really get solved but shifted. And I doubt very much that civil society would have re-developed in Germany hadn't it been with the help and force both of the US and its allies, particularly Britain. It was an urgently needed help and a loss of choice both, inflicted upon us by ourselves. We were Afghanistan once, but we were more lucky. India has never been Afghanistan and is not now, even though it will probably never be the same again after all that Hindutva has already achieved. But there will be noone to come for rescue now unless you do it yourself, as there will come noone for rescue for vast parts of the rest of the planet unless we do it ourselves. Now. Shuddha, all the best for Kassel, I very much hope to see you there soon. Best regards --- Britta ---------- >Von: > > Dear Shuddha, > > Please enjoy yourself. You are a few time zones away > from Delhi, that ffffffff! place. Don't bother about > the fffffffff! place. As traffic red-lights in Delhi > used to put it, RELAX. Tell us about where you are. > > You are eloquently concerned about imminent War. I had > hoped you'd be concerned about War-Mongering. That is > to say, the Logic of Fascist Governance. > > You are in a place where, once (oops! how can I use > that word? But funnily enough, sitting in a place > where War has never happened, I can!), war happened. > In the ffffffffff! place, War has never happened. The > traders who support this fascist government want this > war to happen. They will profit from it, for God's > sake! How can you tell them to not profit? How else > will they sell their surplus? > > Elsewhere, War rages. Lone has been gunned down. The > media didn't go to the meeting, to find out what it > was that Lone had to say. They swooped down only after > he was shot. (it seems that after the meeting > finished, he was walkingaway, and then a Gunman > appeared, and sprayed bullets.) It SEEMS: It seems > because I don't know! Nobody's TELLING me! I don't > think anybody will tell me. Rajdeep, what are you > doing? > > The atmosphere here is very, very cynical. In such an > atmosphere your thoughts, Shuddha, sound sentimental. > > "I would like you to be able to say to me, Shuddha, > you are talking nonsense." > > Shuddha, you are talking nonsense. So am I. Like you, > I have no control over what this fascist government is > doing. We have absolutely no control. This government > has transformed our thoughts into so much "waffle". > They know we are dis-organised. More importantly, they > know we are just not in touch with the fascisised > proletariat they have managed to create. > > There exists today, a "dominant" ideology, and a > "dominant". This "dominant" has been created despite > you and me. This "dominant" has been created not to > spite you and me, but to exist inspite of us. Not in > spite of us. But inspite of us. > > Your posting speaks from a position of "unlearning" > the dominant. You have "unlearned" the dominant. Who > else is "unlearned"? > > There will be no war. The traders that support the war > will make sure that there will be no war. That is to > say, against Pakistan. About the other wars (you spoke > of them in your May 8, 2002, posting), I am not so > sure. > > So enjoy yourself. You are in a place that experienced > war and then managed to create a civil society where, > for the first time in the history of nations, a party > got votes because it had a merely environmental > agenda. Pray, from that place, that War happens here > so that, AT LAST, civil society stops waffling and > starts doing something. > > yours unworriedly, > pp > > > > > > > > --- Shuddhabrata Sengupta > wrote: > Dear all at Reader List >> >> I am sitting right now in a city a few time zones >> away from Delhi, which was >> once devastated by war. Its factories, its roads and >> its houses were once made >> into cratered into nothingness by intensive aerial >> attack. Me and some of us >> from Sarai, inhabitants of this list, are installing >> a work in a far away >> exhibition replete with images of our city, Delhi, >> the city of Sarais, the city >> of Sarai. There are cyclists breaking through the >> winter fog on the ISBT >> bridge, there are the strange bleak landscapes of a >> city that postpones its >> existence on to a perennial tomorrow. Our work goes >> by a name that recalls the >> co ordinates of our city – 28.28 N/77.15 E – this is >> how you can find delhi on >> any map of the world. But a map, whether in a book , >> or in a bomber aircrafts >> navigational system is only a set of co ordinates, >> it says nothing about >> people, about lives, about houses, lived in, >> recently demolished by the >> municipal authorities or waiting to be bombed and >> flattened into a void. I am >> worried that the images in our work might be the >> last of a Delhi that is yet to >> know the reality of what war, and especially what a >> war of the cities is like. >> >> Perhaps there is in me only the anxiety of great >> distance, an uncanny feeling >> of foreboding that makes me see and anticipate war >> engulf my city, everytime I >> switch on the TV in my antiseptic hotel room. >> Perhaps that makes my fears and >> my worries exaggerated and unrealistic. I would like >> you to be able to say to >> me, Shuddha, you are talking nonsense. Today I read >> in the website of a >> newspaper that I read each day in the morning in >> delhi that the Indian >> government had pulled out the war book. This is the >> set of guidelines that the >> state works on in a state of war. This is the >> document where the state lays >> down how to set out blackout procedures, how to put >> black paper on windows, how >> to hand out gas masks. But imagine the task of >> putting out a million fires. >> Imagine the horror of a moderately sized nuclear >> weapon just a little more >> powerful than Hiroshima, frozen suspended over the >> sky of Delhi, or Lahore, >> hanging in a nanosecond’s interval away from full >> impact. There is a voice in >> my head that says that there cannot be and will not >> be war, that even the most >> cussed fascist prime minister, and the worst >> adventurist general will think >> twice before sending us rushing into this madness, >> that there are American >> troops on both sides of the international border >> that divides the countries >> that have amassed a million men on the border in >> full battle preparedness. I >> hope this is the case. But honestly, for the first >> time in my memory I am >> really worried. And perhaps my worries are >> compounded by distance. For the >> first time in my memory Delhi is a city that is >> beginning to have a >> conversation with itself. Sometimes lackluster, >> sometimes heated, sometimes >> tepid, but we are talking, and we have things to >> think about in a way I don’t >> recall us having had in a long time. And I really >> worried that this tiny space >> in the imagination that we have laid claim to might >> disappear in a way that >> none of us are prepared to face the consequences of. >> >> I am hoping that someday soon this list, the city it >> animates (dimly) and all >> of us can step back and say that all this talk of >> war between India and >> Pakistan was just alarmist nonsense, and that we can >> get on with life and talk >> about other things, other places, other times. >> Noticing, for instance, how >> brightly the glare of war has cast the killings in >> Gujarat into a dark shadow >> of amnesia. If war happens, the only thing that I >> hope we will learn is, not to >> forget so easily. >> >> -- >> Shuddhabrata Sengupta >> SARAI:The New Media Initiative >> Centre for the Study of Developing Societies >> 29 Rajpur Road >> Delhi 110 054 >> India >> Phone : (00 91 11) 3960040 >> >> >> _________________________________________ >> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and >> the city. >> Critiques & Collaborations >> To subscribe: send an email to >> reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the >> subject header. >> List archive: > > > ________________________________________________________________________ > Everything you always wanted to know about cars and bikes,now > at: http://in.autos.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html > _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion > list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe > in the subject header. > List archive: > From ohm at zedat.fu-berlin.de Thu May 23 22:40:13 2002 From: ohm at zedat.fu-berlin.de (Britta Ohm) Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 19:10:13 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] A few words from the same time zone Message-ID: ---------- Von: "Britta Ohm" An: reader-list at sarai.net Betreff: Re: A few words from the same time zone Datum: Don, 23. Mai 2002 18:21 Uhr Dear Shuddha, dear PP, dear all, I spent yesterday's afternoon at a big demonstration in this time zone, in Berlin, only two train-hours away from where Shuddha, Monica and Jibesh are installing the images of Delhi, and as war-torn once as Kassel. The demonstration was set out to protest against the American global war strategy and Bush in particular, who happens to be in town till today, and it was one of the most peaceful demonstrations we ever had in Berlin, with more than 20 000 people less voicing their protest and not in the least getting violent but showing ('demonstrating') how a peaceful existence can be lived (I'm very sentimental here, and am more than happy to be so, as it is far from self-evident that this is Germany, it felt like another time zone). It was just the police having to rush in at the end, obviously driven by it's own image that Berlin has to turn into a civil war-zone in the anticipation of every US-President after Kennedy. This was exactly what CNN had projected beforehand and it were just these few minutes of aggressive and manufactured police-raid which were aired on the same channel in self-fulfilling prophecy in the evening, conveniently neglecting a whole day of a completely different message, or rather: of the actual message itself. It is in this that the cynicism lies, and in it's flip-side which showed in an interview the day before on German public television. President Bush gave his first interview ever to a German correspondent (I could not believe it myself), in which he managed to treat the chap like a mentally retarded representative of a far-away country (to avoid the no longer existing or rather about to be re-invented term "Third World-country"). Asked about what he thinks about the mounting protests in Berlin anticipating his visit, he said: "I have never been to Germany (well, that's no news, he's hardly been anywhere), and I'm looking forward to seeing a country in which different voices can be raised. That's democracy." Really? Is that all that democracy is about? Isn't there quite a difference between pluralism and democracy? So whatever form the protest takes, and the variety of forms are inherently limited, it will fit into the anticipation and justification of current US-policy which will go ahead with what it is planning to do one way or the other, but definitely. Bush made it very clear that Germany has just appeared on his map by coincidence and will disappear as quickly - he has not come to visit Germany anyway, it's a stopover on his way to Putin. Germany is a 'dealt with'-country and Third World in a re-defined world order (and is struggling to become a 'proper partner' again with a right-conservative candidate for chancellorship in the pipeline), there are no lessons to be learned from here which would have any influence on a global scale now. The even bigger cynicism - or rather tragedy - lies in the obvious dependency of the sane (and unfortunately very cynical) voices facing the unfolding horror-scenario in India on an invention or a prevention by a US-policy which is war- and not peace- or dialogue-driven, which has no knowledge of and interest in the finer truths of life and politics and which might by now know better where India is situated on the map than it knows where Germany is, but hasn't got a clue in what context to set the latest developments and what forces it is actually dealing with. The Hindutva-led NDA-government is caught in the same contradiction of wanting desperately US-attention whilst at the same time shouting that it does not need any interference which is the safest way to a war happening. No different from the US-government in this respect, it is able to turn protest as well as support into a legitimisation for this war. This is the cynisism of conservative post-modern governance which seems to have refined the modern Divide-and-Rule-Concept beyond democratic control. Yet there is a difference and a hope which I think lies in two aspects of democracy (apart from many others like the protection of minority rights etc.): the right to resistance (which very much includes the resistance to pollution of the mind) and the concept of majorities, political majorities that is. I know that you all know that and that this does not seem to help in the momentary situation where the world and India in particular is heading for disaster with nations round the globe sheepishly assembling behind a leafless Bush promising protection and victory through 'final solutions' (none of our h'ble politicians today had the guts to utter even one critical word after Bush's utterly mediocre and 'Axis of Evil'-loaded speech in parliament) and India that in parts has changed beyond recognition as far as the re-definition of the majority along cultural and religious lines is concerned and where 26 or so coalition partners as sheepishly assemble behind a saffron hawk barely able to stand who promises the same. But I have seen the same people I saw in the streets of Berlin yesterday at peace marches in Bombay and Delhi in the past weeks; they may not be organised enough, they may not be enough in number still, some of them may talk nonsense, but the last thing that helps at this very crucial point in time is to become cynical oneself, no matter how cynical the cynisism is, and by that reproduce the cynicism that is prevailing in the political arena. The idea of purification through war is the most grotesque of ideas commonly entertained by intellectuals and is itself part and parcel of fascist thought. India and Delhi might not have been through a war like Germany has, thank God, but weren't 1984 or Gujarat now enough to show that anything but purification is happening that way? That there will be no relief unless it is achieved in negotiation and acceptance of complexities? Civil society in Germany has lost far more through the war than it is since trying to regain under big efforts and frequent setbacks. There is no guarantee of set-free positive forces after cruelty, the loss is always bigger, and the problems do not really get solved but shifted. And I doubt very much that civil society would have re-developed in Germany hadn't it been with the help and force both of the US and its allies, particularly Britain. It was an urgently needed help and a loss of choice both, inflicted upon us by ourselves. We were Afghanistan once, but we were more lucky. India has never been Afghanistan and is not now, even though it will probably never be the same again after all that Hindutva has already achieved. But there will be noone to come for rescue now unless you do it yourself, as there will come noone for rescue for vast parts of the rest of the planet unless we do it ourselves. Now. Shuddha, all the best for Kassel, I very much hope to see you there soon. Best regards --- Britta ---------- >Von: > > Dear Shuddha, > > Please enjoy yourself. You are a few time zones away > from Delhi, that ffffffff! place. Don't bother about > the fffffffff! place. As traffic red-lights in Delhi > used to put it, RELAX. Tell us about where you are. > > You are eloquently concerned about imminent War. I had > hoped you'd be concerned about War-Mongering. That is > to say, the Logic of Fascist Governance. > > You are in a place where, once (oops! how can I use > that word? But funnily enough, sitting in a place > where War has never happened, I can!), war happened. > In the ffffffffff! place, War has never happened. The > traders who support this fascist government want this > war to happen. They will profit from it, for God's > sake! How can you tell them to not profit? How else > will they sell their surplus? > > Elsewhere, War rages. Lone has been gunned down. The > media didn't go to the meeting, to find out what it > was that Lone had to say. They swooped down only after > he was shot. (it seems that after the meeting > finished, he was walkingaway, and then a Gunman > appeared, and sprayed bullets.) It SEEMS: It seems > because I don't know! Nobody's TELLING me! I don't > think anybody will tell me. Rajdeep, what are you > doing? > > The atmosphere here is very, very cynical. In such an > atmosphere your thoughts, Shuddha, sound sentimental. > > "I would like you to be able to say to me, Shuddha, > you are talking nonsense." > > Shuddha, you are talking nonsense. So am I. Like you, > I have no control over what this fascist government is > doing. We have absolutely no control. This government > has transformed our thoughts into so much "waffle". > They know we are dis-organised. More importantly, they > know we are just not in touch with the fascisised > proletariat they have managed to create. > > There exists today, a "dominant" ideology, and a > "dominant". This "dominant" has been created despite > you and me. This "dominant" has been created not to > spite you and me, but to exist inspite of us. Not in > spite of us. But inspite of us. > > Your posting speaks from a position of "unlearning" > the dominant. You have "unlearned" the dominant. Who > else is "unlearned"? > > There will be no war. The traders that support the war > will make sure that there will be no war. That is to > say, against Pakistan. About the other wars (you spoke > of them in your May 8, 2002, posting), I am not so > sure. > > So enjoy yourself. You are in a place that experienced > war and then managed to create a civil society where, > for the first time in the history of nations, a party > got votes because it had a merely environmental > agenda. Pray, from that place, that War happens here > so that, AT LAST, civil society stops waffling and > starts doing something. > > yours unworriedly, > pp > > > > > > > > --- Shuddhabrata Sengupta > wrote: > Dear all at Reader List >> >> I am sitting right now in a city a few time zones >> away from Delhi, which was >> once devastated by war. Its factories, its roads and >> its houses were once made >> into cratered into nothingness by intensive aerial >> attack. Me and some of us >> from Sarai, inhabitants of this list, are installing >> a work in a far away >> exhibition replete with images of our city, Delhi, >> the city of Sarais, the city >> of Sarai. There are cyclists breaking through the >> winter fog on the ISBT >> bridge, there are the strange bleak landscapes of a >> city that postpones its >> existence on to a perennial tomorrow. Our work goes >> by a name that recalls the >> co ordinates of our city – 28.28 N/77.15 E – this is >> how you can find delhi on >> any map of the world. But a map, whether in a book , >> or in a bomber aircrafts >> navigational system is only a set of co ordinates, >> it says nothing about >> people, about lives, about houses, lived in, >> recently demolished by the >> municipal authorities or waiting to be bombed and >> flattened into a void. I am >> worried that the images in our work might be the >> last of a Delhi that is yet to >> know the reality of what war, and especially what a >> war of the cities is like. >> >> Perhaps there is in me only the anxiety of great >> distance, an uncanny feeling >> of foreboding that makes me see and anticipate war >> engulf my city, everytime I >> switch on the TV in my antiseptic hotel room. >> Perhaps that makes my fears and >> my worries exaggerated and unrealistic. I would like >> you to be able to say to >> me, Shuddha, you are talking nonsense. Today I read >> in the website of a >> newspaper that I read each day in the morning in >> delhi that the Indian >> government had pulled out the war book. This is the >> set of guidelines that the >> state works on in a state of war. This is the >> document where the state lays >> down how to set out blackout procedures, how to put >> black paper on windows, how >> to hand out gas masks. But imagine the task of >> putting out a million fires. >> Imagine the horror of a moderately sized nuclear >> weapon just a little more >> powerful than Hiroshima, frozen suspended over the >> sky of Delhi, or Lahore, >> hanging in a nanosecond’s interval away from full >> impact. There is a voice in >> my head that says that there cannot be and will not >> be war, that even the most >> cussed fascist prime minister, and the worst >> adventurist general will think >> twice before sending us rushing into this madness, >> that there are American >> troops on both sides of the international border >> that divides the countries >> that have amassed a million men on the border in >> full battle preparedness. I >> hope this is the case. But honestly, for the first >> time in my memory I am >> really worried. And perhaps my worries are >> compounded by distance. For the >> first time in my memory Delhi is a city that is >> beginning to have a >> conversation with itself. Sometimes lackluster, >> sometimes heated, sometimes >> tepid, but we are talking, and we have things to >> think about in a way I don’t >> recall us having had in a long time. And I really >> worried that this tiny space >> in the imagination that we have laid claim to might >> disappear in a way that >> none of us are prepared to face the consequences of. >> >> I am hoping that someday soon this list, the city it >> animates (dimly) and all >> of us can step back and say that all this talk of >> war between India and >> Pakistan was just alarmist nonsense, and that we can >> get on with life and talk >> about other things, other places, other times. >> Noticing, for instance, how >> brightly the glare of war has cast the killings in >> Gujarat into a dark shadow >> of amnesia. If war happens, the only thing that I >> hope we will learn is, not to >> forget so easily. >> >> -- >> Shuddhabrata Sengupta >> SARAI:The New Media Initiative >> Centre for the Study of Developing Societies >> 29 Rajpur Road >> Delhi 110 054 >> India >> Phone : (00 91 11) 3960040 >> >> >> _________________________________________ >> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and >> the city. >> Critiques & Collaborations >> To subscribe: send an email to >> reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the >> subject header. >> List archive: > > > ________________________________________________________________________ > Everything you always wanted to know about cars and bikes,now > at: http://in.autos.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html > _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion > list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe > in the subject header. > List archive: > From mimeticus at yahoo.com Thu May 23 23:43:05 2002 From: mimeticus at yahoo.com (Mimeticus) Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 11:13:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] cowboy parody as political theatre Message-ID: <20020523181306.5285.qmail@web21507.mail.yahoo.com> First, this, from the news: "Around 1,000 anti-war and anti-globalization demonstrators continued protesting after Bush departed for Moscow, but the mood was decidedly more relaxed. Playing off Bush's Texas roots, organizers called the action "Cattle Herders not Warmongers" with demonstrators dressed as cowboys and American Indians following a flat-bed truck laden with hay and speakers blaring country and western music. "We picked the western theme so when Americans see the photos they'll feel a bit ridiculed and maybe will think a bit more about what their Texan president is doing," said one man wearing a black cowboy hat with a silver sheriff star."" End of quote. Seems to me that we are seeing here precisely the aporia of contemporary European attitudes towards the US, globalization, and the spectacular politics of a mediated age. As much as we may sympathize with the parodic energies on display here, as politics this is shadow-boxing. I say this not at all to suggest that there is some more 'fundamental' level of intervention that would be preferable. Rather, this little bit of street theatre misunderstands its own subject position - a subject position that in fact has allowed Hollywood cliches (outdated ones at that, dating from Europe's own period of immediate postwar love-hate engagement with a youthful American culture industry) to stand in place of a more nuanced inquiry into what America, and American power, might be about today. To be sure, there is a tempting formal similarity between Baby Bush and ye olde cowboys and Indians scenarios. But perhaps the more important structural alignment is that Dubya stands to the rather more intelligent - and therefore more frighteningly reactionary - members of his administration as the cultural cliches of the culture industries of yore stand to the complex terrain of the contemporary global being of America. The sheer absurdity of the suggestion that any "actually existing" Americans would feel even irritated, let alone troubled, by such 'activism!' What I see in these demonstrations is not political acuity, but rather a nostalgic slumber. An entire generation of European leftists breathe a collective sigh of relief now that they have an American president that is as comfortingly close to their 'cool memories' of Hollywood as old Ronnie once was. This is not a domain of innocence. Its repercussions extend to the moral simplifications of responses outside of the US to the attacks of September 11 - when what much of the world saw as being attacked was not New York, but "New York." To be sure, we may wish to blame the signifying spider for the web it has spun. But to that extent, we will ourselves remain trapped in it. Mimeticus --------------------------------- Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020523/dd04b71c/attachment.html From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Fri May 24 01:42:33 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 21:12:33 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Dear Vinita (NYC), and Rathin Roy, and suchlike assholes Message-ID: <20020523201233.65371.qmail@web8102.in.yahoo.com> Dear Vinita, and Rathin Roy, and other such assholes: I want to say to you: Fuck you. You are in the US of A. You are earning in dollars (translated: 50 rupees per dollar). You are successful people who have suddenly realised that you must take part in the larger agenda of convincing the American nation that you are nothing less than American itself. To this extent, it comes upon you to prove to all other Americans that you possess a 5000-year old UNCHANGING (hah! ha-hah!) culture that buttresses your claim to be no longer treated as slaves. In the history of slavery, the Global Eaducated Indian has a unique place. [Why "Aeducated"? Because only "aeducated" people support fascism.] S/he is the only aethnic community that has willingly embraced slavery. Since the 17th century, slavery has been resisted. The Irish resisted it: they used to use the whiteness of their skins, and run away. So the Imperial nations turned to other shores, out of desperation (there are many stories of how the Irish unemployed used to be given drinks, bludgeoned, and thrown on the ship to Jamaica). The Africans resisted it: they preserved their culture, and completely disempowered, they seeped into America (ever heard New Orleans Jazz, you louts?) Then came the Global Aeducated Indian (GAI), armed with certificates. America willingly and lovingly received him/her. Here, at last, there was no resistance. The whip did not have to be applied, because the GAI was ready to whip him/herself before the employer. No coercion, because the GAI smiled and consented. In the history of slavery, there exists only one community/class that has WILLINGLY accepted slavedon. That community/class is: the GAI, the fucking holy cow of liberalisation. Whilst enslaving, the holy cow called the GAI suddenly realises s/he has no social esteem. So, s/he decides to get it. How? By tom-tomming its HIndu-ness. Get this, you motherfucking GAIs, you chutiyas, you behenchods: you go to the US, find yourself treated as second class citizens, lose your self-esteem, try to find it, and then, you aeducated fuckers you, you latch on to a fascist agenda of cutural revival. Do you really know what your politics is? It is local, it is about finding face in the US (as the Irish did when JFK became president). But in the process of finding face in the US, you come to support an ideology that, In India, in "your Motherland", expresses itself only in negative terms. For you to display your Indian-ness is like being Chicano: this mentality, when expressed in India, comes to fuel hatred; it paves the way towards a politics of RIFT. You seek unity with the US; you want to be accepted. That is why you proclaim yourself as HIndu. In India, your actions and beliefs are used in exactly the opposite way: it is used to create rift, to set limits to acceptance, to break down society. You, by proclaiming yourself as Indian/HIndu, seek to gain respect without violence. Your rhetoric, In India, fuels violence without respect. You, in the US, proclaim that you belong to a multicultural society. You present your 5000 year old culture as proof. At the same time, you support (hopefully unknowingly) pogroms that, using the 5000-year old argument, arise out of the desire to create a monocultural society. You are merely aeducated. You have no claim to how India is unfolding. You are not interested. You are only interested in gaining self-esteem in the US. For that, you are willing to send India to the Dungeon of Fascism. You are hypocrites. You do not have the guts to come to India and do the "good work" you are doing there. You are turds. Oily, yellow-ochre, smelly, corrupted. Your brains are in your asses. Your sphincter muscles do not work smoothly, leading to constipation, and fantasies of cultural glory. You are a fuck, because you have gone off to the US and don't know a shit about how, historically, India is on the verge of redefining itself. You aantichodaas, bokachodaas, chuchhichodaas, dhamnachodaas, egochadaas, foriegnchodaas... you don't know what you want. Therefore, let India be. Let it decide what it wants to be. We don't need your fascist vetan-bhogi help. Fuck off. Yours, pp ________________________________________________________________________ Everything you always wanted to know about cars and bikes,now at: http://in.autos.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Fri May 24 02:43:58 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 22:13:58 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Re: A few words from the same time zone In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20020523211358.3566.qmail@web8101.in.yahoo.com> Dear Britta, and all, To pun on your surname, you are truly a unit of resistance! Germany was Afghanistan, once (you say). You live in Germany (whatever that means!). I do not. But I have read Heinrich Boll (I am unable to put the "umlaut" over the "o"; I am not a computer genius). Boll narrates the horror of Germany transformed to rubble, and takes part in it. (A country is pulverised: so what if it takes British and American help to put it back again? These were the countries that supported Hitler, and then found they were wrong. So, almost as if in revenge, they pulverised HItler's country. At the same time, people lived through those days: they survived, rebuilt their lives, went back to work.) Boll is especially satirical of the moral turpitude that has gone into the rebuilding of the so-called "german" nation, post WW-II. We cannot blame his Idealism. He comes from a long line of writers, like Thomas Mann. But Boll is also able to dream about a new German nation. A nation that has shed its fascism (that, now, can actually shed its fascism given the "betrayal" by the Western nations). This is quite a reality, if I am to believe that you are able to post this from "Germany" [I put "germany" under quotes because I believe West Germany has not quite reached East Germany yet, despite "global" acceptance of the breakdown of the Wall]. Boll was concerned about the norms under which Germany would receive its unity. His novels put into place a narration of a politics of hope. Unlike him, I am unable to take recourse to a similar (identical?) politics of hope. It so happens that civil society in post-war Germany did manage to unfold in a way in which it just hasn't in post-independent India. You can actually go and demonstrate. If I do that, my neighbours will look askance. They needn't know, but they come to find out. I am here justifying my escapism. It will be difficlt for you to understand this. If I am sufficiently bothered, I should be out on the roads! But I am not. I am merely pronouncing prognostications. Indians take care of their young, but they don't groom them. This is the problem. This is why an entire generation does not take to the streets: they do not know what protest means. (this is the culture that the BJP fascists have taken advantage of: they know we, the educated people, are in a minority!) Somehow, in "devastated" Germany, there grew a civil society that made its own space, and made its voice heard. (Boll is surely part of this "population". You, too.) In "devastated" India today, we are still, very privately (not publicly at all), imagining that there will be no war. The cynicism is a hollow cover. It masks indifference. It also expresses "private" hysteria. The inability to do something. The fear of "organising" to do something. (Ask Shuddha about "organising". He has a terror of it!) I love, Britta, the way you ask me throw my cynicism away. You are right: I am reproducing support for this fascist NDA government. Then my middle-class values spring to the fore and I throw away your suggestion with vehemence. I don't want to only snarl. I am not a trapped beast. But this is how I behave. This is the behaviour I take recourse to. What do you do with such an asshole? yours, pp --- Britta Ohm wrote: > Dear Shuddha, dear PP, dear all, > > I spent yesterday's afternoon at a big demonstration > in this time zone, in > Berlin, only two train-hours away from where > Shuddha, Monica and Jibesh are > installing the images of Delhi, and as war-torn as > Kassel once was. > > The demonstration was set out to protest against the > American global war > strategy and Bush in particular, who happens to be > in town till today, and > it was one of the most peaceful demonstrations we > ever had in Berlin, with > more than 20 000 people less voicing their protest > and not in the least > getting violent but showing ('demonstrating') how a > peaceful existence can > be lived (I'm very sentimental here, and am more > than happy to be so, as it > is far from self-evident that this is Germany, it > felt like another time > zone). It was just the police having to rush in at > the end, obviously driven > by it's own image that Berlin has to turn into a > civil war-zone in the > anticipation of every US-President after Kennedy. > This was exactly what CNN > had projected beforehand and it were just these few > minutes of aggressive > and manufactured police-raid which were aired on the > same channel in > self-fulfilling prophecy in the evening, > conveniently neglecting a whole day > of a completely different message, or rather: of the > actual message itself. > > It is in this that the cynicism lies, and in it's > flip-side which showed in > an interview the day before on German public > television. President Bush gave > his first interview ever to a German correspondent > (I could not believe it > myself), in which he managed to treat the chap like > a mentally retarded > representative of a far-away country (to avoid the > no longer existing or > rather about to be re-invented term "Third > World-country"). Asked about what > he thinks about the mounting protests in Berlin > anticipating his visit, he > said: "I have never been to Germany (well, that's no > news, he's hardly been > anywhere), and I'm looking forward to seeing a > country in which different > voices can be raised. That's democracy." Really? Is > that all that democracy > is about? Isn't there quite a difference between > pluralism and democracy? > > So whatever form the protest takes, and the variety > of forms are inherently > limited, it will fit into the anticipation and > justification of current > US-policy which will go ahead with what it is > planning to do one way or the > other, but definitely. Bush made it very clear that > Germany has just > appeared on his map by coincidence and will > disappear as quickly - he has > not come to visit Germany anyway, it's a stopover on > his way to Putin. > Germany is a 'dealt with'-country and Third World in > a re-defined world > order (and is struggling to become a 'proper > partner' again with a > right-conservative candidate for chancellorship in > the pipeline), there are > no lessons to be learned from here which would have > any influence on a > global scale now. > > The even bigger cynicism - or rather tragedy - lies > in the obvious > dependency of the sane (and unfortunately very > cynical) voices facing the > unfolding horror-scenario in India on an invention > or a prevention by a > US-policy which is war- and not peace- or > dialogue-driven, which has no > knowledge of and interest in the finer truths of > life and politics and which > might by now know better where India is situated on > the map than it knows > where Germany is, but hasn't got a clue in what > context to set the latest > developments and what forces it is actually dealing > with. The Hindutva-led > NDA-government is caught in the same contradiction > of wanting desperately > US-attention whilst at the same time shouting that > it does not need any > interference which is the safest way to a war > happening. No different from > the US-government in this respect, it is able to > turn protest as well as > support into a legitimisation for this war. This is > the cynisism of > conservative post-modern governance which seems to > have refined the modern > Divide-and-Rule-Concept beyond democratic control. > > Yet there is a difference and a hope which I think > lies in two aspects of > democracy (apart from many others like the > protection of minority rights > etc.): the right to resistance (which very much > includes the resistance to > pollution of the mind) and the concept of > majorities, political majorities > that is. I know that you all know that and that this > does not seem to help > in the momentary situation where the world and India > in particular is > heading for disaster with nations round the globe > sheepishly assembling > behind a leafless Bush promising protection and > victory through 'final > solutions' (none of our h'ble politicians today had > the guts to utter even > one critical word after Bush's utterly mediocre and > 'Axis of Evil'-loaded > speech in parliament) and India that in parts has > changed beyond recognition > as far as the re-definition of the majority along > cultural and religious > lines is concerned and where 26 or so coalition > partners as sheepishly > assemble behind a saffron hawk barely able to stand > who promises the same. > > But I have seen the same people I saw in the streets > of Berlin yesterday at > peace marches in Bombay and Delhi in the past weeks; > they may not be > organised enough, they may not be enough in number > still, some of them may > talk nonsense, but the last thing that helps at this > very crucial point in > time is to become cynical oneself, no matter how > cynical the cynisism is, > and by that reproduce the cynicism that is > prevailing in the political > arena. The idea of purification through war is the > most grotesque of ideas > commonly entertained by intellectuals and is itself > part and parcel of > fascist thought. India and Delhi might not have been > through a war like > Germany has, thank God, but weren't 1984 or Gujarat > now enough to show that > anything but purification is happening that way? > That there will be no > relief unless it is achieved in negotiation and > acceptance of complexities? > Civil society in Germany has lost far more through > the war than it is since > trying to regain under big efforts and frequent > setbacks. There is no > guarantee of set-free positive forces after cruelty, > the loss is always > bigger, and the problems do not really get solved > but shifted. And I doubt > very much that civil society would have re-developed > in Germany hadn't it > been with the help and force both of the US and its > allies, particularly > Britain. It was an urgently needed help and a loss > of choice both, inflicted > upon us by ourselves. We were Afghanistan once, but > we were more lucky. > > India has never been Afghanistan and is not now, > even though it will > probably never be the same again after all that > Hindutva has already > achieved. But there will be noone to come for rescue > now unless you do it > yourself, as there will come noone for rescue for > vast parts of the rest of > the planet unless we do it ourselves. Now. > > > Shuddha, all the best for Kassel, I very much hope > to see you there soon. > Best regards --- Britta > > > > > === message truncated === ________________________________________________________________________ Everything you always wanted to know about cars and bikes,now at: http://in.autos.yahoo.com/cricket/tracker.html From ravis at sarai.net Fri May 24 14:13:25 2002 From: ravis at sarai.net (Ravi Sundaram) Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 14:13:25 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Pratap pandey Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20020524140638.00b0c658@pop3.norton.antivirus> I have been following Pratap Pandey's postings for a long time, and this time ( and it is not the first), his behavior has no place in a list like this one. This list is a space for critical dialogue, not vicious personal attacks on others. And this is what Mr Pandey has done,...Attacking those who wish to go for a demonstration in NYC with the most disgusting epithets is beyond description... An open list means some sense of respect for voice, and an ability to pursue critical issues. I think that Pratap, you need to take your frustrations elsewhere not this list. Ravi Sundaram From pankaj at sarai.net Fri May 24 15:10:56 2002 From: pankaj at sarai.net (Pankaj) Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 11:40:56 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Pratap pandey In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.2.20020524140638.00b0c658@pop3.norton.antivirus>; from ravis@sarai.net on Fri, May 24, 2002 at 02:13:25PM +0530 References: <5.0.2.1.2.20020524140638.00b0c658@pop3.norton.antivirus> Message-ID: <20020524114056.A17980@sarai.net> On Fri, May 24, 2002 at 02:13:25PM +0530, Ravi Sundaram wrote: > > I have been following Pratap Pandey's postings for a long time, and this > time ( and it is not the first), his behavior has no place in a list like > this one. This list is a space for critical dialogue, not vicious personal > attacks on others. And this is what Mr Pandey has done,...Attacking those > who wish to go for a demonstration in NYC with the most disgusting epithets > is beyond description... > > An open list means some sense of respect for voice, and an ability to > pursue critical issues. Well This in itself is an attack on Mr Pratap.Whats written above are your views and yours alone I think many people enjoy what he writes.and it would be really sad if he leaves the list disgruntled. "Shut Up or else..." behavior also has no place in a list like this one. If you dont want to read what he has to say just make a filter and ignore all his messages. a procmail filter for the samre looks like this I'm sure Eudora has similar facilites. :0 # Anything from pratap * ^From.*pnanpin at yahoo.co.in trash # will go to $MAILDIR/trash -- Pankaj "Trompe Le Monde" From announcements-request at sarai.net Fri May 24 10:27:42 2002 From: announcements-request at sarai.net (announcements-request at sarai.net) Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 06:57:42 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Announcements digest, Vol 1 #53 - 1 msg Message-ID: <200205240457.GAA09600@mail.waag.org> Send Announcements mailing list submissions to announcements at sarai.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to announcements-request at sarai.net You can reach the person managing the list at announcements-admin at sarai.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Announcements digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Screening of Pather Chujaeri (Ranita Chatterjee) --__--__-- Message: 1 From: Ranita Chatterjee To: announcements at sarai.net Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 13:38:59 +0530 Subject: [Announcements] Screening of Pather Chujaeri Screening of Pather Chujaeri / The Play is on... on 25th May, 7pm, at India Habitat Centre ORIGINAL TITLE: PATHER CHUJAERI English Title: THE PLAY IS ON .... Language: HINDI and KASHMIRI (subtitled in English) DURATION: 44 mts Previous screenings: BERLIN, MUMBAI, BUSAN, KATHMANDU, AMASCULTURA, BRONZE REMI at HOUSTON DIRECTOR: PANKAJ RISHI KUMAR PRODUCER: RAJEEV MEHROTRA c/o PSBT SYNOPSIS : How does art survive in a regime of fear? I first encountered this question in 1999, while taking photographs of Kashmir during that mindless war with Pakistan. That summer, I established contact with the National Bhand Theatre, Wathora, and the Bhagat. Theatre, Akingam, two groups that were still performing in the traditional pather form of satire. I returned twice in 2001, now armed with a camera. I was encouraged by what I found: an illiterate community has sustained a centuries-old tradition in the face of debilitating social and cultural changes. Although perenially intimidated by the corruption, violence and intolerance that prevail in Kashmir, the bhands are still affirming a commitment to their theatre, to the critical potential of its form and the liberating joys of performance. Faith in Sufism has tempered their enthusiam for satire and they identify with the collective voices of Kashmir's freedom. The Play is on.... follows the two groups as they prepare for public performances, a rare phenomenon today. For the bhands, who daily witness the erosion of their way of life, each performance represents both a change as well as a repetition of the same brutal fact: that they are not free to share their revolutionary spirit. Credits Director, Camera, and Editing -- Pankaj Rishi Kumar Sound -- Jagan Shah and Gissy Michael ===== PANKAJ RISHI KUMAR B/103, Gokul Tower, thakur Complex, Kandivli (E), MUMBAI 400 101 INDIA PH: 91-22-8877585 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com --__--__-- _______________________________________________ Announcements mailing list Announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements End of Announcements Digest From ravis at sarai.net Fri May 24 20:02:25 2002 From: ravis at sarai.net (Ravi Sundaram) Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 20:02:25 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] pp Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20020524195803.00b13f80@mail.sarai.net> Dear Pankaj, That is a technological solution to an issue of how one voice, virulent, insensitive and always drawing attention to self, often ends up shutting up a lot of people on the list. Personal attacks are a strict no no, as far as I am concerned. If you like this kind of style posting, please yourself, but I don't and I certainly do not want the reader list to degenerate into personal attacks cheers Ravi On Fri, May 24, 2002 at 02:13:25PM +0530, Ravi Sundaram wrote: > > I have been following Pratap Pandey's postings for a long time, and this > time ( and it is not the first), his behavior has no place in a list like > this one. This list is a space for critical dialogue, not vicious personal > attacks on others. And this is what Mr Pandey has done,...Attacking those > who wish to go for a demonstration in NYC with the most disgusting epithets > is beyond description... > > An open list means some sense of respect for voice, and an ability to > pursue critical issues. Well This in itself is an attack on Mr Pratap.Whats written above are your views and yours alone I think many people enjoy what he writes.and it would be really sad if he leaves the list disgruntled. "Shut Up or else..." behavior also has no place in a list like this one. If you dont want to read what he has to say just make a filter and ignore all his messages. a procmail filter for the samre looks like this I'm sure Eudora has similar facilites. :0 # Anything from pratap * ^From.*pnanpin at yahoo.co.in trash # will go to $MAILDIR/trash -- Pankaj "Trompe Le Monde" From shuddha at www.sarai.net Sat May 25 03:47:24 2002 From: shuddha at www.sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 22:17:24 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Pratap pandey In-Reply-To: <20020524114056.A17980@sarai.net> Message-ID: <200205242217.AAA11366@mail.waag.org> Dear All on the Readers List, and Pratap Pandey This is apropos of the discussion on Pratap Pandey�s postings on the Reader List. I would like to state here that I have sometimes found my self deeply appreciative of the incisiveness of what Pratap Pandey writes here, and sometimes irritated, and on occasion totally disgusted. Let me add that none of my judgements of Pratap Pandey�s writing has anything to do with the language or register in which he writes. But it has to do with the arguments that his writing embodies. It matters little to me as to whether or not people use language that refers to body parts or not. For me, a sphincter is as good or not as an elbow, or the brain. Just as a body without a brain is not much use, so too, a body without a sphincter is not much use either. And in the end all body parts are odorous! However, it is evident fithat there is a level of exhibtionistic bragadaccio in the way Pandey deploys what he adolescently thinks is �bad language� to intimidate others on the list. I might not find this intimidating, even if it bores me to death to see someone be juvenile. But I can understand that others might in fact find the intensity of Panday�s vitriol anything less than intimidating. I find this intimidation, especially when it comes from someone who, on occasion can think very incisively, pathetic. Equally pathetic is the imputation of motives on to other members of the list, on the basis of their location. If Ranit or Vinita or anyone else posts a message about a meeting that they wish to attend, in New York, or in New Rajendra Nagar, that is their prerogative, and Panday has no business wasting our time by telling us what his personal problems with migrants are. And who amongst us is not a migrant? Why should the migration to America be more unacceptable than the migration to Kalkaji from Lajpat Nagar really beats me. However, the issue here is not merely about language, it is about arguments. I find it unacceptable that Pratap Pandey criticizes someone merely because they happen to be working or working in the United States of America, if they happen to be of an ethnic origin that allows him to put on to them the mental label � Indian. By Pandey�s logic, anyone who earns their bread outside the territorial boundaries of the republic of India (or anyone who earns their bread) is deserving of his old testament fire and brimstone. I have no affection or respect for any location or place � the usa or India are interchangeable notations for bits of land and fragments of law. A sphincter is as good as an elbow. So any blanket statement about NRIs or what Panday calls Global Aedicated Indians is as meaningless as any blanket statement about any other kind of Indians, or Germans or germans (notice my respect for the distinction that p(P)anday makes between the �G� and �g� in G(g)ermany in his posting to Britta). So I can�t buy the line that all our troubles in India are because of �Global Aedicated Indians�. This seems to indicate a category of at least some people, who are innocent, or are not implicated in the authoritarian vision that Panday critiques. I want to know - who is innocent? - local educated Indians, vernacular snobs, English speaking elites, small town intellectuals, metropolitan cosmopolites, working class people, middle class people, lower.upper.middle class people? Panday�s problem is his smugness. His belief that there is such a thing as a repository of original �un�fascist innocence that we all need to recover. I don�t think there is. If it is there, it is somewhere in the juvenile aristocratic disdain in Panday�s head for what he calls vetan bhogis. Who here, is not now, or will not be, in the near future (if they are students) a �vetan bhogi�. Having said all this, I also do not think that my criticism of Panday needs to be seen as advocacy that Panday should be asked to leave this list. I think (and there may be differences of opinion amongst us about this) that our commitment to free speech on this list must mean that we are prepared to give space to opinions, and styles and registers of speech that we absolutely, categorically disagree with. Those of us who disagree must do so, publicly. Anyone who thinks that the list must not be characterized by occasional bouts of macho juvenilia has a responsibility to post actively, in a way that they think is conducive to healthy discussion. To be silent, and then say that one could not speak because others spoke �badly� is really a dime excuse for discursive laziness. To appeal for the ejection of a person on the grounds that they use sexist language is to fall into the trap that much of Indian mainstream feminism is in, which is - to protest against obscenity, to call for bans, and to not do anything that contributes to a pushing of the boundaries of what can be said. Arguments can be encountered only by arguments, and if you thinks that some thing is an instance of �offensive language� then it is as much your responsibility to counter that usage with something that is at least as creative, as hungry for attention and provocative as that which you critique. To my mind, this is the responsibility that free speech brings with it. Besides, just because I think Panday bullshits his way through life on this list a lot of the time, does not Contradict the fact that he sometimes talks very sensibly and elegantly and intelligently, and that sometimes the sense and the nonsense go hand in hand, and indeed, might have something to do with each other. Its me as a reader who has to display the responsibility of critical discretion. Finally, for anyone who finds Panday reallyoffensive, I would endorse the elegant solution that Pankaj has proposed earlier. Just filter him out of your mailbox. That way his freedom to rant, and your freedom to not have to listen to him, are both guaranteed. He will then also understand that there are risks he is taking when he stoops so low as to brandish his particular brand of personal invective. And amongst the risks is the possibility of having many, if not most, if not all, people on this list, deciding to filter his messages out of their mailboxes. Then he may continue to rant in the ethereal solitary confinement of the virtual space of this list, but that is a corner he will have chosen for himself. A list that believes in free speech, can also be painfully cruel, in freely choosing to ignore someone who continues to offend people on it. This is not censorship, because no one will force Pandey to not speak his mind or his elbow or his sphincter aloud. It is merely the choice that we may exercise (just as freely) to not listen to him, if we so please. I am quoting Pankaj again � �If you dont want to read what he has to say just make a filter and ignore all his messages. a procmail filter for the same looks like this .I'm sure Eudora has similar facilites. :0 # Anything from pratap * ^From.*pnanpin at yahoo.co.in trash # will go to $MAILDIR/trash� In fact, Eudora does have similar facilities. Just go into Eudora. Select mail from anyone you find offen offensive in your inbox. Now click on �Special� in your menu bar, click on �Make Filter� . In the part that says �Match� - Click on the button that says �From Contains� (the box next to it should have the offending persons e mail address, in this case - pnanpin at yahoo.co.in - and then in the part that says �Action�, click on the box that says to Delete Message (transfer to trash). This should do the trick. Then Professor Pandey might find his corner very stimulating. Thet silence, of that corner can be deafening and I hope that Pandey does mend his ways, so that it does not get \ unleashed on to him. The worst thing for post-er thirsty for an audience, is for that audience to decide to become, for that person, a mirage. So, beware Professor Pandey and kindly mend your ways if you want to continue having a conversation with most of us. Cheers Shuddha -- Shuddhabrata Sengupta SARAI:The New Media Initiative Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110 054 India Phone : (00 91 11) 3960040 From ravis at sarai.net Sat May 25 12:10:41 2002 From: ravis at sarai.net (Ravi Sundaram) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 12:10:41 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] from shohini ghosh Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20020525120940.03ac7af0@mail.sarai.net> "shohini" From: "shohini" To: "Ravi S. Vasudevan" , "Ravi Sundaram" , "Ravi Sundaram" Subject: PP's Personal Attacks Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 09:51:20 +0530 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-AntiVirus: scanned for viruses by AMaViS 0.2.1 (http://amavis.org/) Ravi & Ravi, please post this for me. For some reason, I am not being able to post on the list. Thanks. Sho Dear Shuddha: Many of us on the list do not subscribe to the mainstream feminist view that sexual explicitness is sexism. Otherwise, we wouldn't enjoy Hothead Paisan, On Our Backs and what have you. Sexism may also exist in non-sexually explicit speech. (Like that woman in the kitchen example that PP once gave.) The problem here is not sexual explicitness but how it has been deployed. In this case, it has been deployed to be personally abusive to two other people who have also expressed their right to free speech. It is one thing to criticise someones politics and quite another to call that person a fuckhead because s/he has different politics! Free speech means that everybody has the right to voice their opinion. Asking for certain kinds of speech to be discouraged from one particular forum is not asking for the speech to be killed. PP's speech is not fringe speech. It's so mainstream that he can take it anywhere and live happily. All of us have a right to ask for a forum where certain kinds of speech are discouraged. I may want to be part of a LGBT group that allows for sexually explicit speech but discourages homophobic speech. I wonder whether we would allow communal speech or other kinds of hate speech on this forum. Sometimes the communal/hate speech and sexual speech intersect. Look up for instance the Hindu Right's attack on M.F. Hussain on the net. Not very different from PP's description of Vajpayee lusting for Musharraf's ass! Even that does not bother me so much as PP's eagerness to make personal attacks. To invite people on the list and have their ass kicked is neither responsible nor desirable. Therefore, its up to SARAI to decide what kind of a forum they want to have and what kind of speech they want to encourage or discourage. Moreover, to argue that if people get intimidated into silence its their fault, is a lazy argument. It is very hard to speak up in a space where you feel disempowered. For long feminists, at least in Dellhi, would blame lesbians for not speaking up little realizing that its hard to speak up affirmatively when the space has been vitiated by homophobic and sexphobic speech. Therefore, running a list is hard work - it is more than just creating space on the web and then letting people run wild. To end on a note of trivia. Those who speak up against the Hindu Right are often inundated with hate mail. (I am sure it has happened to many of us on the list and more recently to people like Sumit Sarkar and Seema Mustafa.) Barring Hindutva politics the hate mail reads exactly like PP's letter. Shohini From shohini at giasdl01.vsnl.net.in Fri May 24 21:34:37 2002 From: shohini at giasdl01.vsnl.net.in (shohini) Date: Fri, 24 May 2002 21:34:37 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Pratap Pandey's Postings Message-ID: <000201c20390$4edd5fe0$9fc9c5cb@shohini> I absolutely support Ravi Sundaram's position on Pratap Pandey. In the name of `satire' and political committment Pratap Pandey has been indulging in sexist, mysogynist, homophobic and plain obnoxious speech. Mr Pandey and his little constitutency are welcome to form a group of their own and take their expletives elsewhere. Shohini Ghosh -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020524/39c916ef/attachment.html From ravis at sarai.net Sat May 25 17:53:33 2002 From: ravis at sarai.net (Ravi Sundaram) Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 17:53:33 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Obituary of a culture Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20020525174838.02e724f8@mail.sarai.net> This is a powerful piece by Ashis Nandy in the special issue of Seminar on Gujarat. This issue, one of the best collections that have come out on Gujarat is long sold out, but is now available on-line http://www.india-seminar.com/semframe.htm Obituary of a culture ASHIS NANDY THE massive carnages at Rwanda and Bosnia have taught the students of genocide that the most venomous, brutal killings and atrocities take place when the two communities involved are not distant strangers, but close to each other culturally and socially, and when their lives intersect at many points. When nearness sours or explodes it releases strange, fearsome demons. Those shocked by the bestial or barbaric nature of the communal violence in Gujarat would do well to read some accounts of the carnages in Rwanda and Bosnia. In both cases, the two communities involved were close to each other and ethnic cleansing took the forms of a particularly brutal, self-destructive exorcism. And the same thing happened during the great Partition killings in 1946-48. The ongoing death dance in West Asia, with the Arabs and Israelis locked in an embrace of death, is another instance of the same game. Gujarat was being prepared for such an exorcism for a very long time. It is a state that has seen thirty-three years of continuous rioting interrupted with periods of tense, uncomfortable peace. During these years, a sizeable section of Gujarat's urban underclass has begun to see communalism and rioting as means of livelihood, quick profit, choice entertainment, and as a way of life. Riots have, in addition, ensured temporary status gains for this underclass; they are considered heroes in their respective communities during riots and for brief periods afterwards an important reward for persons at the margins of society. Rioting everywhere is pre-eminently an urban disease. Demographers of riots from Gopal Krishna to Asghar Ali Engineer, and from P.R. Rajgopalan to Ashutosh Varshney have shown repeatedly that it is even more so in India. The icing on the cake is that the urban middle class in Gujarat is now the most communalised in the country; it has become an active abetter and motivator of communal violence. Sections of it participate in the loot enthusiastically, as we have seen in the course of the recent riots; those that do not often participate in the violence vicariously. (For the last hundred years or so, the so-called non-martial races of the subcontinent Bengali babus, Kashmiri Muslims and Gujarati upper castes, for instance have had a special fascination for violence, particularly if someone else was doing the fighting and risking their lives. However, in recent years, this fascination and the search for redemptive violence, which bestows heroic stature by being expiation for one's own 'passivity' and 'effeminacy', have often found direct expression in public life.) Unlike in places like Uttar Pradesh, cities matter in Gujarat. Urbanity is a crucial presence in Gujarat's political life. The state has fifty cities, many of which have already become cauldrons of communal hatred and paranoia. The result is that Gujarat is now a classic instance of the urban-industrial vision, decomposing and spitting out in a blatant form the violence that the vision has always hidden in its belly. The state has not only been riot-prone but at war with itself. Even after the present riots die down available data show that riots last longer in Gujarat than in other states it would be at best a temporary truce. Tension and hatred will persist and both sides will remain prepared for the next round. Gujarat is and will continue to be an arena of civil war for years. This situation has come about not because the Inter-Services Intelligence or the ISI of Pakistan omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent like God himself, according to many Indians has planned it that way. Nor because the minorities have been the main victims in the recent riots. This situation of civil war has arisen because minorities now know that they cannot hope to have any protection from the state government. Lower-level functionaries of the state government have been complicit with rioters many times and in many states. But this is probably for the first time after the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 that the entire state machinery, except for some courageous dissenters among the administrators and in the law-and-order machinery, has turned against the minorities.1 The minorities of Gujarat are by now aware that, for good or worse, they will have to prepare to protect themselves. This is a prescription for disaster. It will underscore the atmosphere of a civil war and create a new breeding ground for terrorism. More than Operation Blue Star, the anti-Sikh riots spawned terrorism in Punjab in the 1980s; the two decades of rioting in Gujarat has by now similarly produced the sense of desperation that precedes the breakout of terrorism. In the early 1960s, when I first went to Gujarat as an adolescent student, it was difficult to believe that Gujarat could ever have a major riot. People talked of riots that had taken place in the past and the state did have a history of small riots and skirmishes. Many Ahmedabadi Hindus seemed afraid and suspicious of the Muslims, but they were afraid and suspicious mostly of non-Gujarati Muslims, many of them labourers in the huge textile industry of Ahmedabad. They took the Gujarati Muslims, a large proportion of them business castes, as a part of Gujarat's landscape, though there was clear social distance. In retrospect, the picture was remarkably similar to that of Cochin, which I studied a few years ago as a city of religious and ethnic harmony.2 The only difference probably was the more than moderate dislike for the Muslim as representing a tamasic principle in Ahmedabad's predominant Jain-Bania culture. That dislike was, however, 'balanced' by a similar dislike for the westernised outsiders congregating in the new, fashionable institutions being established in the city. Traditional Ahmedabad kept away both. The 1969 riots began to change the city radically, though at the time the changes were not that obvious. Like all riots in South Asia, that one too was organised, and it was organised with great managerial panache by the RSS. The violence paid rich dividends. So did the imaginative hate campaigns unleashed by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the RSS. Together they gave a kick-start to the process of ghettoisation of the Muslims and the growth in the power of Mafia-like bodies in both communities, always itching for a fight and acting like protectors of the Hindus and the Muslims at times of rioting. However, the growth of this criminal sector was disproportionately high among the young, unemployed Muslims. Understandably. The existing social distance between the communities had already acquired another tone. Facing discrimination in job situations and housing, many among the unemployed Muslim youth began to take to professions in which slum youth everywhere in the world specialise illicit distillation, drug pushing, protection rackets and petty crime. And they always seemed ready for street violence. The situation worsened once Ahmedabad's famed textile industry collapsed. The changing political culture of the city ensured that this collapse, too, affected the Muslims more.3 The dragon seeds sown by the 1969 riots have sprouted over the years. Gujarat's regular annual harvest began to include gory communal clashes and mob violence. We saw the full flowering of this culture during the Ramjanmabhoomi movement. As the great charioteer Lal Krishna Advani moved through Gujarat, he left in his wake a series of riots in which, according to Achyut Yagnik, for the first time, women and children were seen as legitimate targets of attack and atrocities. Riots were now becoming more brutal and barbaric. During the last decade, Gujarat has kept up with that tradition. In the ongoing riots, women and children have not only been attacked but also often killed with a sadistic glee that will be inconceivable in a civilised society. Even in the attack on karsevaks at Godhra, the one that precipitated the riots, it now transpires that the main victims were women and children. The following is an extract from a widely circulated eyewitness account, which some of the readers might not have seen. It is written by an officer of the Indian Administrative Service: 'Numbed with disgust and horror, I return from Gujarat ten days after the terror and massacre that convulsed the state. ... As you walk through the camps of riot survivors in Ahmedabad, in which an estimated 53,000 women, men, and children are huddled in 29 temporary settlements, displays of overt grief are unusual. ... But once you sit anywhere in these camps, people begin to speak and their words are like masses of pus released by slitting large festering wounds. The horrors that they speak of are so macabre, that my pen falters... The pitiless brutality against women and small children by organised bands of armed young men is more savage than anything witnessed in the riots that have shamed this nation from time to time during the past century... 'What can you say about a woman eight months pregnant who begged to be spared. Her assailants instead slit open her stomach, pulled out her foetus and slaughtered it before her eyes. What can you say about a family of nineteen being killed by flooding their house with water and then electrocuting them with high-tension electricity? 'What can you say? A small boy of six in Juhapara camp described how his mother and six brothers and sisters were battered to death before his eyes. He survived only because he fell unconscious, and was taken for dead. A family escaping from Naroda-Patiya, one of the worst-hit settlements in Ahmedabad, spoke of losing a young woman and her three month old son, because a police constable directed her to "safety" and she found herself instead surrounded by a mob which doused her with kerosene and set her and her baby on fire. 'I have never known a riot which has used the sexual subjugation of women so widely as an instrument of violence as in the recent mass barbarity in Gujarat. There are reports every where of gangrape, of young girls and women, often in the presence of members of their families, followed by their murder by burning alive, or by bludgeoning with a hammer and in one case with a screw-driver.'4 Gujarat disowned Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi long ago. The state's political soul has been won over by his killers. This time they have not only assassinated him again, they have danced on his dead body, howling with delight and mouthing obscenities. The Gandhians, in response, took out some ineffective peace processions, when they should have taken a public position against the regime and the Nazi Gauleiter ruling Gujarat. One is not surprised when told by the newspapers that the Sabarmati Ashram, instead of becoming the city's major sanctuary, closed its gates to protect its properties.5 Almost nothing reveals the decline and degeneration of Gujarati middle class culture more than its present Chief Minister, Narendra Modi. Not only has he shamelessly presided over the riots and acted as the chief patron of rioting gangs, the vulgarities of his utterances have been a slur on civilised public life. His justifications of the riots, too, sound uncannily like that of Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian president and mass murderer who is now facing trial for his crimes against humanity. I often wonder these days why those active in human rights groups in India and abroad have not yet tried to get international summons issued against Modi for colluding with the murder of hundreds and for attempted ethnic cleansing. If Modi's behaviour till now is not a crime against humanity, what is? More than a decade ago, when Narendra Modi was a nobody, a small-time RSS pracharak trying to make it as a small-time BJP functionary, I had the privilege of interviewing him along with Achyut Yagnik, whom Modi could not fortunately recognise. (Fortunately because he knew Yagnik by name and was to later make some snide comments about his activities and columns.) It was a long, rambling interview, but it left me in no doubt that here was a classic, clinical case of a fascist. I never use the term 'fascist' as a term of abuse; to me it is a diagnostic category comprising not only one's ideological posture but also the personality traits and motivational patterns contextualising the ideology. Modi, it gives me no pleasure to tell the readers, met virtually all the criteria that psychiatrists, psycho-analysts and psychologists had set up after years of empirical work on the authoritarian personality. He had the same mix of puritanical rigidity, narrowing of emotional life, massive use of the ego defence of projection, denial and fear of his own passions combined with fantasies of violence all set within the matrix of clear paranoid and obsessive personality traits. I still remember the cool, measured tone in which he elaborated a theory of cosmic conspiracy against India that painted every Muslim as a suspected traitor and a potential terrorist. I came out of the interview shaken and told Yagnik that, for the first time, I had met a textbook case of a fascist and a prospective killer, perhaps even a future mass murderer. The very fact that he has wormed his way to the post of the chief minister of Gujarat tells you something about our political process and the trajectory our democracy has traversed in the last fifty years. I am afraid I cannot look at the future of the country with anything but great foreboding. The Gujarat riots mark the beginning of a new phase in Indian politics. We talk of terrorism in Kashmir and the North East and proudly speak of subduing the terrorism that broke out in Punjab. The total population involved in these cases, particularly the section that could be considered sympathetic to militancy, has always been small. Even if we believe that Pakistan's ISI and the Indian Army between them have persuaded all Kashmiris in the Valley to support militancy, these Kashmiris add up to only three million, one-third the size of the city of Delhi. The forces the Gujarat violence might have released are a different kettle of fish. They seem to have done what the Partition riots did. Also, given that they have been arguably the first video riots in India riots taking place in front of TV cameras their impact will be pan-Indian and international. The minorities all over the country have seen the experiments in ethnic cleansing and the attempts to break the economic backbone of the Muslim community. The sense of desperation brewing among the Gujarati Muslims is likely to be contagious. I wonder what we should do with 120 million bitter Muslims, a sizeable section of them close to desperation. Will it be another case of Palestine now onwards, at least in Gujarat? Prima facie, Modi has done his job. The Sangh Parivar's two-nation theory is genuine stuff and has already initiated the process of a second partition of India, this time of the mind. We, our children and grandchildren above all, the Gujaratis will have to learn to live with a state of civil war. The Gujarati middle class will have to pay heavily culturally, socially and economically for its collusion with the recent pogrom. Footnotes: 1. This point has been indirectly made by Tridip Suhrud, 'No Room for Dialogue', Economic and Political Weekly 47(11), 16 March 2002, pp. 1011-2. 2. Ashis Nandy, 'Time Travel to a Possible Self: Searching for the Alternative Cosmopolitanism of Cochin', The Japanese Journal of Political Science 1(2), December 2001, pp. 293-327. 3. The Godhra incident, which precipitated the recent riots, was partly a product of this larger process, not a conspiracy of the ISI, as the Sangh Parivar claims. Nor was the incident the result of a provocation by karsevaks so severe that the Muslim victims of the provocation had to burn alive scores of train passengers, most of them women and children, as some politically correct secularists have begun to insist. For the moment, I am ignoring the even more inane attempts to explain away the Godhra episode as a non-event. In some ways, the episode is a typical example of the chain of events that have characterised a huge number of communal riots in recent times deliberate provocation leading to violent reaction from desperate, angry youth in slums and ghettos, followed by fully organised, large-scale attacks on Muslims in general. 4. Harsh Mander, 'Cry, the Beloved Country: Reflections on the Gujarat Massacre', unpublished report circulated over the Internet, 21 March 2002. 5. Ibid. See also Achyut Yagnik and Suchitra Sheth, 'Whither Gujarat? Violence and After', Economic and Political Weekly 47(11), 16 March 2002, pp. 1009-11. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020525/3f9a4993/attachment.html From monica at www.sarai.net Sun May 26 15:09:07 2002 From: monica at www.sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 09:39:07 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] writing on a list Message-ID: <200205260939.LAA26538@mail.waag.org> Dear Readers, We have received complaints from several people on the list about what seems to be a tendency on Pratap Pandey's part to pick on individuals for personal attack. This has happenned not just in his last posting, but also, on occasion, previously. We all live in difficult and disturbing times, We are all distressed by the events of the past few months in Gujarat, and the continuing climate of tension on the India Pakistan border, and the anger, sorrow and foreboding that has been expressed by members of the list is symptomatic of that. It is unfortunate that this is becoming an occasion for some of us to hang out our personal peeves and impose on to the list at large. It is important to be categorical in pointing out differences in a discussion, but personalised dismissal, often expressed in a sexist language, only shuts discussion down. Pandey might think that his postings are provocations to kick start a dialogue but his tenor, as evinced in his last posting, actually, is effectively sabotaging dialogue. In effect, we have spent more time and energy discussing lexical excesses,than the issues and very important questions that the thread of discussions on Gujarat and the emerging climate of militarism represents, which is lurking in the background of this most recent spat. What seems to have retreated to the background of this list, is the emerging climate of intolerance both in India as well as elsewhere, that the list was begining to reflect upon. Pandey needs to reflect on whether his intent is to have us discuss him, or have us discuss issues larger than macho word play. And whether his specific form of address does not actually reflect another kind of intolerance. I think that it would be best to take the level of discussion on to a deeper level which can be accomodative and welcoming to satire or provocative writing when necessary, without having to become an arena for the casting of aspersions on fellow list members. We have kept this list un-moderated, and this means that we all have a responsibility to ensure that disagreement does not become disagreeable. It is the responsibility of each one of us to keep the critical integrity of the list alive. To create a commons, each of us must be responsible to it. I would also urge the many silent voices to speak up, perhaps there are other perspectives, even news or ideas of other things that are not getting heard in the din of the debris of the slanging match of last week. The list deserves it from all of us. Thank you for all your attention Monica Narula List Administrator -- -- Monica Narula Sarai: The New Media Initiative Centre for the Sudy of Developing Societies 29, Rajpur Road, New Delhi 110 054 India From VinitaNYC at aol.com Sun May 26 23:37:10 2002 From: VinitaNYC at aol.com (VinitaNYC at aol.com) Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 14:07:10 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Pratap Pandey's Postings Message-ID: <7076F609.4FC641BF.029E54D5@aol.com> Dear PP; you are funny. you do write well, but are you sure your anger is directed at me? Do you have any idea who you are talking to? Do you have any idea what you are saying? I'm not sure where you got your ideas about who I am and what I think: By calling people to go to an anti-protest as I did (meaning one that tries to drown out the voices of the Hindu Right in a New York city public space, which happens to be the school I attend), I was engaging in a vision: Dialogue and dispute in public space. By all reports the young (mostly women) did drown out the old (mostly men) "members" of the U.S. Hindu Right. You make me laugh because did you think I was going to support the protesters or instead join the anti-protesters? I don't need to defend myself, or tell you that I know exactly everything or the way things should be or that I have a 100% defined progressive south asian politics in america (you say I should know). (Instead this, of course, changes and is flexible). you make me laugh because: maybe you did not think about why I was going to an (anti)-protest, in support of someone who is speaking out against the very things you hate. you make me laugh because you reacted without finding out what you were reacting to. Aside from the mistake of your assumption: Do you know anything about progressive U.S. South Asian politics? Or the complexity of the immigrants that live here -- (instead of assuming all kinds of things like a homogeneous class, race and politics.) Oh, and I don't necessarily need to go to India to do the "good work," as you say. There's enough shit here to tackle. (or haven't you heard?) fuck off back. (excuse my language y'all). Just had to push back a little. but listen, hey, one day, if you stop to listen we might become friends. (or maybe never at all) not yours at all, Vinita From aiindex at mnet.fr Mon May 27 03:45:13 2002 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 23:15:13 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] US Army Recruiting Through Video Games Message-ID: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64744-2002May23.html Army Recruiting Through Video Games By Anthony Breznican AP Entertainment Writer Thursday, May 23, 2002; 3:59 PM LOS ANGELES –– Being all that you can be is going digital, and Uncle Sam is footing the bill. The U.S. Army hopes to attract military recruits with two new computer games that simulate life as a soldier in combat and basic training. The military has supplied advice to video game makers for other titles over the years, but "America's Army, the Official U.S. Army Game" is the military division's first foray into creating games itself. The PC software consists of two separate titles, "Soldiers," a role-playing character-builder akin to the popular "real life" simulator "The Sims," and "Operations," a first-person shooter game that takes the player on missions to attack enemies. They were introduced Wednesday. "The Army's not a game, but we use war games in our training and this is kind of an extension of that. It's just a new way of connecting with young Americans," said Lt. Col. Casey Wardynski, director of the office of Economic and Manpower Analysis. Recognizing that movies like "Top Gun" and "Black Hawk Down" can help attract recruits, the military often cooperates with entertainment producers on projects the Pentagon believes present the organizations fairly. But it's rare for the military to initiate its own projects. Wardynski proposed the idea for an Army video game in 1999, arguing that military vehicles and equipment will require greater computer familiarity in the future. The games are expected to come out in July or August, and all the software will be free, Wardynski said. Most of the 1.2 million discs released will be attached to popular video game magazines. By September, the Army expects to have paid about $7.5 million to create and distribute the games, he added. The announcement came at the start of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the interactive gaming industry's annual worldwide convention. Visitors were greeted by a camouflaged Humvee and a small tank parked near the entrance while soldiers distributed fliers about the games. John Hiles, one of the creators of "Soldiers," said the game was set on an Army base to show players that even the less glamorous side of military life can be rewarding. There are no terrorists to hunt in that game, no borders to protect – but it does feature barking drill instructors, target shooting and other training exercises that offer character-building points. Characters who pay attention, follow orders and work hard advance on scales that measure loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service and honor. That gives them greater skills and options later in the game. "If your guy has values, he continues in his career," Hiles said. "If he's there to party and minimize his work, then maybe he gets stuck and doesn't make it." The "Operations" game is a more traditional shooting adventure, featuring battles to defend U.S. interests like the Alaskan oil pipeline or eliminate enemy forces such as a terrorist training camps. "The game does include violence, but only in the same way the real Army uses force in defense of our country," said Michael Capps, a designer of "Operations." "We wanted to portray it as a value-laden organization." "Operations" is played online with a squad of other remote gamers, and just like "Soldiers," it rewards positive military behavior. Any gamer who logs in to cause havoc by shooting at fellow members of the special operations team gets kicked out of the game. The joke is they can still log in – but their point-of-view is locked behind bars in the Fort Leavenworth military prison. ––– On the Net: http://www.americasarmy.com © 2002 The Associated Press From slumbug at rediffmail.com Mon May 27 09:30:14 2002 From: slumbug at rediffmail.com (slumbug) Date: 27 May 2002 04:00:14 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] The rant is back! Hooray! Message-ID: <20020527040014.15832.qmail@webmail19.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020527/689c50ae/attachment.pl From sumayar at freemail.absa.co.za Sun May 26 22:18:32 2002 From: sumayar at freemail.absa.co.za (sumayar) Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 18:48:32 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Fw: HoffmanWire: Hoffman Contra Sobran Message-ID: <000701c20551$15862d40$3d9bcba3@default> ----- Original Message ----- From: Michael A. Hoffman II To: Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2002 10:06 PM Subject: HoffmanWire: Hoffman Contra Sobran > THE HOFFMAN WIRE > Dedicated to Freedom of the Press, Investigative Reporting and Revisionist History > > Michael A. Hoffman II, Editor > http://www.hoffman-info.com/news.html > ******************************************* > > ============================================================ > Sponsor a child today through Children International. Give > a desperately poor child hope for a brighter future. For > only $15 a month you can make a difference! > http://click.topica.com/caaajW9a2iTuca3cac2a/ChildrenInternational > ============================================================ > > May 15, 2002 > > Hoffman Contra Sobran: > Deconstructing the Loyal Opposition > > > Lowering Our Guard > > by Joe Sobran > > > > Who would want to provoke a war? > > > > For some reason, even Israel's warmest supporters > > haven't picked up President Bush's description of Prime > > Minister Ariel Sharon as "a man of peace." Unlike "axis > > of evil," the phrase just isn't catching on. It's a bit > > like praising Arnold Schwartzenegger as "this > > generation's Cary Grant." You can admire Arnold for many > > things -- and don't we all adore him? -- but suave charm > > isn't exactly his line. > > =============== > > Hoffman replies: Bush's characterization of Sharon as a man of peace is > not only ludicrous, it's an indicator of the grave degree of disorder in > Bush's soul, the same Bush who the American establishment media refuse > to report was a business partner of the Bin Ladens. > > ========= > > Sobran writes: > > > Sharon is tough. Give him that. And he refuses to > > allow his country to be swallowed up by "the > > international community," the United Nations, and > > assorted acronymic agencies. Even when he's wrong, which > > is usually, he sticks to his guns. Sharon consistently > > puts his country first -- though this doesn't really > > distinguish him from most American politicians, who also, > > just as consistently, put his country first. > > ============== > > Hoffman replies: > > Oh, God! Here's one of these excruciatingly nonseniscal Sobranisms that > have been cropping up in his columns over the past few years. Is this a > bit of "diplomacy" to try and win over the Sharon-worshipping > conservatives by faintly praising Sharon? If so, it's a fool's errand. > > "Give him that"? No way. I give Sharon nothing. He's a baby killer. He's > the personification of the wicked Talmud, of genocidal Zionism's Master > Race doctrines. > > Sharon defied the international community and the UN, says Mr. Sobran. > But Sharon's Jewish lobby intimidates, subverts, bribes and thereby > shapes and controls these communities and world bodies. If not, where > were the UN sanctions on "Israel" when it refused the UN war crimes > commission entrance to Jenin? > > Sobran lauds Sharon because he says Sharon "sticks to his guns even when > he's wrong...Sharon is tough." This is a virtue? Is the pun about guns > intended? The guns that kill helpless Palestinian grandmothers? The guns > that Sharon's boys used to kill the first victim of the latest Israeli > holocaust that began March 29-- an American citizen, a mother who was > holding her infant when she was shot for no reason other than the > Talmudic alibi that she was a sub-human Palestinian? Sharon sticks to > his guns. Even when wrong. What is Joe saying? > > Mr. Sobran opines that Sharon "consistently puts his country first." > Rubbish. Sharon and those like him will destroy the Jewish people. They > put their country last. The Talmud and Zionism are what comes > first--recipes for planetary suicide, of Israeli and Arab first, and > then of everyone. > > Why this need to find something to praise in the hideous and disgusting > mass murderer Sharon, who ought to be sitting in death row at the Hague > awaiting a hangman's noose? > > ============ > > Sobran writes: > > > U.S. Government officials have received information, > > unspecified and admittedly unreliable, that we could have > > an exciting July 4 ahead of us this year. Terrorists may > > have picked Independence Day as the date for an attack on > > a nuclear power plant. > > ============= > > Hoffman replies: > > These cry-wolf "reports" are government-generated. They have been issued > to spread panic and fear a half dozen times since Sept. 11. Sobran helps > them by repeating without comment the latest govenrment panic bulletin, > intended to keep the American Group Mind on boil, to keep us away from a > cool, calculating assessment and investigation of the government's own > role in 9/11. Until we truly calm down, "exciting" flag-waving jingoism > obstructs sleuthing and skepticism. > > =========== > > Sobran writes: > > > We are also getting news reports and rumors, hard to > > pin down, that Israelis, in this country illegally, have > > been arrested while engaged in curious activities: posing > > as art students, driving a truck with traces of TNT and > > another explosive. It's possible that these Israelis are > > here for innocent reasons, or that their doings aren't > > aimed against the United States: even if they are Mossad > > agents, they may be friendly to this country. > > ============= > > Hoffman replies: > > Sobran states that even if they are Mossad agents they may be friendly > to the US anyway. > > Huh? This is "Chronicles" magazine "logic." For years Rabbi Jacob > Neusner was a columnist for the celebrated, "hardcore" > paleo-conservative, "Chronicles" magazine-- you know, the 'zine that > purported to want to restore "Western Civilization" by putting a rabbi > on board their ship of state. What a joke. > > The Mossad, as a terror and assassination arm of the Israeli government, > is dedicated to the destruction of our civilization. They can no more be > friendly, under any circumstances, to the American people than the > Jewish ("Russian") Mafia or the Chinese Communist Party. > > ========== > > Sobran writes: > > > But there is a darker possibility. Some of them may > > be provocateurs whose mission is to stage an event that > > will recharge American hysteria over terrorism and fuel > > demands for immediate war with alleged "terrorist states" > > -- which happen to be Israel's enemies in the Middle > > East. It would be far from the first time Israel had > > duped the United States in pursuit of its own interests. > > > > No politician will say this publicly, but when it > > comes to Israel, U.S. security is very lax. Security > > officials dread the ever-ready charge of anti-Semitism. > > And when Israeli planes attacked the USS Liberty In > > 1967, killing 34 American sailors, or when the spy > > Jonathan Pollard's "rogue operation" turned out to have > > the full authorization of the Israeli government, > > Congress, instead of investigating the incidents fully, > > chose to turn a blind eye. It either didn't want to know > > what happened or didn't want the American public to find > > out. The real scandal is not that we can't trust the > > Israelis; by now that should be a given. What is much > > worse is that we can't trust our own government. > ============= > > Hoffman replies: > > The preceding is factual, an axiom, yet it appears surrounded by the > myopia and muddled thinking previously cited, so its usefulness is > diminished, if not negated by dint of the confusion which mixing a bit > of truth with massive error sows. > > =============== > > Sobran writes: > > > In Federalist No. 22, Alexander Hamilton warned that > > one of the weaknesses of republics (as opposed to > > monarchies) is that "they afford too easy an inlet to > > foreign corruption." Foreign countries and their > > partisans here have often egged this country into war > > with their enemies: not only Israel, but England and the > > Soviet Union. > > > > ============ > > Hoffman replies: > > Here we go with "American Constitutionalist" Sobran's bizarre tilt > toward monarchism, last seen in his perverse column airing British > author Samuel Johnson's execration of the American Revolution. Alexander > Hamilton was an enemy of freedom. Monarchies are at least as susceptible > to "foreign corruption" as republics; the most flagrant example of this > being the British Crown. > > ============= > > Sobran writes: > > > Of course a terrorist attack could come from many > > parties, including disaffected Americans or hostile > > aliens already within our borders. No foreign government > > would have to instigate or facilitate it. > > > But is it likely that Iraq or Iran would sponsor > > such an attack, when the U.S. Government, predisposed to > > blame them, would most likely respond by shooting from > > the hip? By the same token, an enemy of Iran and Iraq > > might reckon that enraging the United States with a > > "terrorist" incident, staged by trained provocateurs, > > would be a convenient way of provoking the destruction of > > both countries. > > ========= > > Hoffman replies: > > Yes, of course. The stratagem is as old as the sinking of the Maine and > the Lusitania, and the Parl Harbor ruse. Tell us something we don't > know, Joe. Like how George W. Bush had Usama bin Laden's older brother > killed in a plane crash, or how Bush Sr. and Jr. did lucrative business > with SaudiBinLaden (SBL) prior to Sept. 11. > > =========== > > Sobran writes: > > This is not to say that Israel would actually do > > such a thing. > > =========== > > Hoffman replies: > > Ha ha ha. You're quite the comedian, Joe. > > ============== > > Sobran writes: > > >The risks of failure would be enormous. > > ======== > > Hoffman replies: > > The risks aren't so "enormous." The Israelis at the very LEAST monitored > and tracked the 9/11 hijackers before Sept. 11, shepherding them. Cf. > "Revisionist History" newsletters #20 and #23. > > Moreover, with a tightly controlled US media, with a Masonic FBI and CIA > and the White House occupied by a Zionist agent, how are the risks > enormous? Risk of exposure presupposes an independent media and an > honest intelligence apparatus. America has neither. Israeli complicity > in the next terror attack can be dimsissed as an "urban myth," in the > same way that Deputy US Attorney General Larry Thompson on March 5 > dismissed the significance of the apprehension of Israeli "art students" > and "moving van employees" in the wake of 9/11. > > There's not much risk of failure/exposure in an America that watched its > own government bomb the Federal Murrah building in Oklahoma City; and > that now watches Rep. James Trafficante sent to prison as a payback from > the Israelis for his having helped free John Demjanjuk. > > Moreover, risk of "exposure" in the context of a processed American > population, can in certain circumstances fuel the Cryptocracy, by the > mechanism of the "Revelation of the Method" (cf. this writer's "Secret > Societies and Psychological Warfare: 2001"). > > =========== > > Sobran writes: > > > security is a matter of anticipating all possibilities. > > With millions of lives at stake, dismissing some > > scenarios as improbable is not enough. The 9/11 attacks > > were improbable too. That's why they succeeded. > > > > Today America's guard is up on many fronts. But on > > one front its guard remains conspicuously down. Any > > president who can call Ariel Sharon a "man of peace" with > > a straight face is in the wrong business. The frightening > > thing is that he seems to believe this. If so, he's the > > only one. > > > > The previous President Bush, for all his > > shortcomings, had a healthy suspicion of Israel. As a > > former CIA director, he knew what he was dealing with. > > Hasn't he tipped off his son? > > ============= > > Hoffman replies: > > One really must question Mr. Sobran's lucidity when he writes, "The > previous President Bush...had a healthy suspicion of Israel. As a former > CIA director...he knew what he was dealing with." > > As a member of the masonic order of "Skull and Bones," i.e. the Russell > Trust at Yale, George Bush Sr. has never been an opponent of the > Israelis. He was simply of that wing of Aryan-Zionists who were > convinced that Yitzhak Rabin's approach toward swindling the > Palestinians out of their land (by means of negotiation) was the > craftier method, superior to Sharon's Neanderthal tactics; but the > objective for these Masons and Judaics has always been the same: the > rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem, secured in part by means of the > pacification of the indigenous Palestinians, either through guile (Oslo) > and CIA proxies (Arafat); or by massacre and war crimes (Jenin, Nablus, > Ramallah, Bethlehem). > > George Herbert Walker Bush was an occult monster and the Chinese > Communist Party's man in the White House before Clinton. He betrayed his > drug-dealing crony Manuel Noriega and suckered Saddam Hussein into > invading Kuwait. Certainly Bush Sr. has "tipped off" Dubya, and the tip > is the same one Christ was given, "Bow down before Satan and all these > kingdoms will be yours." At this late date, we should have absolutely > no illusions about our deadly enemies. One wonders why Mr. Sobran > exhibits so wretched a naivete toward them. > > It is disastrous that horribly confused and double-minded pundits like > Mr. Sobran disseminate such a stew of half-truth and seeming > disinformation, and yet still maintain chachet as beacons of opposition > to the establishment. > > Such opposition is loyal opposition. It fits the Cryptocracy's profile > of permissible and controlled opposition, of safety-valve venting and > the generation of sufficient levels of "noise" necessary to keeping the > America people awed and bedazzled spectators, rather than militant and > clear-thinking detectives and radicals. > > In retrospect, Mr. Sobran's title for his column, "Lowering our guard," > would seem to be a double-entendre. > > Michael A. Hoffman II > > --------------------- > > ============================================================ > 50 BONUS + 5 COMMISSION-FREE TRADES. Open an Ameritrade(R) > cash account today with at least $1,000 and get a $50 cash > bonus. Plus, receive five commission-free trades: > http://click.topica.com/caaameva2iTuca3cac2f/Ameritrade > ============================================================ > > Hoffman is a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press > > The HOFFMAN WIRE is a public service of Independent History and Research, Box 849, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho 83816 USA > > 24 Hour Revisionist News Bureau: http://www.hoffman-info.com/news.html > > Subscribe: HoffmanWire-subscribe at topica.com > > Disclaimer: The Hoffman Wire is a controversial and politically incorrect e-mail letter intended only for those who have requested it. We have a strict anti-spamming policy. The views expressed in the Hoffman Wire are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of advertisers or the transmitter. > > Freedom of the Press: A hallowed right. > Responsible Dissent: A contribution to understanding and dialogue. > > ==^================================================================ > This email was sent to: sumayar at freemail.absa.co.za > > EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a2iTuc.a3cac2 > Or send an email to: HoffmanWire-unsubscribe at topica.com > > T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! > http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register > ==^================================================================ > From shuddha at sarai.net Mon May 27 14:04:36 2002 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddha) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 10:34:36 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Pratap Pandey's Postings In-Reply-To: <7076F609.4FC641BF.029E54D5@aol.com>; from VinitaNYC@aol.com on Sun, May 26, 2002 at 02:07:10PM -0400 References: <7076F609.4FC641BF.029E54D5@aol.com> Message-ID: <20020527103436.A9397@sarai.net> Dear Vinita, thank you for your posting and for putting Pratap (and anyone else) who shoots off their mouth without bothering to read what they are writing about in their place. Your description of the anti protest (many young south asian women on one side and a few old south asian men on the other side) sounds interesting. Perhaps you could tell us more about what happenned. I have been following for some time hindu right websites and discussion groups onthe web, especially hinduunity.org, and I think that a serious and organized online assault by way of e mails and postings on these sites is in order. I agree with Neel who says that the criticism of the right needs to be more imaginative, for one, we could start thinking about the many things (like nationalism, and a faith in the state)0 that the right and the so called left in India share.Perhaps we need to think in metaphors and inways which the right (or the existing so called left) cannot anticipate yours Shuddha s On Sun, May 26, 2002 at 02:07:10PM -0400, VinitaNYC at aol.com wrote: > Dear PP; > > you are funny. > you do write well, but > are you sure your anger is directed at me? > Do you have any idea who you are talking to? > Do you have any idea what you are saying? > I'm not sure where you got your ideas about who I am and what I think: > By calling people to go to an anti-protest as I did (meaning one that tries to drown out the voices of the Hindu Right in a New York city public space, which happens to be the school I attend), I was engaging in a vision: Dialogue and dispute in public space. > > By all reports the young (mostly women) did drown out the old (mostly men) "members" of the U.S. Hindu Right. > You make me laugh because did you think I was going to support the protesters or instead > join the anti-protesters? > > I don't need to defend myself, or tell you that I know exactly everything or the way things should be or that I have a 100% defined progressive south asian politics in america > (you say I should know). > (Instead this, of course, changes and is flexible). > > you make me laugh because: > maybe you did not think about > why I was going to an (anti)-protest, in support of someone who is speaking out against the very things you hate. > > you make me laugh because you reacted without finding out what you were reacting to. > Aside from the mistake of your assumption: > Do you know anything about progressive U.S. South Asian politics? Or the complexity of the immigrants that live here -- (instead of assuming all kinds of things like a homogeneous class, race and politics.) > Oh, and I don't necessarily need to go to India to do the "good work," as you say. There's enough shit here to tackle. > (or haven't you heard?) > > fuck off back. (excuse my language y'all). Just had to push back a little. > but listen, hey, one day, if you stop to listen > we might become friends. (or maybe never at all) > > not yours at all, > Vinita > > > > > > _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. > Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. > List archive: ---end quoted text--- From shuddha at www.sarai.net Mon May 27 17:06:50 2002 From: shuddha at www.sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 11:36:50 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Aaj ke Naam - In Today's Name Message-ID: <200205271137.NAA10933@mail.waag.org> Dear All at readers List, (Please feel free to copy relevant parts and redistribute this message) I am forwarding news of an initiative started by independent filmmakers called 'Aaj ke Naam' (In Today's Name), which intends to respond to the growing fascism in India through short films/ video. The initiative is voluntary. There is a discussion list which is hosted by Sarai for those who would like to be involved in furthering and supporting this effort. Please find below, an announcement from the list adminsitrators - Yousuf Sayeed and Rahul Roy about this initiative, and also, a background text that spells out the ideas behind the initiative. More info on Aaj ke Naam is available at - Rahul Roy's e mail address is - Yousuf Sayeed's e mail address is - Hope that this will be of interest to many on this list, and we would like to welcome, Aaj ke Naam, which is begining to become active, on to the network of discussion lists at Sarai. regards Shuddha -------------------------------- ANNOUNCEMENT OF AAJ KE NAAM Dear Friends, Some of us got together recently in Delhi to discuss the possibility of responding to the current communal situation in the country as a community of film makers. In the meeting we decided to produce a body of work which would represent our protest/statement/comment on the times we are living in. We do not have the means to support these productions but we are hoping that each one of us will be able to generate resources and assistance to make these productions possible. We hope to put these productions together as a package which can then be screened all over the country. A detailed statement (background text) is enclosed in the body of the message below. We would like to request all those connected with film making to offer their services/expertise/equipment to make it possible for these productions to take place. If you can let us know how you can contribute towards the production we will try and put you in touch with those in your cities who have agreed to make a video/film. We are specially interested in statements by new film makers and we will try to introduce them to camerapersons, sound recordists, editors who are associated with the project. Kindly respond at the earliest possible. We have started an egroup called Aaj ke Naam through which we can interact and share our thoughts. The mails for this group can be sent to aaj-ke-naam at mail.sarai.net�, and the archives/other information about the same can be had from the following site: . Others from film/media background could also become members of this egroup�by registering at the above site, or requesting us for the same. In Solidarity, Rahul Roy/Yousuf Saeed List Moderators _________________________________ Background Text : AAJ KE NAAM In a few weeks, it will almost be two months since the killings began in Gujarat. We have seen the images on television, not only of the violence, but also of the ways in which those who orchestrated it were feted and honoured. As people who work with images, as documentary filmmakers, we feel an urgent need to address this reality, so that these images of helpless victims and arrogant engineers of massacres are not the only ones we will have available to us to remember and understand a dark time. We also feel that as a community, we - documentary filmmakers and all those who work with images. will have failed in our responsibilities if we do not respond to what has happened. This is why we are writing to you all, as fellow filmmakers to make a series of interventions that can begin to address what we have all witnessed in the last weeks and days. What have we witnessed? Once again, like in Delhi in 1984, in Meerut in 1987 and at other places in other times, we have seen how a state machinery has blatantly demonstrated that it is willing to organize and implement a pogrom. We have also witnessed a near paralysis of our imagination, as we clutch at ways of being able to articulate our sadness and our anger at how the fabric of our social life, of everyday relations, of the few things that redeemed our cities, have been torn by the forces that command the state today and by their agents in society. If it was Gujarat yesterday, it (the violence that begins in the mind and in the imagination) is everywhere today, in the arrogance with which people say "serves them right" in ordinary tea shops and in elite dinner parties, or in the seriousness, and the ease with which people express the sentiment that "we need to arm ourselves for a civil war, fought to the finish" on internet chat rooms, and in crowded buses. If such a thing happens in our society, in these times, Lebanon, Yugoslavia and Rwanda will seem picnics by comparions. For many of us, this has resulted in our being unable to speak, being unable to react by any means other than being present at an occasional demonstration, or by signing a petition. This has left our anger, our despair, un-thought, un-adressed and un-accounted for. We live as if we had already begun counting our time, as strangers, unsure of when the next wave of orchestrated madness will occur and where it will occur. And, even if it does not occur, we have seen the spaces of conversation, of discourse, steadily being taken over by fascists and their epigones, or by those who would like to make capital out of the suffering that arose from the violence. We have witnessed the cynical politics that makes political parties prepare themselves for elections in the wake of massacres. We have seen them gloat in the assurance that violence will reap them the rewards they seek. We have seen them justify this violence in a language that would make a Goebbels feel proud of them. They have told their thousand lies. How do we address this time? How do we address its silences, its hate speech, its evasions and its apologies? How do we speak without garbled and tired cliches about communal amity (as if a davp style "hindu-muslim-sikh-isai, hum sab hain bhai bhai" poster, or slogan can do justice to the enormity of what has happened), without having to defend a moribund state, its tokenism which paved the way for full-on communalization, and its always pathetic treatment of people who it decided were not part of the "mainstream", or without resorting to a demonization of any community and their history? How do we meaningfully break the silence about Gujarat? And how can we think about it, not as an aberration (because then it would be easy to forget and forgive the perpetrators - as abnormal and inhuman people who are not like you or me) but as a slow poisoning of our imaginations and of all our minds with images of some people as "greater than"or "less than" human beings. The media, our intelligentsia, our artists, everyone is implicated in this process. How do we account for the greed, the complete erasure of the humanity of other people, and the inability to think in anything other than a communal or nationalist binary mode that besets so much of our contemporary culture, and especially our popular culture, our films and our television. Surely, this process has a history that we had begun to be comfortable with, way before the killings in Gujarat happenned. Surely, even Hindutva and the politics of hatred has a pre-history in the way in which people were addressed in terms of their identities even within what is called secular nationalism. Perhaps it is about time that we started asking some uncomfortable questions about how we got to where we have today. We are documentary filmmakers, we live and work with the raw materials of the realities, hopes, anxieties and dreams of the lives of ordinary people. We have seen things that others theorize about, or report, or convert into political manifestoes. Sometimes we hesitate to say things, not because we dont want to say them, but because we know that the realities that they attempt to describe are very complicated, and not reducible to easy, newsy television bytes. Some of us met in Delhi, one afternoon in March, when Rahul Roy and Saba Dewan called us to consider what we can do together with our craft and our skills in the wake of the killings in Gujarat. They wrote, - "...Can we dream of film makers from all parts of the country lodging their protests with videos on the communal situation which are then shown together as a body of work? Can we do it, or rather shouldn't we do it? " We decided that the time had come for us to challenge our own silence, our own awkward hesitations and our own confusions, despair and anger about what we know is happening around us. This letter emerges from that decision. We have decided to make a collection of short films/videos that articulate what we are thinking and feeling, some of which we have tried to summarize above. These are not films for a cause, because there is no cause to uphold. We are tired of causes that make people into the objects of political projects that are always larger than the reality of peoples lives. We are tired of the rhetoric of communities, nations, states and all things that claim our loyalties. We want to speak of and to the concreteness of particular experiences, our experiences and yours and the experience of those who have suffered and witnessed suffering. We make no larger claims. These are not films that say "This is what needs to be done", because we are not sure about "what needs to be done". We may have our own differences, but we are agreed on the fact that the time for people to be told that "this, or that, needs to be done" has long gone. These are not films we are making because someone has commissioned us to make them, because no one has and no one will. These are films that promise nothing to their makers other than a means to engage with their times. They are not funded, they will not be sold, but we hope to energize a network of peoples organizations, social movements, groups, and even small affinity groups of individuals to show and distribute them. They will be made available as VHS tapes, and will be works available for fair use (for non commercial, educational, consciouness raising, discussion related purposes) within the public domain We have decided to call this collection - "Aaj Ke Naam", (In Today's Name) taken from the title of a poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, which talks about the difficulty of living through dark times. We felt that talking about today is necessary and difficult at the same time. We are certain about the fact that we have anger, remorse and regret, and that we want to step back and think with our images about what we are feeling. We invite you to join us in this, to contribute films/videos, as short as you want them to be. As poster-films, as music videos, as experimental videos, as still images with soundtracks, as animations, as computer generated shorts, as simple video sketches and scratches - as anything that makes sense to you, and that you feel can give expression to what you are thinking. This is not an invitation to make the definitive, finished piece of work, rather it is a call to respond, spontaneously and creatively, with all and any creative means available at your disposal as a filmmaker or as a person who works with moving images and sounds. If you are a technician, ( a cameraperson, a sound recordist, an editor, a writer, a graphic artist) and would not like to make a film yourself, or feel that you could contribute better as a technician, then you can let us know and we can make your offer known to those who get involved or interested in this project. The deadline for submission for the first cycle of films is 30 August, 2002. Do let us know what you think of these ideas, and whether and how you would be interested in joining in or helping out in any way. In solidarity M.K. Srinivasan, Rahul Roy, Raqs Media Collective, Saba Dewan, Sabina Gadihoke, Sanjay Kak, Shriprakash, Yousuf Sayed. -- Shuddhabrata Sengupta SARAI:The New Media Initiative Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110 054 India Phone : (00 91 11) 3960040 From jchaudhuri at mantraonline.com Tue May 28 08:08:57 2002 From: jchaudhuri at mantraonline.com (Jyotirmoy Chaudhuri) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 19:38:57 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] ancestor worship/ kathryn hughes Message-ID: Dear Readers, Those of you who love or do hover around archives, record rooms, internet archival resources and such spaces may find this article interesting, amusing and hugely enjoyable. So, do not trash it, download it and read it - in your own time. Best, Jyoti ---------------- Ancestor worship Genealogy is now more popular than pornography. What does that say about us? Kathryn Hughes I had never been interested in family history. Or rather, I had always steered clear of it. In my family the stories seemed so sad. The great uncle who was dropped from the boat race at the last minute; the second cousin who was almost a bishop. There was a constant sense of just missing out on being rich, smart, important or successful. In our family you had to dance with an awful lot of people before you got to the Prince of Wales. Later, when my life had not gone as well as it should have-when small failures had taken the gloss off what was supposed to be a charmed existence-I fell to thinking that it might actually have been damaging, this sense of myself as coming from a long line of people who never quite got what they wanted. It seemed to inform the things I chose to write about. My first book, which had been brewing for years, was a study of Victorian governesses, a class of marginal women if ever there was one. With their noses pressed against the goings-on of grander people, their touchy pride in their status and their unconvincing insistence that it was inner qualities that mattered-my identification with them, I see now, could be traced back to my inverted family romance. All this was unconscious. In my thinking life, I took scrupulous care to avoid ancestor worship, even of the upside-down kind. I had grown up in the home counties, where people had a habit of putting up their family trees in the lavatory. Indeed, in mid-Sussex bloodlines were so important that animals had them as well. The dogs in these self-assured homes usually had pictures of their parents and even grandparents in the downstairs cloakroom. In my more uncertain home, we made a point of getting our animals from rescue centres, where they arrived without pedigree or personal history. I assumed that this was because, since my parents were both only children, we needed our pets to match the fact that we had no cousins. Now I think it was simply because, without a flourishing family tree and pictures of doggy ancestors, there was more room to make up stories about who we almost could have been. So when I started my new book 18 months ago, a biography of Mrs Beeton, the Victorian cook and teacher of etiquette, I had not thought about family history-mine or anyone else's-for a long time. For someone who seemed to embody not only a particular tradition but Tradition in general, Mrs Beeton turned out to be a surprisingly slight character. Not much was known about her. All there was to go on were a couple of bad pictures and a sketchy chronology. No one could say exactly when or where she was born. She may have had four children, or five. Her mother's name was uncertain. Her grandfather died either in the 1820s or the 1840s. This obscurity will come as no surprise to anyone who has tried to track down a middle-class woman in the days before proper public record keeping, but it still sat oddly with the received image of Mrs Beeton as a rooted and conspicuous presence in Victorian domestic history. As I went on with my research, this slipperiness started to make a kind of sense. For instead of the middle-aged household authority of popular imagining, Mrs Beeton was actually a 25-year-old journalist who knew how to ventriloquise the voice of an older, expert woman. Her public persona was so untethered to biographical fact that it could be tugged and pulled in any way that made commercial sense. Although she died in 1865 at the age of 28, "Mrs Beeton" soon became a lucrative brand name that was used to sell a range of products over the next 150 years. Even today her name shifts indifferent supermarket pasties. My job as her biographer would be to strip away the layers of myth and hype that had wrapped themselves around "Mrs Beeton" until there was nothing left but the modest, proven chronology of the girl who was born Isabella Mary Mayson. This wasn't as reductive as it sounds. By getting back to basics, I could begin to build a richer picture. By tracking Mrs Beeton through census returns, spotting her in parish registers, confirming her death in the civil register, I would not merely start to make sense of the emotional patterns of her life-the trauma that came from losing a father at the age of four and the misery of two dead babies by the age of 25-I would also be able to place her in the volatile social world of early Victorian Britain. I could hunt down the occupations of her grandfathers (as it turns out, an odd pairing of vicar and groom), look at wills, work out bank balances, find out how many servants she and her husband, the publisher Samuel Beeton, employed. I could trace her trajectory from its wobbly start to its untimely end. I would be doing family history, but with a difference. It was not mine, but someone else's and it would be done in the service of public narrative rather than personal fantasy. But I had not bargained for the sheer power of genealogy, the capacity it has to suck you in to its neverending stories. When I first visited the Family Records Centre (FRC) in Islington 18 months ago, I should have spotted the telltale signs of a cult straight away. There was the bookshop with its specialist literature, from My Ancestors Were Merchant Seamen to the darkly Gothic Disused Cemeteries of Outer London. The assistants, too, were oddly knowledgeable and engaged for public service staff: instead of having to strain to catch their attention, it was hard to shake them off. And then there were the punters who started to fill the place from 11 am (though they look like early risers, amateur genealogists are thrifty and always travel off-peak). Over the following weeks, I got to know the rhythms of this group of men, women and adolescents who arrived each day to track down their great-great aunts and long lost cousins. They stow their macs in lockers, come prepared with pencils (being caught in possession of a biro in a public record office is shaming), and know exactly who they want to find each day. On the first floor, where all births, marriages and deaths since 1837 are stored, they heave and swing the giant registers around with practised ease, like porters in a meat market. Whisking through pages with an expert index finger, they scan the lists of copperplated names, searching for a second cousin who was born during the war, a great uncle who turns out to have been married after all. At first I could not understand the stifled whoops of pleasure-an intake of breath, a hissy y-e-e-s-that accompanied a "hit." But within a few days I had my own repertoire of victory signals, the most explicit of which was "got you, you bugger!" It is very satisfying tracking down someone who has been eluding you, scampering out of sight, falling between the cracks of the paper record. Isabella Beeton was like that. She was born a year before civil registration began; she was absent from the 1841 census when the rest of her family was present and correct. Wherever she should have been, she was not. When I found her-born on the other side of London from where anecdote had placed her, lodging in Cumberland when she should have been in Cheapside-I did a little dance of joy. Anywhere else it would look mad; in the FRC no one batted an eyelid. Upstairs at the centre is where you go to consult the census. It is a tricky business, especially if you are trying to locate a household between 1841 and 1871. There are indexes and conversion tables to puzzle out, reels of microfilm to spool through, impossible Victorian handwriting to untangle. It is grinding work but, for constructing family trees, invaluable. The census doesn't just tell you where your ancestors were living one random summer night each decade, but provides you with their ages, occupations and family relationships. They may have fibbed to the authorities, but that is half the point: the stories people concoct about jobs, lovers, children and birthdates send you to the places where you need to dig for deeper truths. So useful is this information to family historians that the authorities were caught off-guard at the beginning of this year when the 1901 census went online. It lasted only a few hours. Over-burdened by 1.2m hits, the system collapsed and has stayed in a doddery on-off state ever since. The Public Record Office was wrong-footed over the 1901 census because it hadn't realised what most people already knew: that genealogy is now Britain and America's biggest hobby. To be accurate, it is family history and not genealogy that pulls so many people to the FRC every day. Aside from the professional historian, it is hard to see who could possibly be interested in the story of a family other than their own. Indeed, there is nothing more tedious than going down to the refreshment room in the FRC and finding yourself corralled into a discussion with a stranger about whether their great uncle emigrated to Canada in 1892 or 1895. Initially I had other, more high-minded excuses for avoiding these conversations. I remained convinced that most visitors to the FRC were frittering their time away on ancestor worship, when they could be thinking constructively about the future. I had a fantasy-wrong and snobbish, I now see-that they were returning to the local Rotary club to bore people with accounts of how grand or special their family had once been. A little of that may go on-there are several websites dedicated to helping you discover whether you are descended from royalty. But by forcing myself to attend carefully to snack break conversations, I began to realise that what people were hoping to find in their family tree was not so much grandeur as difference. They were reacting, I think, to a sense that, these days, it is hard to tell ourselves apart. Thanks to social and economic changes-welcome, mostly-in post-war Britain, we increasingly look and sound the same. We have the same jobs, eat the same food, have the same expectations. What family history can do is put you in touch with something that feels rougher and more real. An illegitimate grandfather is just as acceptable as a duke. Ideal is a grandfather who was the illegitimate son of a duke. Things that used to matter even as recently as 20 years ago-a great aunt in the workhouse, an uncle with syphilis-now seem positively sparky. Having a cousin who went Awol from the army is something to boast about. Shame, thank God, is not what it used to be. Yet there remains a tension in these stories exchanged over the sandwiches. Whichever way you slice it, genealogy generates a fatalistic narrative that makes you the passive recipient of whatever your ancestors happened to hand down. It is chillingly determinist. But the people I spoke to, people like Bill from Maidstone and Jo from Tottenham, seemed to be doing creative things with the ancestors they had found. They were using them to generate new stories, ones that opened up rather than closed down the future. Bill said he had found a great uncle who, according to the 1861 census, was a wax-flower maker and wondered what it meant. Was that why his eldest lad worked as a florist, something which had always, well, surprised him? Jo, who had herself down as a north London Irish Catholic, "so boring it wasn't true," had come up with an émigré step-grandfather and a clutch of step-cousins, presumably still living in Lithuania, "it's so exciting, I keep wondering what they're doing right this minute." Thanks to the internet Jo will probably soon be able to find out. For every person who visits the FRC on an off-peak train ticket, there are ten people at home logging on to the huge number of websites dedicated to helping them trace their family trees. Indeed, genealogical sites now get more daily hits than those offering pornography. The sites range from those of the various branches of the Public Record Office through to big American commercial outfits such as Ancestry.com which, once they have got hold of you, refuse to let go. (Only this morning I received an e-mail beseeching me "Kathryn, why not let us help you find your Hughes ancestors?") It was through the internet that I met Isobel Beeton. Not Isabella Beeton, but her great-great niece. Isobel is a social services clerk from Chichester who has been researching her family for the past year. She is not especially interested in Isabella who, after all, is no Beeton but only married to one. Still, Isobel was named after Isabella and wanted to learn more. I found her fingerprints all over the web. She was on the message boards of various genealogical sites, sharing information with family historians, asking for leads about the Beetons, passing on material which might be useful to others. I e-mailed her, she e-mailed back. Soon we were doing it every day, attaching scanned images of wills, certificates, photographs, not to mention hypotheses, speculations and frustrations about various Beetons and their ability to slip through our fingers. Isobel was a dab hand at the technical side and told me how to do all kinds of tricks, including setting out a professional-looking family tree using Word, instead of improvising with pencil and ruler. The moment just before we finally met on Arundel station, I wanted to run away. Surely the advantage of doing genealogy on the web was that you never actually had to meet the other people involved? Why had I stepped from the virtual world into the flesh-and-blood one? Isobel, however, was comfortable with it because, as she explained, she had spent the last few months meeting up with various Beetons. Second cousins, third cousins, steps, halves and even adopted, anyone who was within a day's travel. Mostly they were lovely. Isobel, a middle-aged woman who had run the gamut of life's usual difficulties and disappointments, told me over lunch that it was only at this stage in her life that she had developed a desire to reconstitute her extended family. Her teenage children weren't interested, her partner only half-so, but for her it had become a quest to fill out the picture of where, and who, she had come from. Genealogy is a sneaky business, though. Just when you have reconciled yourself to it as a harmless, even honourable activity, followed by people of humbling good sense and skill, along comes something new to trip you up. Here's the thing. The practice of family history, in Britain and in the US, is almost entirely dependent on the Mormon Church. Anyone who has located their great-great grandfather in Newcastle has probably done so by using something called the International Genealogical Index (IGI). It is an extraordinary resource containing the births, marriages and some deaths of 725m dead people. The data is culled from church and state records drawn from 110 countries. Britain is particularly well- covered, but even parts of the Samoan Islands have been inputted-useful if your great uncle was a stranded seaman who went native. The IGI is managed by the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City as a way of keeping tabs on possible converts to their idiosyncratic faith. Their crazy logic goes like this: anyone who died without having the opportunity to become a Mormon needs to be given the chance to put things right. Otherwise they face the prospect of an eternity spent sitting forlornly outside the gates of Paradise, unable to get in. Mass post-mortem conversion won't do, for some reason. In order for the mechanism to work, each dead individual has to be identified by name and then presented personally with the Mormon message by way of a "covenanting ceremony." Since the Mormons are scrupulously polite, they do not bully the dead-who may well have been Jewish or Muslim in their earthly existence-into accepting the covenant. It is left up to each individual soul to decide. In their keenness to identify as many potential post-mortem converts as possible, the Mormons do sometimes get careless about details. Enthusiastic volunteers are apt to send information culled from sloppy secondary reading. Once it is in the system it is hard to weed out. Thus someone has entered George Eliot, under her real name of Mary Ann Evans, as being born in London, whereas it should be Warwickshire. As a result she is presumably still languishing in the spirit world 120 years after her death, waiting for a correctly addressed covenant. Until recently I had withstood the temptation to tap in the names of my ancestors to the IGI to see what happened. It seemed important to keep the boundaries clear. I was a historian researching another person's life, not someone who needed to concoct sentimental stories about her own. Then, one day, I couldn't resist it. But there was nothing. No hits at all. At first I thought it must be because my family's name is so common: if you have a father from Wales called John Hughes then you can't expect results first time. So I tried my mother's family-a bit fancier, well-known in a little England duffery sort of way. Nothing. Everyone else who was consulting the Index at the FRC had been hissing and punching the air as their ancestors rolled up the screen in mocking profusion. I couldn't locate a single one. For months I had avoided trying because it seemed elitist. Then I hadn't because I feared that my family might turn out to be dull and dreary, more puritans than cavaliers. But now, it transpired, it was worse than that. My family was so insignificant that they didn't show up at all. The Mormons, who make a point of extending their invitation to everyone, had decided that my family weren't worth bothering with. We had missed out on heaven, just as we had missed out on everything else. Kathryn Hughes is a contributing editor to Prospect Prospect/May 2002 Source: http://prospect-magazine.co.uk From prosaha at hotmail.com Mon May 27 19:42:07 2002 From: prosaha at hotmail.com (Pradip Saha) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 14:12:07 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] New Book: The New Nuclear Danger Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020527/ce7f1f5d/attachment.html From slumbug at rediffmail.com Mon May 27 19:51:12 2002 From: slumbug at rediffmail.com (slumbug) Date: 27 May 2002 14:21:12 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Another view? how? Message-ID: <20020527142112.14018.qmail@webmail26.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020527/a0b2c89e/attachment.pl From twsherma at mailbox.syr.edu Mon May 27 19:33:09 2002 From: twsherma at mailbox.syr.edu (Tom Sherman) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 10:03:09 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Reader-list] BEFORE AND AFTER THE I-BOMB/invitation/press release Message-ID: The Banff Centre Press is very pleased to announce the publication of Tom Sherman's book of essays on the late twentieth century: BEFORE AND AFTER THE I-BOMB An Artist in the Information Environment An excerpt from the book appears as a Word file attached to this email. Please join Pages Books and Magazines and the Banff Centre Press in celebrating the launch of this groundbreaking collection in Toronto on June 13, 2002. Tom Sherman will be reading, speaking, and showing selections of his video art. Date: Thursday, June 13, 2002 Time: 7 - 10 pm Place: TRANZAC, 292 Brunswick Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, 416-923-8137 (Just south of Bloor, 3 blocks west of the Spadina Subway Station) Contact Pages Books and Magazines for more information at 416-598-1447, or Meaghan Craven at the Banff Centre Press at 403-762-7532 and press at banffcentre.ca. ----- Before and After the I-Bomb AN ARTIST IN THE INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT TOM SHERMAN ISBN 0-920159-94-X / $29.95 CD $20.90 US / 6.5 x 8.25 / 384 pages / B&W photos / Contemporary Art History Tom Sherman is an artist who has drawn deeply on his study of communications, the information economy, and natural scence. His writing works within and between these disciplines, postulating new ideas and congruencies, revealing possible truths for our future. In some cases, his speculation has become fact. - Peggy Gale, Preface Sherman integrates a deeply critical perspective on modern life with an understanding and sense of hopefulness that denies cynicism [and] defies ideological categorization. Read Sherman slowly and re-read. You will find his to be one of the most original and powerful voices of a generation. - David A. Ross I'm "blanking" on the "i-bomb." I'm "buffeted by the message storm" in Tom Sherman's poetic semi-fictional polemic on "the slow burn of telecommunications through the late 20th century." So, "don't check for my pulse. I just want to be a dial tone." - John Oswald, Perpetrator of Plunderphonics There was a time, not too long ago, when people wrote letters (and mailed them), picked up the phone and spoke to people (not voice mail systems), and considered whether to invest in expensive new "fax" technology as a means of speeding up communication. Children went outside to play games that didn't require a console and screen, schools bought books, and computers filled entire floors of some offices. In less than twenty years, our homes, schools, cars, workplaces, and leisure activities have been revolutionized by the onslaught of technology. Tom Sherman, part artist, part writer, and part visionary, got wired early and has spent much of his career leading the way through the aftershocks of the "I-Bomb" and its information revolution. Before and After the I-Bomb collects some of the best of Sherman's thinking and writing about art, nature, and technology from the last two decades. His series of personal reflections express both a love for and struggle with the new technologies and the cultural changes they have spawned. Most importantly they provide an instrument for gauging the evolution of a human culture inextricably bound to Earth's ecosystem, and a tool for negotiating the future, even if it is currently "obscured by a dense cloud of scrambled technobabble." ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tom Sherman is a media artist, writer, and broadcaster. He knows the media environment from several perspectives, having worked in mainstream radio and television, but also having produced groundbreaking art with video gear, industrial robots, surveillance systems, and telecommunications networks. He founded the Media Arts Section of the Canada Council for the Arts, co-founded Fuse magazine, and represented Canada at the Venice Biennale. Sherman performs and records with the group Nerve Theory. He currently teaches media art history, theory, and practice at Syracuse University in New York, but considers Nova Scotia's South Shore his home. REVIEW CONTACT / MEDIA CONTACT Meaghan Craven Acting Managing Editor Banff Centre Press Phone: 403-762-7532 Fax: 403-762-6699 email: mcraven at telusplanet.net Available to the trade from the Banff Centre Press Available to the public at bookstores everywhere BANFF CENTRE PRESS Tel: 403-762-7532 Fax: 403-762-6699 PO Box 1020, Banff, Alberta T1L 1H5, Canada press at banffcentre.ca www.banffcentre.ca/press ----- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/msword Size: 24576 bytes Desc: Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020527/17f154eb/attachment.dot From monica Mon May 27 21:22:31 2002 From: monica (Monica) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 17:52:31 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] from undercurrents Message-ID: <20020527175231.A12979@sarai.net> Dear All on the reader-list Interestingly, lists are porous entities and ideas and discussions spill over. PP's posting was forwared to the undercurrents list by one of its list moderators. It has evoked a thoughtful response which i think would make interesting reading for all on this list as well. best Monica Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 15:15:35 +0900 Subject: Re: [undercurrents] homeland/immigrant rifts From: Anjali Sagar To: Sender: owner-undercurrents at bbs.thing.net Reply-To: undercurrents at bbs.thing.net X-AntiVirus: scanned for viruses by AMaViS 0.2.1 (http://amavis.org/) Status: Dear Everybody, including the writer of the below piece, I would be really interested to know what exactly Rathin Roy et al wrote that prompted such a strong attack. Is this the same Rathin Roy that teaches political economics at SOAS -the School of Oriental and African Studies in London- who has organized anti-war demos and has been instrumental in mobilizing an active response within SOAS since 9/11? It seems really unlikely but it would be good to know for sure. I understand the writers response towards Indian Americans who support Hindu Fundamentalism from a distance in order to firstly ingratiate themselves with White Americans, and then proceed to stand back from the consequences of their actions. If indeed that is her/ his point. Actually, I am unclear as to the writers point. Is support of Hindu Fundamentalism necessarily about gaining grace and favour with White America? It is clear to me that there is a vocal tendency within the Hindu American community that is actively right wing. In a continuing series of attacks on leftwing Indian activists, one example that occurs to me is the recent case where a vociferous lobby of American pro Hindu-fundamentalists tried to prevent my Uncle Anand Patwardhan's anti-nuke film War and Peace from being shown at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. To me these clashes seem like another example of the complex antagonism between diasporic metropolitan Indians and Indian nationals. From my position as a British Asian cultural practitioner working here in London, I expect more from so called educated Indians from India, especially those working in the arts who visit Britain. Why are their ideas are so fixed? Is there no room for difference or fluidity? Their ideas, or rather prejudices, seem to be class based. Since this forum is an open field to articulate issues that are sometimes hard to deal with, I would like to talk about a subtler prejudice that I continue to experience. So called leftist arty types from India seem to have a real problem with British Asians who do not conform to their expectations. As a British Asian arts producer, my experience of these leftist Indian curators and artists has been consistently negative. However leftist they appear to be, they are in fact bloody snobs who revile British Asians. They only talk to you if you have relations who happen to be from the same class/ caste as them. My family happens to come from the same milieu as theirs but if I choose not to mention my 'heritage', it is all too common to experience unadulterated snobbery, avoidance of eye contact and other condescending modes of behaviour. While they are busy ignoring me, they work overtime at ingratiating themselves with the white colleagues sitting with me. It seems to me that in a country like India, where fine art, in the traditional western sense, has existed for only 60 years, art practice inevitably involves educational privilege. The Indian art world has always been practised and championed by an elite that has leveraged their cultural capital into critical authority that has reserved the right to canonise successive artistic generations. A cultural elite has developed that tends to reward the art that illustrates and extends its own discursive preoccupations. When this cultural elite comes to Britain, an unholy class alliance develops between them and posh white arts curators. Often communicated through glances and body language, this alliance operates through the unspoken assumption that British Asians(BAs) are somehow bamboozling white institutions. This assumption in turn justifies their own activities. On one hand, they behave as if it is necessary to hoodwink white institutions, on the other hand, they work hard at establishing a common bond of class snobbery. Indian curators are past masters at these kinds of psychosocial transactions. The end result of these postcolonial games is to restrict the field of communication. The field of action is constricted to a cosy little debate that is all sewn up. Anyone outside this nice little social scene is construed as an uncouth intruder. The entire process is designed to say loudly and clearly to all BAs: 'Who the hell are you junglies trying to muscle in on our territory? Stay out!' Quite clearly, the aim of all these pathetic games is to squeeze out any British Asian presence. BAs are supposed to be too dirty, too déclassé, too inarticulate and too untrustworthy to join in these sophisticated little cliques. Indian curators are completely disinterested in the wide range of contemporary arts practices of British Asian origin. Perhaps they hate the current obvious and rather irritating fascination with Bollywood. I too share their disdain. I have no sense of patriotism towards Bollywood. However, Indian curators' fixed notions and class prejudice towards British Asian popular culture is too often used to justify a dismissal of all British Asian artists, whether 2nd Gen or 3rd Gen. My own dislike of certain BA arts practices and of Bollywood stems rather from a desire to see a new set of complexities emerging here in the UK. In my research, I am interested in analyzing the full history of 20th century Indian modernism. That means integrating the overlooked histories of 20th Century Indian feminism and its complicated relations to socialism, nationalism, spirituality and sexuality. This implies an interrogation of the consequences of these ignored histories within white and more importantly diasporic culture. I am opposed to all fixed notions of British Asian culture that comply with the multicultural exhibitionist agendas of white institutions. My research is aimed at identifying and creating cultural forms that upset and subvert the expectations of mainstream institutions, snooty leftist Indian curator-cliques and 2nd Gen BA artists hellbent on genuflecting towards an imaginary India. What has art got to do with the inordinate varieties of diasporic and homeland based patriotisms unless those patriotisms help us to clarify and overturn the crisis India is in now? Thank you Coco for posting the piece. I was inspired to respond by the anger that the writer PP feels. I hope I have managed to traverse some of the complexities involved in the questions of homeland without being too general. Best Anjalika Sagar on 24/5/02 8:24 pm, Animas999 at aol.com at Animas999 at aol.com wrote: > Dear Everybody, > The message below was on posted on the Sarai list today. It is a very > disturbing and vitriolic version of some of the assertions that have been > made in the past in the context of this list about American-based > multiculturalism and its supposed relationship to fascism. The deratory > reference to Chicanos is also quite disturbing. I am posting this here > because I want to present it as a case study for our analysis. Clearly, this > kind of tension exists between some Indians based in India and other abroad. > But it is also representative of other rifts between exiled and/or immigrant > populations and home countries. Having to live with the constant battles > between Cubans and Cuban-Americans myself, I have first hand experience of > how treacherous these issues can be, but I don't think that ignoring them > will help at all. > I would very much like to know what others on the list, particularly those > not associated with Sarai, think about this. > Coco > From rehanhasanansari at yahoo.com Tue May 28 02:34:03 2002 From: rehanhasanansari at yahoo.com (rehan ansari) Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 14:04:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] do you know where the fuck the money goes? Message-ID: <20020527210403.4359.qmail@web12908.mail.yahoo.com> Dear Shuddha, Monica, Shohini, Ravi, Vinita, (and PP), PP has initiated more than a fair share of interactions on this list. I have found his contributions inspirational. I should say his attitude, his quick-fire responses, his rhetoric provocative in the very best sense. Once again it is PP that got Ravi and Shohini to write, which they do rarely. I find people who dont write on the list, the cut and paste crowd, the most offensive. At the very least PP has told us about his workday, the cut and paste moralists are too high and mighty to do that. Calling him akin to a fascist, homophobic, navel gazing, airing personal frustrations (the last two I find particularly hypocritical) is silly at best. I had no doubt that Vinita would not call for PP's ouster. Nor that she can give as good as she got. When PP became fresh with me, employing a PP patented rhetoric of suggesting/needling/demanding that I ( me who? A Pakistani, a Rehan Ansari?) could tell him what others (like me?) could be dreaming in Gujrat and Kashmir my outrage and dismay were only one of my reactions. What PP had said after all was not unusual, this needling occurs a lot on my travels in india, but coming from him ("him" being the sum of all he has written and provoked), AND IN THIS FORUM, is a rich experience. And with the Vinita thing once again a Pratap "fit" has led to me looking out for the shadows that lurk beneath. Shuddha writes to Vinita > Your description of the anti protest (many young > south asian women on one side and a few old >south asian men on the other side) sounds >interesting. Perhaps you could tell us more about what happenned. I'll tell you. Something disturbing. I havent voiced it yet. Of the young south asian women several of them are friends, some acquaintances, some of them i know have gone to a mandir in flushing, one of them regularly, and some I accompanied on one occasion. This mandir is: one which claims and many claim for it that it is the first one in new york. Address. Queens 45/57 bowne street flushing ny 11355 My sister, Saniya Ansari, told me a while ago, that on a shoot for a tv program she saw a sign on the premises that was asking money for orphanages. An RSS sign. It clearly said that. R S S. Saniya also interviewed the director of the mandir, a Dr Uma Mysorekar, or between you and me Dr. Massacre. The Dr spoke about restoring HinduISM. And this is a quote from the tv show, "make it puritan, just like Christianity." So I have asked more than one of those protestors quietly: do you know what the mandir does with its contributions? Oh in so by the way fashion I asked this. I feel like screaming: you fuck, do you know where the fuck the money goes... rehan __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com From pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Tue May 28 10:15:32 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 05:45:32 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] A Day of Doxological War Message-ID: <20020528044532.50860.qmail@web8101.in.yahoo.com> A Day of Doxological War May 27, 2002 The war between India and Pakistan has not begun, yet. But within India, the war has begun. This war is happening in the apparently independent print and electronic Indian media, apparently independently of the "other" war, the real war. This is the Doxological War. The Doxological War has mobilised armies of on-the-spot reporters; brigades of sponsors, and commercials breaks; battalions of broadcasting time; platoons of platonic (and not so platonic) Experts; and infantries of calm, shampooed- and gelled-hair, good-looking and expressionless newscasters. As the aforementioned newscaster – living up to his/her training, doing his/her job – speaks of war in a monotone, there runs simultaneously at the bottom of the screen a stream of events transformed into one-liners. Mimicking the stream of company stick prices in a stock exchange, these one-liners supplement the spoken words. They add a further, real-time dimension, to the TV screen and so add on to the already-incited Doxological War. n 9 injured in Grenade attack in a bus station at Anantnagar n Indefinite curfew continues in Godhra, Ahmedabad calm n Mulayam: India missing opportunity to teach lesson to Pakistan n Musharraf to address nation, may announce policy changes n Britain says sale of advanced Hawk Jet trainers on n Hizbul urges Pakistan to resist foreign pressure on Kashmir issue n 10 Assam Rifles jawans killed in militant ambush in Manipur [Aaj Tak, afternoon and into the evening, May 27, 2002] As these one-liners stream on at the fringe of the TV screen, the Aaj Tak channel reporting news in the late afternoon of May 27, 2002, carries a report how one Asghar has been caught in Jaipur, Rajasthan. He has been caught on suspicion of bribing Army "personnel" and sending troop information to Pakistan. The newscaster disappears, to be replaced by a "spokesperson" of the "Khufiya Vibhaag", as the Aaj Tak channel likes to put it. This Khufiya Vibhaag Expert talks about how this Asghar, and by extension, "these people, terrorists", "they go to cybercafes, and send messages to the enemy". While talking about the fact that this Asghar received money through hawala channels and then went on to bribe at this point, while talking, the Expert coughs. It is clearly understand that soldiers in the Indian Army did manage to get bribed (perhaps high-ranking ones, for the Khu Vi spokesperson mentioned, in his narrative, that classified documents were involved), which is what this Expert was on the point of blurting out, then realised he shouldn't. And so stopped himself. As the one-liners keep incessantly streaming, Aaj Tak late in the afternoon of May 27, 2002, also carries a report on village terahgharia in West Bengal (?). Why this question mark? Because, as the report clarifies, this village lies on the border between Bangladesh and West Bengal (i.e. India). It is not, as the reporter, a young Bengali woman speaking very good Hindi, clarifies, that border stines have not been placed. (Here, her voice goes on voice-over as the camera focusses on a plinth-like concrete block). The problem is, that 3 sides of the village face West Bengal and the fourth, Bangladesh. These 3 sides get inundated in the rainy season. The fourth doesn't. Thus infiltrations from Bangladesh, presenting a grave security problem, can happen at any time. There is a twist here. When the 3 sides get inundated, access to the village can happen only by canoe-like boats (here, there is a shot of a canoe-like boat turning the corner of a water channel, young Bengali Aaj Tak woman reporter on board). If the boats don't reach the village with essential commodities, the village suffers. Why has this "feature" has been inserted into a 30-minute News broadcast (since it doesn't bear any relation to whatever's been said and shown before)? Perhaps it is because the Doxological War is extremely arbitrary. Herein lies its reach, its ability to interpellate. n Pakistan arrests a hardcore Chinese Terrorist n 70,000 people affected by malaria in 12 districts of Assam, Central team to review situation n 9 militants of National Democratic Front of Bodoland killed in an encounter in Bhubri district, Assam (Zee News, afternoon and into the evening, May 27, 2002] But let us turn away But let us turn away from Television for the time being and look at India Today (Volume XXVII Number 22; for the week May 28-June3, 2002, released on May 27). The cover headline reads: "Operation Salami Slice." Is that a deliberate reference to pork? Can we sue this magazine? No it seems, on both counts. For one, it seems it is not a baldly racist reference. Don't we also get chicken salami nowadays? Moreover, the cover story text clarifies (on p22): 'A growing band of defence experts including those in the Government is now veering towards what in military terms is called a "salami slice offensive" (see graphic). Much like the way a chef chops salami, the idea is to rapidly capture small swathes of territory in PoK and hold them as a bargaining chip while signalling clearly that India didn't want the war to escalate to other areas.' Secondly, we cannot sue this magazine because this article, written by Raj Chengappa (a respected journalist, right?) and Shishir Gupta, is the Doxological War Happening. In the here and now. Textually organised. Presented as objective report, as Journalism, Journalism as independent as India itself. It is immaterial that we are not told who this "growing band of defence experts" is. It is immaterial that we are not given any facts about "including those in the Government". It is immaterial that we don't know when such "military terms" were coined. Ignore the simile ("much like the way the chef chops salami"). Although this seals the lie, since ultimately the text has to resort to a figure of speech to transform its truth-claims into "truth", this is not even the tip of the iceberg. For, after this statement, the article plunges into an ideal scenario of war. In what follows, the war is already on. It does not matter that real war has not begun. This article goes to war, by itself, in the present tense, in a national English weekly: "The likely targets of such offensives (meaning the capture of small swathes of territory in PoK) are in the high mountains adjoining the the Uri sector or in the Poonch-Rajouri sector south of the Pir-Panjal" Now, Chengappa and Ghosh begin to revel in their fantasy (where the war has begun is on): "Before such strikes are mounted, Pakistani army bunkers, artillery gun positions, ammunition dumps, supply lines, key communication facilities are detected through a surveillance network of satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles, reconnaissance aircraft and human intelligence. The offensive usually begins with heavy artillery shelling or a fire assault for 48 hours in the area of strike. "The idea is to exhaust the enemy's morale in the area of fire, knock out its artillery, command and control centres and disropt its supplies," says Lt-General (retd) Vinay Shankar, a former director-general of artillery" Let us pause here. The quote is a piece of classic Indian (I am tempted to say: Global eaducated Indian!) journalism. Whereas it is meant to buttress the story, it actually punctures it. That is because the text now begins to exist on two different registers: fantasy and fact. What sutures the two is the Doxological War, a fraught suturing between reality and fantasy, in which the latter wins out. The latter really wins out. Read the next para.: "On D-Day, to ensure that the area is "sanitised", Indian Air force fighters taking off from air bases in Udhampur, Srinagar and Pathankot would launch raids to knoccck the remaining pakistani fortification and gain superiority in the region. Air Chief Marshall (retd) A.Y. Tipnis, former chief of staff, saya air action is most effective for a degradation strike because it causes the "greatest damage" to the enemy's war-waging potential in the least possible time" The fantasy goes on. Read it for yourself. This article is not an article. It is a "reportorial". The reportorial (as in TV) is the genre through which War in the Abstract is explained, played out, created as an object of pleasure, for audiences. That is the purpose of the reportorial, the "relaying agent" of the Doxological War. What is the purpose of the Doxological War? It is to transform War in the Abstract into that cultural system called "common sense". And, nothing fulfills (or displays) that purpose than the hugely attractive Map that the India Today cover story carries on p22-23. See Graphic What is fascinating about the p22-23 Map is the manner in which terrorist camps have been pinpointed. Below the map is a summary of what India could do and what Pakistan might do (this element, that there might be resistance to attacks, is completely missing in the main story!). And in the map, a complete compendium of terrorist camps! Can we take this map to George Bush so that it is proved to him, once and for all, that Pakistan is a terrorist state? Can we use this map as proof (if we want to) of India's moral righteousness, of the "just" war Vajpayee and Advani have been thundering about? No, for the map is an unsourced one. Check out the credits to this Map. It says: "Graphics by NILANJAN DAS and YOGESH CHAUDHARY". What does this mean? What is the source of the information that has led to the making of this Map? What is its facticity? Is the Map real, or is it Imagimary? The map could be both. It could be real, in which case Pakistan does harbour terrorism. But it could also be Imaginary (since no source is given). In which case, Pakistan does not harbour terrorism. What wins the "D-Day" over here is the sheer pleasure of looking at a well-made graphic. Chengappa and Ghosh ride on this pleasure, which is the the pleasure of Doxological War. But let us turn away But let us turn away from the print media back to television. n 9 militants of National Democratic Front of Bodoland killed in an encounter in Bhubri district, Assam, arms and ammunition recovered n Pakistan catches chinese Islamist terrorist leader in PoK, extradites him to China n PM speaks to British PM Tony Blair, tells him Pakistan should translate words into action n British PM speaks to Pervez Musharraf on phone: says infiltration across border must stop n British High Commissioner and American Ambassador meet Brajesh Mishra Ahead of Musharraf's speech n Russian Deputy foreign minister is in Islamabad to discuss Russian proposal for talk between India and Pakistan n Japanese envoy to visit India and Pakistan in the next few days to urge restraint n Jyoti Basu: Sonia Gandhi has a better understanding of politics now [STAR News, late afternoon till before Musharraf's speech, broadcast live 8 p m onwards, May 27, 2002] The one-liners stream on. Outside, a squall slowly gathers. The light grows faint. One doesn't know if it is because it is evening or because the clouds are playing with the light. I watch a JAIN TV broadcast for the fourth time. The reporter, one Satish Dwivedi, is talking about missiles. As Republic Day march past file shots of Indian missiles are shown, the reporter talks about how these missiles are indigenous, whereas the ones that Pakistan has are China-bestowed. The reporter is unequivocal about this. That is to say, the text he is clearly reading out is unequivocal about this. Not so Uday Bhaskar, the defense expert whose comments punctuate this report. Uday Bhaskar says "It is the opinion of some" that the missiles Pakistan has have been got from North Korea, "some say", and from China. Continuing on missiles, the reporter says that since the Indian missiles are indigenous, targeting them will not be a problem (since, ostensibly, the science that drives the missiles is also indigenous). Another Expert appears, sitting beside an active computer screen. This is Major General Asghar -- (couldn't get his last Name). He is confident. He reiterates the indigenous bit, and then says: they will send one missile, we'll send 5. S Dwivedi then dwells upon the possibility of a nuclear strike, via missiles. Their range is smaller, he says. In the event of a nuclear strike (both ways), he says: "India will be crippled, but Pakistan annihilated". (End of Report) n Advani says India will remain firm on a decisive strategy towards Pakistan's undeclared war against India [STAR News, late evening, May 27, 2002] n Advani: India has to adopt another way to fight war declared by Pakistan [Aaj Tak, Afternoon, May 27, 2002] Whatever Advani said, one thing is chillingly clear: he said whatever he said while flagging off a Youth expedition to Ladakh, as part of "Sindhu Darshan". The Doxological War is being carried out on many different fronts. It is being carried out in the name of journalism. Professionals (Shuddha wouldn't like me to say: vetan-bhogis) are on these programmes: experts, creators of public opinion, carriers of cultural authority. Just one day of Doxological War shows what supreme confidence is inherent to it. And all this before 8 pm, before Musharraf's speech. Yours, pp PS: n Modi demands investigation into Lallo's daughter's wedding expenses [STAR News 1-line streamer, May 27, 2002] n Jyoti Basu says Centre should give autonomy to J&K [Aaj Tak 9 pm Headline, May 27, 2002] Grenade attack on Anantpur bus station ---------------------------------    Yahoo! Autos - everything you wanted to know about cars and bikes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020528/712793e1/attachment.html From m.kumar at mudra.com Tue May 28 14:05:18 2002 From: m.kumar at mudra.com (Mansi kumar) Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 14:05:18 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) Message-ID: <007e01c20622$99017720$b96464c0@Mansi> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020528/a5dcae9b/attachment.html From pankaj at sarai.net Tue May 28 16:19:47 2002 From: pankaj at sarai.net (Pankaj) Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 12:49:47 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Delhi needs to be bombed Message-ID: <20020528124947.B20428@sarai.net> Hello All, Sitting uncomfortably in my squat-ed comfortable high ceiling room I cant keep my mind off what's happening in Delhi and script. Watching CNN in my plasticly Uncomfortably comfortable hotel room I can only but picture Delhi streets. The simplicity (excitement) with which NDTV and barkha datta can go and talk about WAR, strategies and war book can only but keep ringing in my head. My dad being posted immediately from Calcutta to maruet can only but make me worried about my mother. The way people talk about "Pakistan needs to be taught a lesson" in the bus and on the streets is still fresh in my /dev/mem The simplicity with which people talk about war and people taking the army for granted and army personal dyeing as a "part of their job". As Jb Says "Delhi needs to be bombed". PS: This is not a troll, just vulgar display of anger -- Pankaj(Im a tru gnu boo boo) Kaushal Type in :(){ :|:& };: on any UNIX terminal From aiindex at mnet.fr Wed May 29 04:47:20 2002 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 00:17:20 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Anti-snooping operating system close to launch in the UK Message-ID: NEW SCIENTIST - NEWSFLASH -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anti-snooping operating system close to launch Computer activists in Britain are close to completing an operating system that aims to sidestep new government surveillance powers by storing virtually all data overseas. But the UK Home Office have condemned the project as potentially providing a new tool for criminals. To read the full story go to: http://www.prq0.com/apps/redir.asp?link=XbdeehjaCI,ZbccefhaccCF&oid=UcjjbCB From aiindex at mnet.fr Wed May 29 13:59:31 2002 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 09:29:31 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Wake-up call (Henry Porter) Message-ID: The Guardian Wednesday May 29, 2002 Wake-up call For the first time since the Cuban missile crisis, nuclear war is not a distant threat but a real possibility and the lives of 12 million people are at risk. But you may not have realised - perhaps because the rest of the world doesn't seem too bothered, or because India and Pakistan are a long way away. Or maybe you just don't want it to spoil your World Cup. Henry Porter says it's time to take notice Henry Porter We always knew it would be something like this - two peoples myopically locked in ancestral loathing and equipped with nuclear weapons rush to war before the rest of the world has time to prevent the disaster. Deterrence may just work this time. We must pray that it does but meanwhile it is imperative to realise how the world came to the point where a nuclear exchange became an admissible rather than an unthinkable possibility. Since September 11 the world has changed dramatically and in ways that we have so far yet to understand. If India and Pakistan had come to this pass last summer there would have been a far greater diplomatic effort to bring the nations to their senses. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan would have been shuttling between Islamabad and Delhi or standing on the border in Kashmir (which incidentally is where I believe he should be now), and America would have been galvanised by the crisis, putting its full might into making sure that these two countries understood that the nuclear option is unacceptable to the whole of humanity. But since 9/11 the processes of conflict resolution have been diminished and the norms of international behaviour have been degraded. Al-Qaida's attacks not only terrorised the west, they also coarsened us and narrowed our ability to engage in a pro bono diplomacy. While Pakistan and India were mobilising these past few days, the Bush administration has been completely diverted by the president's tour of Russia and Europe and the continuing agenda of how to respond to the threat of al-Qaida. Every emergency and every event is now passed through a new and dangerously egotistical filter that was erected by the Americans last autumn and is designed to see events exclusively in the context of American security and peace of mind. We have, to some degree, been converted to this process, for American security does matter to us all even if we don't like to admit it - but it means that situations which do not appear to have an immediate bearing on US concerns fade from our attention. Kashmir, although just under 500 miles from the theatre of war in Afghanistan, has been almost completely neglected as an important issue because the US and Europe were primarily concerned about President Musharraf's assistance in toppling the Taliban. In other words, the understanding of an entire region, its complexities and competing needs, has been swept aside in the pursuit of one western priority. As important as this is, it is remarkable how little we have seen of Annan and how powerless and negligible his contributions have seemed in respect of the wars on Afghanistan and in the Middle East. In these times of crisis he has turned out not to be the statesman that we were all certain lay beneath that collected exterior of his, but a rather slight and inoffensive figure. Admittedly his influence has been in part reduced by the sheer force of American unilateralist military action. The arguments for retaliation were compelling last year, at least to the US and British governments, and the UN more or less went along with them. But the UN has since failed to rise above the shock of September 11 and provide vision in this new era of disorder. For example, although the security council has voted 14-1 against possible military action in Iraq, there is no sense that this features in American calculations, no sense that Annan has any power to impress upon America the importance of the vote. If America's perception of the world's needs has been subsumed by its own powerful sense of injury and outrage, then it was for Annan to develop a rhetoric which goes beyond one nation's interests. That is what he and the UN are for. As Malcolm Rifkind said on Monday's Newsnight, it is astonishing that the security council is not in permanent session. It is also remarkable that there is not a greater sense of international alarm at a situation which approaches the Cuban missile crisis in its gravity. Annan should be in the subcontinent conveying a compelling message to the Indian and Pakistani people which is that the world will not contemplate such vast destruction and pain. Instead he talks to the leaders by phone and issues weak statements from UN headquarters which nobody takes the slightest notice of. How different things would be if America had not got itself into a muddle with Pakistan - on one border an ally of US's war against terrorism and on another a sponsor of Islamist insurgency. It could then back Annan with all its conviction and might. American intelligence estimates put the toll in the event of a full exchange of the two nuclear arsenals at 12 million dead with maybe seven million wounded - an instant slaughter unprecedented in the history of mankind. But despite the movement of missiles yesterday and the tests which took place in Pakistan over the weekend, the possibility of nuclear warfare still strikes the west as either remote or not really very important. British newspapers carried these figures on their inside pages, if at all, and the general impression is that India and Pakistan have got a nerve to distract us from the exciting run-up to the World Cup. Possibly that is summarising things a bit flippantly but there is, I think, a failure to understand the scale of the threat . We admit this terrible possibility and allow the contemplation of the figures and the crossing of a threshold where this horror becomes part of our record. Why are we guilty of such drift, of such apathy? Have we forgotten how the second world war ended in Japan, or is there maybe something more sinister at work, a voice which is saying, "If there is a going to be nuclear war to remind us all of the utter horror, it might as well be in south Asia?" Or is it simply part of our collective nature to expect these large-scale exterminations once every couple of generations? If similar hostilities menaced Europe the concern would be a great deal sharper. Few of us would be able to concentrate on our lives, let alone on the World Cup. But as it is this stand-off is taking place many thousands of miles away and one has to consider the possibility that there is a racist element in our thinking which quietly suggests the two countries could easily afford to suffer 19 million casualties. I hope not, but how else do we explain our own disengagement? One columnist, writing in the Daily Mail, raised the issue that it might be racist to have reservations about Indian and Pakistan controlling nuclear weapons because they cannot be trusted. This is to miss the point profoundly because the objections to these two countries developing weapons of mass destruction was because they have gone to war three times since partition in 1947 and their relations are characterised by congenital mistrust. The second and perhaps more subtle reason is the differential that exists between the capabilities and understanding of the Indian and Pakistani masses and the regimes which have acquired these weapons. It is plain, at least in Pakistan where up to two thirds of people are thought to be near illiterate, that there is very little understanding of the consequences of a nuclear exchange. In effect it would be the end of their nation. Clearly Musharraf and the Pakistani elite see that, but under a military dictatorship all that stands between the people of Pakistan and catastrophe is the balance of one man's mind. It is hardly racist to observe that neighbouring countries with convulsive politics and deep loathing should be discouraged from the development of these weapons. This is important because there must be much greater international efforts against nuclear proliferation. It is all very well America and Russia agreeing over the weekend to reduce their arsenals, but their pact makes no difference whatsoever to the security of the very large amounts of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium that is available in Russia. In 1998, for example, Russia's federal security service foiled an attempt to steal 18 kilograms of HEU - nearly enough for a bomb - from a weapons laboratory in the Urals. In 2001, six grams of plutonium were found hidden in a ship in a Latvian port. In the past six years rods, pellets and plates of radioactive material have been smuggled out of the former Soviet Union. This requires our concentration and the focus of international effort. But what did the Bush administration do when it arrived in our lives? It proposed a cut in the non-proliferation budget of the energy department of $41m (£28m). The fact is that material is out there, both illicitly and with legitimate regimes, and the west continues to endorse this situation by trading in components and conventional weapons. As Jack Straw pleads with both sides to see reason in Kashmir his case is eroded by the history of British arms sales to the subcontinent. We are anything but pure in this matter and some time soon we have to grasp that the trade in arms with these countries is no way to effect peace. If the two sides withdraw and we are able to get on with life, the thing that we must take away from the situation was the failure of the international community, of American diplomacy and of Europe's cohesion. The dispute developed right under our noses, yet only this week was anything like a response produced, and that was well below par. I suppose in the end what we are talking about is lack of leadership and vision in the UN, US and Europe, but there has also been a failure of imagination. Opinion counts for something in these matters and we are at least equipped with the knowledge to form those opinions and express them. Our disengagement up to now has been regrettable. From pankaj at sarai.net Wed May 29 14:49:41 2002 From: pankaj at sarai.net (Pankaj) Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 11:19:41 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Anti-snooping operating system close to launch in the UK In-Reply-To: ; from aiindex@mnet.fr on Wed, May 29, 2002 at 12:17:20AM +0100 References: Message-ID: <20020529111941.A30288@sarai.net> Even if its outside UK government's jurisdiction its inside some one else's jurisdiction. there are already plans of making singapore the MPAA RIAA control center for Asia. and more or less all states are busy implementing similar laws. In my opinion information will be secure only when no one knows where it is. rather then just posting it on a server outside ur country. Such a system is already there the need is to just start using it. freenet.sourceforge.net -- Pankaj(Im a tru gnu boo boo) Kaushal Type in :(){ :|:& };: on any UNIX terminal From anilbhatia at indiatimes.com Wed May 29 16:03:02 2002 From: anilbhatia at indiatimes.com (anilbhatia) Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 16:03:02 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Delhi needs to be bombed Message-ID: <200205291036.QAA17187@WS0005.indiatimes.com> Which 10 million could we lose? Everyone in India is worried that Pakistan�s leaders wouldn�t hesitate to nuke us if push came to shove, says Paran Balakrishnan, business-standard How does it feel to be the world�s first victim of nuclear terrorism? Put bluntly, that�s the position that India has suddenly found itself in during the last five months. It would like to strike decisively against Pakistan and deter it from sending terrorists across the border. But, a gigantic nuclear question mark hangs over a government that dares to take such action. But, let�s make no mistake about it. Nuclear terrorism works � or blackmail, if you would prefer to call it that. Everyone in India is worried that Pakistan�s leaders wouldn�t hesitate to nuke us if push came to shove. Back in January it wasn�t clear how Indians felt about war with their nuclear neighbour. The politicians felt their constituents were calling for a retaliatory war after the dastardly attack on Parliament that came so close to being a democratic disaster. Today, emotions have climbed to great highs and dipped once again. On one hand, there�s a weary feeling war may be the only option against an obstreperous neighbour that does not understand any other language. On the other is the sudden realisation that a nuclear war is forever. Hiroshima was a small, crude explosive compared to the nuclear weapons of the 21st century. Even India and Pakistan, novices in the nuclear game, could create craters many times the size of Hiroshima. The feeling is strongest in Delhi, which, for obvious reasons, would be the first target of any nuclear strike. Defence minister George Fernandes was quoted sometime back as saying India could afford to lose 10 million people and then go on to annihilate Pakistan. But as one worried mother put it recently, �Which 10 million could we afford to lose?� The sudden change of mood is visible at all levels. From shopkeepers to taxi drivers, everyone understands what would happen if a nuclear weapon exploded over Delhi. There might be slight doubts about whether the Pakistanis could guide it in the right direction. But everyone understands what would happen if the bomb did get here: We would be toast. The second target would be Mumbai and it wouldn�t fare much better. Even people who cheered when India exploded its nuclear devices in 1998 are suddenly staring the awful consequences in the face � and they don�t like them. Let�s put this in historical perspective. Back in January, I was surprised to find nobody seemed bothered by prospects of a nuclear war over the sub-continent. But I had lived in Britain during the early 1960s when the Cold War was at its height and when the Cuban missile crisis had created a chilling fear of nuclear war. North Americans grew up with air raid sirens and instructions about how to react in event the Russians dropped �the big one�. In that era before instantaneous communications, India was far from such terrifying possibilities. Why would anyone have bothered to send a nuclear bomb in India�s direction in those distant days? In 1998 the BJP-led coalition, in its wisdom, decided that India needed to test a nuclear weapon to put it on the world map. In some ways they were making the right strategic moves. Nuclearisation forced the Americans to take notice of India. But the bomb in the basement had one side effect: it put Pakistan on par with its giant neighbour India. That was one consequence India�s leaders hadn�t thought to its conclusion. No leader could take any action if he was paralysed by fear about the dreadful consequences that might follow. We do want our leaders to make the right moves whatever the awful consequences. But amidst the belligerence and sabre-rattling there is a sudden and growing realisation that we should tread extremely cautiously in a cross-border skirmish that could escalate. We would like to tackle the Pakistanis but the man � and woman � in the street doesn�t want to pay the potential consequences of a politically satisfying strike across the border. We hate Pakistan-inspired terrorism but these days there are fewer enthusiasts for a cross-border solution. "Pankaj" wrote: Hello All, Sitting uncomfortably in my squat-ed comfortable high ceiling room I cant keep my mind off what's happening in Delhi and script. Watching CNN in my plasticly Uncomfortably comfortable hotel room I can only but picture Delhi streets. The simplicity (excitement) with which NDTV and barkha datta can go and talk about WAR, strategies and war book can only but keep ringing in my head. My dad being posted immediately from Calcutta to maruet can only but make me worried about my mother. The way people talk about "Pakistan needs to be taught a lesson" in the bus and on the streets is still fresh in my /dev/mem The simplicity with which people talk about war and people taking the army for granted and army personal dyeing as a "part of their job". As Jb Says "Delhi needs to be bombed". PS: This is not a troll, just vulgar display of anger -- Pankaj(Im a tru gnu boo boo) Kaushal Type in :(){ :|:& };: on any UNIX terminal _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city. Critiques & Collaborations To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header. List archive: Get Your Private, Free E-mail from Indiatimes at http://email.indiatimes.com Buy Music, Video, CD-ROM, Audio-Books and Music Accessories from http://www.planetm.co.in -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020529/bceb5446/attachment.html From announcements-request at sarai.net Tue May 28 10:56:53 2002 From: announcements-request at sarai.net (announcements-request at sarai.net) Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 07:26:53 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Announcements digest, Vol 1 #55 - 1 msg Message-ID: <200205280526.HAA18770@mail.waag.org> Send Announcements mailing list submissions to announcements at sarai.net To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to announcements-request at sarai.net You can reach the person managing the list at announcements-admin at sarai.net When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Announcements digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Join IndyMedia Bombay! (PUKAR Monsoon) --__--__-- Message: 1 Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 23:43:03 +0530 To: Recipient List Suppressed:; From: PUKAR Monsoon Subject: [Announcements] Join IndyMedia Bombay! Dear Friends: As part of its continuing activities with Mumbai college students, PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research) is supporting the establishment of an Independent Media Centre (IMC) and IndyMedia network in Mumbai. The PUKAR Monsoon, a series of events and interactions with college students to be organised by the PUKAR Associates in July and August 2002, will feature a module on IndyMedia in Bombay. "IndyMedia" has emerged globally as a non-hierarchical, non-commercial platform for the production and circulation of alternative news, opinions, and documentation. It is a medium created and maintained by local, grass-roots networks of activists, students, media practitioners and journalists organised around Independent Media Centres (IMCs) all over the world. It is completely open and inclusive of all opinions, providing a space for open publishing, information sharing, networking around local issues, events and protests. These IMCs work towards open, democratic, and non-corporate news and opinion. There are more than fifty IMCs on every continent, managed autonomously with their own mission statements, resource bases, and decision-making processes. For more information, visit http://www.indymedia.org and the existing India site at http://www.india.indymedia.org/. We want to tap into the potential of this global network in order to establish an IMC in Mumbai. The IndyMedia network we envisage in Mumbai will not be headed by any person, organisation, or corporation, but will work as a network of students and young people, sharing information and turning ideas into action. The PUKAR Monsoon will help to launch the network amongst students in Mumbai in July and August. We have decided to set up an e-mail list-serv to take forward the discussion about IndyMedia. TO SUBSCRIBE to this list please visit http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-mumbai and enter your e-mail address and a password. A meeting to discuss these possibilities was held at PUKAR last week, and was attended by students, NGOs, and the PUKAR Associates. There will be another MEETING of students from several Mumbai colleges interested in the Bombay IndyMedia initiative on THURSDAY 30 MAY at 3.00 p.m. at the Comet Media Foundation, Topiwala Lane Municipal School, Lamington Road, Mumbai 400007, Phone 3869052, 3821983. You are invited to attend and participate. Regards, Sanjay Bhangar St Xavier's College Shekhar Krishnan and Rahul Srivastava Coordinators, PUKAR Secretariat _____ PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research) P.O. Box 5627 Dadar, Mumbai 400014, India E-Mail Phone +91 (022) 2077779, +91 98200.45529, +91 98204.04010 Web Site http://www.pukar.org.in/ --__--__-- _______________________________________________ Announcements mailing list Announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements End of Announcements Digest From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Wed May 29 06:25:06 2002 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 20:55:06 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Books for Palestine Message-ID: >hello >please circulate regardless of whether you can help. education, even within >the belly of the dragon, until the end of the world, etc. thanks. please >do not reply to the list. >zehra > >-----Original Message----- > > > Subject: Books for Palestine > > > > > The Israeli incursions into the West Bank during the > > > month of April have set back all aspects of > > > Palestinian life, including the learning institutions. > > > Our goal is to replenish educational infrastructure > > > by donating textbooks, software, and other learning > > > material. Specifically our aim is to provide 100,000 > > > books for the 2002-2003 Bir Zeit (a University in the > > > West Bank) academic year. The Palestinian students > > > would appreciate the most recent university texts, > > > within the last five years or so. We ask that you aid > > > the Palestinians in this humanitarian quest by not > > > only providing books, but by also forwarding this > > > message to all relevant recipients. As for the price > > > of shipping 33 books will fit in three boxes or one M > > > bag at the cost of 50 dollars by surface mail, a small > > > price to pay for the reward of providing education to > > > the Palestinian people. > > > > > > Please ship to: > > > Mr. Nadem Nashef > > > Association for Arab Youth > > > Address: P.O.BOX 99604 Haifa 31996 Israel > > > Phone: 972-4-8523035 > > > Fax: 972-4-8523427 > > > Mobile: 972-50-647670 > > > Email: baladna at zahav.net.il > > > www.baladna.4t.com > > > > > > We appreciate all the help that we can recieve. > > > > > > Please reply to this address with any questions or > > > concerns > > > > > > The Palestine Solidarity Committee at the University > > > of Texas at Austin > > > > > > __________________________________________________ > > > Do You Yahoo!? > > > LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience > > > http://launch.yahoo.com > > > > > > > _________________________________________ > > F.ree P.alestine A.ction N.etwork > > ***************************************** > > *FREE PALESTINE* *END THE OCCUPATION NOW* > > ***************************************** > > > > To subscribe to the FPAN mailing list, > > send a message to: > > fpan-subscribe at lists.riseup.net > > > > To unsubscribe, send a message to: > > fpan-unsubscribe at lists.riseup.net > > _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com From shohini at giasdl01.vsnl.net.in Wed May 29 09:24:06 2002 From: shohini at giasdl01.vsnl.net.in (shohini) Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 09:24:06 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Speech Message-ID: <000301c206c5$3bf60ca0$29d0c5cb@shohini> To critique and ask for counter-speech is not to ask for censorship. This is the critical difference between the libertarian position and the anti-censorship feminist one. To be able to disagree without making personal attacks is certainly desirable and more constructive. Otherwise, we'll be reduced to "I don't like your face' kind of argument that we have already seen evidence of. Also, the cut and paste work must not stop. I have read some of the best articles that way. Thanks Ravi for the Nandy article and Abir for his many interesting postings. Shohini -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20020529/ba050b21/attachment.html From bandshell at onebox.com Wed May 29 20:41:05 2002 From: bandshell at onebox.com (Alexis Bhagat) Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 08:11:05 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] Delhi needs to be bombed Message-ID: <20020529151105.JGRQ4635.mta08.onebox.com@onebox.com> Dear Reader-List, There can never be a cross-border solution. There must be trans-border solutions, post-border solutions. There must be no more border. This is the possibility inherent in a landscape centered around cities, the possibility which should be articulated on this list. When Delhi is the heart of its environs, not the master of a Nation; and Lahore, Karachi, etc... etc... are the heart of their environs, then the groundwork is laid for solutions, for inter-politan solutions. There only cross-border solution is no more border. Yours truly, Alexis ---- "anilbhatia" wrote: > Which 10 million could we lose? > We hate Pakistan-inspired terrorism but these days > there are fewer enthusiasts for a cross-border solution. > > "Pankaj" wrote: > > > > Hello All, > The way people talk about "Pakistan needs to be taught a lesson" > in the bus and on the streets is still fresh in my /dev/mem > > The simplicity with which people talk about war > and people taking the army for granted and > army personal dyeing as a "part of their job". > > As Jb Says "Delhi needs to be bombed". > From supreet at sarai.net Thu May 30 20:24:18 2002 From: supreet at sarai.net (Supreet Sethi) Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 10:54:18 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Anti-snooping operating system close to launch in the UK In-Reply-To: <20020529111941.A30288@sarai.net> References: <20020529111941.A30288@sarai.net> Message-ID: <200205300410.GAA05335@mail.waag.org> freenet architecture allows for flow of content towards maximum consumption area so chances are pretty high that indian content would'nt move far from nodes on indian subcontinent unless people in US start hoarding "indian" content available on freenet. That could skew the content flow to some extend I do'nt see any solution to this problem at this point of time Supreet On Wednesday 29 May 2002 05:19, you wrote: > Even if its outside UK government's jurisdiction its inside > some one else's jurisdiction. there are already plans > of making singapore the MPAA RIAA control center for > Asia. and more or less all states are busy implementing > similar laws. > > In my opinion information will be secure only when > no one knows where it is. rather then just posting it on > a server outside ur country. > > Such a system is already there the need is to just start using it. > freenet.sourceforge.net From supreet at sarai.net Thu May 30 20:33:58 2002 From: supreet at sarai.net (Supreet Sethi) Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 11:03:58 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Delhi needs to be bombed In-Reply-To: <20020529151105.JGRQ4635.mta08.onebox.com@onebox.com> References: <20020529151105.JGRQ4635.mta08.onebox.com@onebox.com> Message-ID: <200205300420.GAA05405@mail.waag.org> Problem is people do'nt believe when they see a articulated argument because that is "ordinary", something that they do on daily basis. People tend to go with the spectacle. I believe that there are isolated few who actually buy the argument that "borders" and "nations" may not be "true". As long as government can seduce people by creation of a spectacle, its all true and real On Wednesday 29 May 2002 11:11, you wrote: > Dear Reader-List, > > There can never be a cross-border solution. There must be trans-border > solutions, post-border solutions. There must be no more border. > This is the possibility inherent in a landscape centered around cities, > the possibility which should be articulated on this list. When Delhi > is the heart of its environs, not the master of a Nation; and Lahore, > Karachi, etc... etc... are the heart of their environs, then the groundwork > is laid for solutions, for inter-politan solutions. > There only cross-border solution is no more border. > Yours truly, > Alexis > > ---- "anilbhatia" wrote: > > Which 10 million could we lose? > > We hate Pakistan-inspired terrorism but these days > > there are fewer enthusiasts for a cross-border solution. > > > > "Pankaj" wrote: > > > > > > > > Hello All, > > The way people talk about "Pakistan needs to be taught a lesson" > > in the bus and on the streets is still fresh in my /dev/mem > > > > The simplicity with which people talk about war > > and people taking the army for granted and > > army personal dyeing as a "part of their job". > > > > As Jb Says "Delhi needs to be bombed". > > _________________________________________ reader-list: an open discussion > list on media and the city. Critiques & Collaborations > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with subscribe > in the subject header. List archive: > Supreet -- Chaos reigns within. Reflect, repent, and retry. Server shall return. From starchild at anjalika.demon.co.uk Thu May 30 06:47:01 2002 From: starchild at anjalika.demon.co.uk (Anjali Sagar) Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 10:17:01 +0900 Subject: [Reader-list] ATTENTION / Avert Nuclear War Over Kashmir In-Reply-To: Message-ID: from Andrea in Norway. beena From: "Eli Pariser, 9-11peace.org" Date: 28 May 2002 22:34:27 -0000 To: "Andrea Soendervik" Subject: Avert Nuclear War Over Kashmir Dear friend, The conflict between India and Pakistan over the disputed territory of Kashmir is edging ever closer to a nuclear war. A nuclear exchange between these rival nations could kill 12 million people and spread radioactive fallout around the globe. Please join us in calling on President Musharraf of Pakistan and Prime Minister Vajpayee of India to step back from the brink of holocaust. Sign a message from concerned citizens of the world to these two leaders at: http://www.moveon.org/nonukesoverkashmir/ Both leaders are currently banging the drums of war. Yesterday, Pakistan tested its third missile in as many days, emphasizing its ability to deliver nukes to the Indian capital city New Delhi in under three minutes. Prime Minister Vajpayee told the 700,000 troops stationed along the border of Pakistan that he was preparing for "a decisive victory." While India has stated that it will only use its nukes in the case of a nuclear attack, Pakistan has made clear that it will strike first if threatened. And there's reason to believe that it will follow through on this policy: in 1999, such an attack was narrowly averted, over the protest of then-General Musharraf. More worrying still, India and Pakistan have broken their diplomatic ties. Unlike the US and the USSR during the Cold War, India and Pakistan have no direct line connecting the leadership of each nation. The possibility exists that nukes could be launched as a result of a mistake, since there's no easy way for the leadership of one nation to verify the intentions of its rival. With millions of lives in the balance and weapons on hair-trigger alert, the lack of communication between the two countries is just plain wrong. If India and Pakistan were to go to war, the effects would be felt around the world. The trade winds above the two countries are ideally situated to spread nuclear fallout. Essentially highly radioactive dust, fallout can cause leukemia and many other kinds of cancer, as well as radiation poisoning. Assuming either nation survived the attacks, it's unlikely that the conflict would even be resolved. Instead of pushing their countries toward Armageddon, Mr. Vajpayee and Mr. Musharraf must re-establish diplomatic ties, disavow the use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances, and work toward a comprehensive agreement on the future of Kashmir. Please let them know that you're deeply concerned about the escalating conflict today: http://www.moveon.org/nonukesoverkashmir/ The lives of millions of Indians and Pakistanis could be at stake. Sincerely, --Eli Pariser 9-11Peace Campaign Director MoveOn.org Tuesday, May 28, 2002 Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ From pankaj at sarai.net Thu May 30 18:27:16 2002 From: pankaj at sarai.net (Pankaj) Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 14:57:16 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Washinton post's review of OpenOffice Message-ID: <20020530145716.A7937@sarai.net> A week or two ago Open Office went stable 1.0 was released. heres the review http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4246-2002May11.html Mozilla also reached 1.0 just a few days ago mozilla is the open-souce web browser and is avaliable for MacOS 9, X, Linux, Windows,Solaris, FreeBSD, Irix, BeOS. to name a few.. anyone wants to review it? http://www.mozilla.org/ -- Pankaj(Im a tru gnu boo boo) Kaushal From sreejata at yahoo.com Thu May 30 21:56:40 2002 From: sreejata at yahoo.com (sreejata roy) Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 09:26:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Stop the War Coalition Message-ID: <20020530162640.53754.qmail@web11507.mail.yahoo.com> For information about the Stop the War Coalition, click below http://www.stopwar.org.uk/ ------------------------------------------------------ Regards Sreejata __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com From oga at ihug.co.nz Fri May 31 06:32:34 2002 From: oga at ihug.co.nz (Peter Fogarty) Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 13:02:34 +1200 Subject: [Reader-list] Rushdie on Kashmir In-Reply-To: <20020530162640.53754.qmail@web11507.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20020530162640.53754.qmail@web11507.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <02053113023403.01089@linux> http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/30/opinion/30RUSH.html The Most Dangerous Place in the World By SALMAN RUSHDIE The present Kashmir crisis feels like a déjà vu replay of the last one. Three years ago a weak Indian coalition government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party had just lost a confidence vote in India's Parliament and was nervously awaiting a general election. At once it began to beat the war drums over Kashmir. Now another coalition government, still led by the B.J.P. and deeply tainted by B.J.P. supporters' involvement in the massacre of hundreds of Muslims in Gujarat State, may be about to lose another general election. So here goes the government again, talking up a Kashmiri war and asking India to stand firm behind its leadership. .... From prajaf at vsnl.com Fri May 31 12:09:04 2002 From: prajaf at vsnl.com (Yazad Jal) Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 12:09:04 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Speech References: <000301c206c5$3bf60ca0$29d0c5cb@shohini> Message-ID: <00c201c2086e$0d4bee60$8301c5cb@vsnl.net.in> > To critique and ask for counter-speech is not to ask for censorship. This > is the critical difference between the libertarian position and the > anti-censorship feminist one. Shohini, I'm not sure if I got this right. Are you saying that the libertarian position is pro-censorship and the feminist position is anti-censorship? -yazad