From yazadjal at vsnl.net Tue Oct 1 19:04:25 2002 From: yazadjal at vsnl.net (Yazad Jal) Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 19:04:25 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Public Turns on Business Message-ID: <00b901c2694f$453613e0$d002c5cb@vsnl.net.in> http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1057 Public Turns on Business by Adam Young [Posted October 1, 2002] Lately, pundits and commentators have suggested that the scandals that brought down Enron, Global Crossing, and WorldCom simply are more proof that trade and enterprise are inherently corrupt and pose a danger to the public. Some have even seriously claimed they represent the failings of a society with too much freedom, as if there could be such a condition. Until the latest recession, this was just a shared sentiment of the second-hand dealers in ideas, laboring mightily to miseducate the public, as usual. Now along comes polling info that of course provides popular approval for their views--though is it really surprising that the public would agree with the media's spin after they have spent month after month advocating their anti-capitalist take on events? It's a neat trick: the media sell a certain viewpoint, then take a poll and cite public opinion to illustrate that, yes indeed, the public agrees with what it has been told, and that the only solution is more interventionism. This is a democracy, after all. In her story "Polls Say Workers Uneasy With Economy, Executives" published on Tuesday, September 3, 2002, Kirstin Downey Grimsley highlighted the results of several recent polls conducted by various organizations. The American Enterprise Institute found that only 48 percent of the Americans asked agreed that "what is good for business is good for the average person." And a Gallup poll in July found that 38 percent considered "big business" to be the "biggest threat to the future of the country," up from 22 percent in October 2000. This percentage had never before been so high in the 48 years of polling on that question. In contrast, in 1954, only 16 percent identified "big business" as the biggest threat, while 46 percent said "big labor" was the greater danger. In July 2002, only 10 percent rated big labor as the nation's greatest threat. Presumably, this is a result of the labor movement's failure to cartelize American employment--and its inability to shut down the economy with widespread strikes--and its subsequent focus on public-sector workers. While all polls must be taken with a grain of salt, they are probably reliable as a gauge that the anti-capitalist mentality is alive and flourishing. But where would the public get the information it used to come to this conclusion that big business poses the most danger to Americans? The vast majority of the American public have been fed a steady diet of economic ignorance, especially so since the bubble burst. And typically, it has been the media who failed the public again. From their reliably statist bent when it comes to economic questions and alleged free-market sins, to showcasing the fantasies and conspiracy theories of politicians who's only claim to expertise is gaining election to Washington or appearing on television, the general media have played an invaluable role as allies in the drive for increased interventionism in the wake of the bust and the 9/11 attacks. But where were the "Big Media" during the boom phase? Certainly they weren't warning or educating the new "investor-class" that jumped into the stock market, as the middle class always does during a boom. George Reisman described what happened: "... as the new firms swarm into the latest investment fad--in one era, canal building; in another, railroad building; in a third, electric power-plant construction; in a fourth, radio; and, most recently, in our day, the 'dot.coms' and the Internet--a host of observers is always on hand, in all eras, to trumpet the arrival of the 'new era,' or the 'new economy,' or the 'new' something or other that allegedly explains why it has become all right to throw all rational principles of investing to the winds...." Lured by the prospect of easy riches in an ever-higher-rising stock market "... a public many members of which believed that they knew something about investing because gains had showered down upon them..." once the bubble popped, would turn on a dime against the "greed" of CEOs that their stock frenzy had turned into media celebrities and household names. The average person presumably fears "Big Business" because he knows for sure that the political system is corrupt and that his congressman is more likely to respond faster to a stack of twenties than to a handwritten letter from a lowly constituent. And the larger the firm, the more resources it has on hand to buy favors from the state against the interests of the common man. It may even be that, the larger the firm, the more it may have to buy influence just to stay in business. Many firms do use their size to seek out favors from the state. But it is also a dirty truth that the alleged "friends of the working man" are perfectly content with the situation, in order to destroy that feature of capitalism that directly threatens their continued rule by misinformation and dependency--that is, the opportunity for individuals that actually free markets provide. Sometimes statists claim that an age of "Big Business" requires "Big Labor" and "Big Government"--the former to protect the workers, and the latter to protect the ... what ? the general public? Or could it be,to protect Big Business from whatever might threaten the continued existence of those firms and their employees? As Murray Rothbard wrote: "With a few honorable exceptions, big business jostles one another eagerly to line up at the public trough.... Big business support for the Corporate Welfare-Warfare State is so blatant and so far-ranging, on all levels from the local to the federal, that even many conservatives have had to acknowledge it, at least to some extent.... Big businessmen tend to be admirers of statism... because a good thing has thereby been coming their way. Ever since the acceleration of statism at the turn of the twentieth century, big businessmen have been using the great powers of State contracts, subsidies and cartelization to carve out privileges for themselves at the expense of the rest of society...." And "... the vast network of government regulatory agencies is being used to cartelize each industry on behalf of the large firms and at the expense of the public.... The liberal reforms of the Progressive-New Deal-Welfare State were designed to create what they did in fact create: a world of centralized statism, of 'partnership' between government and industry, a world which subsists in granting subsidies and monopoly privileges to business and other favored groups." Of course, it's not the size of a business that is the problem; rather, it is its relationship with the state. This is something the media fail to comprehend. It's difficult to know whether Enron was from the start a taxpayer-looting ring or if it simply became one later as opportunities arose. With its extensive collection of celebrity/media "consultant" boards, troupes of lobbyists, and a Rolodex of politicians always eager to lend an ear, Enron tapped into the security of the federal government's public/private initiatives of loans and subsidies from the public treasury. What is easy to know, however, is that Enron was a typical example of the distortion in expectations and corporate planning that accompanies the boom phase of the fiat credit business cycle. WorldCom and Global Crossing met the same fate, as their executives and shareholders bought into the "New Economy" pitch from the very same media organizations and pundits that have now become their most ferocious critics -- now that their hindsight is 20/20, that is. Certainly the "Big Media" had no clue that the surging Dow and Nasdaq and overvaluation of these firms signaled widescale manipulation of banking and credit by the federal government. The Big Media were the biggest cheerleaders for Greenspanism and their pet project, the Clinton presidency. And when the edifice collapsed, business took it on the chin, as usual, with accusations of "greed," thievery, and corruption. What the American public does not know or understand is that what they are calling for with a new round of interventions in the form of new regulations, agencies, and other controls is the creation of a new round of government and industry partnerships, where the state "partners" with business to further isolate them from the consequences of free-market activity, under the popular notion that business cannot be trusted to oversee its own affairs. The state will act as monopoly partner in reassuring the public of the reliability of its corporate partners. As Reisman points out, big businessmen, rather than being a threat, are instead the most valuable representatives of the free-market system, because it is these men who have demonstrated the talents and abilities necessary to coordinate the vast amount of information that the structure of prices provides to the system of production to create ever more efficient and profitable processes that raise the standard of living for consumers. And rather than the image pumped up by the Big Media--that many firms were sunk by the "greed" of their CEOs--Murray Rothbard again made the point about the nature of corporate management: "[the shareholders] hire managerial labor to supervise their workers.... A manager is just as much a hired laborer as any other worker. The president of a company, just like the ditchdigger, is hired by the owners [of the company]." The vast sums paid to these now-disgraced CEOs was, on the one hand, capital that belonged to the owners of the firm, and on the other, the reflection of the competitive pressures on wages created by the inflationary boom. The shareholders ratified compensation packages for what they believed was a worthwhile exchange--to attract and keep managers who could create profits and prevent losses, which is the goal of every investor. Absent the Fed and fractional reserve banking, the fear of "Big Business" would be misplaced. Without the regime of privileges, subsidies, guarantees, and legislative loopholes, where mutually beneficial exchange is replaced with coercion and exploitation, business could not find shelter from the entrepreneurial actions of talented and ambitious individuals, and the laissez-faire system would be able, without exception and equivocation, to refute the accusation that what is good for business isn't good for the average person. "Big Government," which used to be feared but seems to be a rarely heard concern nowadays, is the real threat and danger to the public. And it gains support and assistance from the media, who act as loyal apologists for the collusion between political interests and businessmen under the deception of "protecting the public." Which is the greater threat to American liberty, prosperity and happiness: Big Business, or the clueless Big Media? With their broadcast licensing privileges to restrict competition and cartelize the presentation of the news, to their access to politico's that the average person could never have, the influence of the print and broadcast media themselves starkly illustrate the dangers of politicized "big business." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Adam Young writes from Ontario, Canada. Send him MAIL, and see his Mises.org Articles Archive. Subscribe to Mises Email List Services Join the Mises Institute Mises.org Financials Home | About | Email List | Search | Contact Us | Periodicals | Articles | Games & Fun News | Resources | Catalog | Contributions | Freedom Calendar -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021001/60bc4caf/attachment.html From monica at sarai.net Wed Oct 2 19:52:15 2002 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 19:52:15 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] On Ramallah - 1 Message-ID: The writer William Dalrymple has been travelling in the middle east, and spent some time in Ramallah. He is writing pieces on his experiences and encounters for the Guardian. (which i shall post here as i get them!) best Monica They came in their tens of thousands in the early 90s, selling up in the west to start afresh in the 'new Palestine'. Now daily violence and curfews are bringing them to the edge of ruin. In the second of a series of major articles on the intifada, William Dalrymple talks to some of the forgotten victims of the conflict - the Palestinian middle class Tuesday October 1, 2002 The Guardian It is only 7pm but already there is loud Algerian rai - Youm Warra Youm - booming at top volume from the speakers in the Bethlehem Radio 2000 Net Cafe. The remix drowns out the Eminem video on MTV which flashes from the widescreen TV over the bar. Tripping over the floor lights are some 40 middle-class Palestinian girls in tight T-shirts - all firm olive midriffs, fashionable flares and beautifully braided hair. They are dancing the dabkeh with hands raised, swaying as their clapping boyfriends look on. There could be few worse places in Palestine to try to conduct an interview. But this is Reem Abu-Aitah's favourite spot in Bethlehem, the place she says most reminds her of normal life - or at least her previous life in Europe - and she insists that we struggle on over the stamping and dancing and the bass boom. "Just look at these babes," she says. "They've been under curfew for weeks now and this is their first opportunity to get out and have a graduation party. It only takes one day - just one day - without the Israelis locking us in our homes and things get back to normal." Then she adds after a pause: "Well, most things." There are good reasons for Abu-Aitah's hesitation. The town is completely encircled by new Israeli settlements built during the past 12 years, mostly on confiscated Bethlehem land. Israeli Merkava tanks are dug in on hilltops to the north and the south, their guns pointing out over Bethlehem's churches and mosques, bazaars and piazzas. And while the illegal Israeli settlers have free movement over the entire West Bank, indigenous Palestinians without foreign passports are prevented by the Israel Defence Force (IDF) from entering Israel or Jerusalem. The effect of this ban on movement - turning every Palestinian town and village into a vast open-air prison - has been economically catastrophic. Like many Palestinian business people, Abu-Aitah is now on the verge of bankruptcy. It hasn't always looked this way. In 1998, after 10 years out of the West Bank, Abu-Aitah and her elder brother sold up their computer business in Birmingham, took out a loan and set up what they hoped would be the Palestinian answer to PC World: "It was a great place. We did it up. It looked really good: we had so many accessories, a nice, open, spotlit place you could walk around and choose your laptops and desktops, printers, scanners, whatever. There was a web design place in the back. The business boomed - there was nothing remotely like it around here - and we had just gone into profit when Ariel Sharon went for his little walk to al-Aqsa [the contested religious site in Jerusalem]." Abu-Aitah looks up over the dancefloor to the lights of the concrete phalanx of new Israeli settlements clearly visible on the hilltops through the cafe windows: "Within 10 days, our shop was caught in the middle of the crossfire between Bethlehem and [the illegal Israeli settlement of] Gilo. We just had to lie on the floor for hours on end watching the tracers shooting past the windows. It was horrible. Bullets were hitting the walls - if we stood up or ventured outside that would have been it. One of our immediate neighbours was killed just sitting in her house. Since then, of course, we have barely sold a single computer. No one has the cash for a new laptop in this climate, even if we could get them through the checkpoints and into the shop in the first place. Business is dead. We have big debts." Abu-Aitah is hardly alone in finding herself in this mess. In the early 90s, on the wave of optimism that followed the Oslo accords, tens of thousands of middle-class West Bank exiles sold up in the west and returned home to invest their life savings in the "new Palestine". They ranged from recent graduates, such as Abu-Aitah, to homesick Palestinian multi-millionaires who had built up fortunes working for the Saudis and Kuwaitis in the Gulf. There are no exact figures for how much private money flowed back into Palestinian areas during the 90s but it amounted to several billion dollars, with at least $300m (£192m) a year coming in throughout the decade. So many families returned from the US, bringing with them their exclusively Anglophone children, that Birzeit University and several other Palestinian colleges had to open Arabic courses to teach the children of the returning business diaspora their own language. Overnight, the landscape changed. Bethlehem, Nablus and Ramallah all host the sprawling refugee camps we know from the news reports, places whose utter hopelessness breeds the apparently endless stream of ill-educated men willing to become Hamas suicide bombers. But alongside these places, featured far less frequently in the press, are large and well-to-do middle-class suburbs where wealthy, highly-educated US and Gulf returnees have settled down in what was - at least until the outbreak of the second intifada - great comfort. Ramallah in particular has a lively middle-class cafe society that has doggedly survived the repeated Israeli incursions, closures and sieges, the roadblocks and dug-up highways, the seizure of much of the town's farmland and the systematic destruction of its olive and citrus groves, the bombing of Arafat's compound and everything else that, in Palestinian eyes, Sharon has done to strangle the peace process and make life as intolerable as he possibly can. Even now, as you drive through the streets, beside pockets of real poverty and deprivation around the camps, you pass gleaming CD shops and art galleries, fitness clubs and a string of cappuccino bars. There is even a Mercedes dealership. There are large, sprawling villas with new extensions and satellite dishes, the obligatory 4x4s parked in the driveways. Many such places were smashed up and systematically looted by the Israeli army over the Easter invasion last April - new Russian immigrants in the IDF, many of them fresh from the war in Chechnya, behaved particularly brutally - but the people of Ramallah are a house-proud lot and, Arafat's compound excepted, the town has largely replaced its broken plate-glass windows and rebuilt the streets smashed by the lumbering Israeli tanks. (According to Palestinian National Authority figures, the Israeli army caused more than $545m [£349m] of damage last year.) Yet, if some sort of normal life is possible between curfews, then profitable business is still unimaginable. The fruit and vegetables belonging to Palestinian farmers routinely rot at checkpoints, left waiting for days in the sun by bored and bloody-minded IDF officers. As no one can leave their towns, it is impossible for shopkeepers to supervise imports or orders coming in from Haifa or Tel Aviv. The shelves of many shops are empty as the IDF randomly refuses to allow non-essential goods through. According to Abu-Aitah, "Occasionally we get calls from our shippers and suppliers in Tel Aviv saying, 'Do you want an order?' They don't seem to understand that most days we can't even get out of our houses to go the 500 yards to the office without the Israeli army shooting us. Last month, the shop was only open for three or four days. The rest was curfew. Sometimes - many times - I think of emigrating again. You have to be crazy to live here if you have a choice. But the business keeps me here. We have invested everything. What can we do?" Not everyone has found themselves stuck in this way. Many of the young, unattached middle-class Palestinians I met in Bethlehem and Ramallah already had their immigration papers with an embassy, while many more - especially those with young families - were considering doing so. Canada is now the destination of choice, the US being perceived as too hopelessly Arabophobic for even Christian Palestinians to settle in. Emigration rates are rising by the month, especially among Palestinian Christians who find their applications getting preferential treatment from western embassies. Either way, the people who are going are the young, the bright, the technocrats and the moderates: exactly the people both Palestine and Israel will count on in the future to bring prosperity and moderation to any future state if a peace solution is ever found. Ironically, this exactly mirrors the situation over the battle lines in Israel, where there is also a steady drain of liberals emigrating from the country in an attempt to escape the rival fanaticisms of the conflict. In the long term, it sometimes seems as if it will just be the fundamentalist settlers left to confront their opposite numbers in Hamas, with fewer and fewer secular moderates remaining to keep the crazies from each other's throats. Yet despite the gloom, and the growing conviction on both sides that the Palestinians have lost this round, many Palestinians refuse to give up hope. Zehi Khoury is a 50-year-old Christian Palestinian financier from a leading business family: his uncle George started the Jaffa orange brand name in the 30s, before being turned into a refugee and losing everything at the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. After decades running a Saudi multinational, Khoury returned from New York in 1992 and made what he calls "a multi-million dollar investment" in his homeland, starting its first mobile phone network and taking a major share in Palnet, the main Palestinian internet service provider; he also bought the Coca-Cola franchise for the area. It took several days and a couple of failed attempts to get into Ramallah to see Khoury's creations: curfews are declared by the IDF late at night or early in the morning, on an apparently random basis; you usually learn this only on arrival at a two-mile tailback leading up to the checkpoint. But on our third attempt Khoury got us into the creation he is proudest of: the gleaming offices of his phone network, Jawwal. Although it is only five minutes from the dusty wreckage of Arafat's compound, Jawwal looks as if it is from a different planet. The style is chrome and plate glass; new PCs gleam on every desktop. As the staff cannot get to Gaza to see their colleagues, they communicate via widescreen video links. Everything is set up so that the team workingin the company'scall centres can operate from their homes at a moments notice if curfew is declared. In contrast to Arafat's poor and ill-educated PA police force, the young technocrats who staff Jawwal are chic and, if anything, wildly over-educated for the work they do: the chief executive, for example, is ex-Nasa. "For me it was a dream that the minute Oslo was signed I would come back here from the US to help found the state," says Khoury. "I went for broke and invested everything. Sure, there is a cloud hanging over us at the moment, but it is definitely not over. A safe Israel is a must for stability in the Middle East. But an independent Palestinian state is as important to the Israelis as to the Palestinians if that stability and safety is to be achieved. It's as simple as that. All the Israelis I meet in the business community agree with me. It is a must if there is to be any future for the next generation. So no, I haven't written off my investment yet. No way." Many of the young Ramallah techies who staff operations such as Jawwal and Palnet feel the same. Marwan Tarazi is the son of Palestine's leading neurosurgeon and is himself one of the top Palestinian webmasters and software designers: he helped design Arabic MS-DOS. Five years ago he returned home from an extended spell in Canada intent, like Khoury, on rebuilding his ravaged and occupied country. "I earn about a quarter of what I used to in Canada and of course it is irritating not being able to travel around and go windsurfing and mountain biking like I used to in Montreal," he says. "But this is my home. My duty is here." Tarazi is developing software for Birzeit University to allow all the courses to be taught interactively at home over the net, so that students can continue their work when under closure or curfew: "Education is the most important thing - it's the building block of any nation. You can have all the curfews in the world, but if you have a well-educated people, you have the basis for a developed country. "At the moment, the Israelis have closed down the schools and are preventing our children from taking their exams. Whole generations of kids are coming out with compromised educations, and it's going to have a catastrophic effect on society in the long term. Thanks to this programme we already have Ramallah kids bedding down in the net cafes doing their courses while the IDF rampage outside. It's working and it's a fantastic feeling." Tarazi shrugs his shoulders: "You've got to understand we are living in a horror show here. It's very easy to go nuts. You just have to keep believing in the future. You have to dream. It's when you stop dreaming that you die." William Dalrymple's book, White Mughals: Love & Betrayal in 18th-Century India is published next week by HarperCollins, at £19.99. He will be lecturing on the book at ArRum, 44 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1, tonight at 6.30pm. Tel: 020-7490 8999. -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net From coolzanny at hotmail.com Thu Oct 3 10:36:43 2002 From: coolzanny at hotmail.com (Zainab Bawa) Date: Thu, 03 Oct 2002 10:36:43 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) Message-ID: Sept 23 2002, Ahmedabad. My stomach is knotted up in fear. 26 people have been killed in a terrorist attack in some mandir in Gandhinagar. My fourth floor flat in Dani Limda is too high to jump down. the road in front of our flat is one of the many borders near Shah Alam Dargah. Much had happened in this area just a few months back. My dad calls up every half an hour to tell me the latest TV news. We have no radio, no TV. If the mobile phone connections are cut off, we are cut off from the world. Mobile connections were jammed all afternoon. The night sky shows helicopter lights circling the city. The knot in the bottom of my stomach grows tighter. We watch and wait... 11pm We have packed up essentials into a small bag. A change of underclothes, all our money, camera, blank tapes... In case we have to leave in a hurry. The street in front of our flat is empty. Deserted. I have never seen it empty, even at 2 in the morning. We push off to our work place, Kasai ki Chali, Behrampura. On the way I see young men collecting stones in the death of the night. Men sit outside huddled in silence, anxiety and fear. We reach Kasai ki Chali by 11:30. The people are outside, on the stone benches. The children are mostly asleep. A few loiter around, too scared to sleep. We wait with the people of Kasai ki Chali. A fire cracker goes off nearby. At this time of the night. Or is that a bomb? Our nerves are frayed. The wait is maddening. 24 September The night passed by eventlessly. Equations have been drawn between the terrorist attack and the ongoing elections in Kashmir. VHP has called for a bandh tomorrow. The State Congress has called for a bandh today. Some shops are closed. The city seems normal. People have started shifting from the chali. Chan bibi is shifting today. Political statements are flying high and low. A nice mockery of living they have made in the soverign socialst republic of India. _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx From monica at sarai.net Thu Oct 3 14:38:34 2002 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 14:38:34 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Ramallah - 2 Message-ID: A culture under fire Palestinian artists have suffered more than physical hardship - they have also had to deal with censorship, harassment, and the destruction of their work. In the third of a series of major articles on the intifada, William Dalrymple looks at the struggle to keep art alive in wartime Wednesday October 2, 2002 The Guardian It is never easy running an arts centre in a small provincial town. Overcoming indifference and getting the punters in, attracting good work and making ends meet - these are the problems faced by such places across the globe. What most arts administrators do not have to face is rampaging enemy troops, occupation, F-16 bombing runs, siege and curfews: "The first time the Israeli army paid us a visit was at Easter," says Adila Laidi, the chic, French-educated 36-year-old who founded and runs the Sakakini cultural centre in central Ramallah. "Voilà! They broke in and trashed the place. Though peut-être we should be grateful they didn't actually blow it up." In this they were relatively lucky. The previous day, on a visit to Bethlehem, I had seen a similar arts centre run by the Lutheran Church. The pastor had taken me around, showing how Israeli troops had completely smashed up the new $2m Lutheran centre, blowing up workshops, smashing windows and fax machines, shooting up photocopiers, and bringing down ceilings with explosive charges in an oddly pointless bout of thuggery that caused over half a million dollars' worth of damage. Compared to that, the Sakakini got off lightly, with permanent damage only to doors and computers. Despite such trials - indeed, partly because of them - the Sakakini is an extraordinary place. Founded in 1988 on the wave of optimism that followed Oslo, it is a vibrant centre of Palestinian creativity, housed in a beautiful early 19th-century Ottoman villa made of stone the colour of feta cheese. It sits at the top of a hill in one of the more wealthy middle-class areas of Ramallah, surrounded by villas and bars and private schools. Upstairs there are spaces for poetry readings and film screenings, while downstairs there are a series of well-lit exhibition spaces. The energy of the place defies the stringent constraints imposed on it by the state of siege. "It's difficult to do this work under constant curfews," admits Laidi, "though it is true that the occupation has provided some Palestinian artists with wonderful material." The ceramicist and installation artist Vera Tamari, who turns up for a chat in Laidi's office as we are speaking, is a case in point. Vera has spent half her life as an artist under Israeli occupation: "Up to Oslo, the Israelis used to monitor all our exhibitions. There were very few Palestinian art galleries, so we used to hold our shows in schools, churches, municipal halls - whatever was available. People piled in - students, labourers, political people, shepherds. It was so crowded that there was hardly any room to see the paintings. It was the first time in their lives that many of these people were seeing actual works of art. Their noses were rubbing against the paint as if they wanted to smell the oil. "It was very exciting, but the Israelis soon became aware of the importance of these exhibitions and started hitting the League of Palestinian Artists. They made us get permits to show our work, censoring art and invading artists' studios. Several of us were imprisoned, usually on charges that they were painting in the colours of the Palestinian flag. They would say, 'You can paint, but don't use red, white or black,' and they would imprison you if you used those colours. You couldn't paint a poppy, for example, or a watermelon: they were the wrong colours. Often it was up to the artistic judgment of the particular officer in charge." The occupation has always lain at the heart of Tamari's art, but recently she found that the Easter incursion provided her with some unexpectedly rich subject-matter. When the Israeli tanks rolled into Ramallah, they made a point of trying to punish the Palestinian civilian population by destroying as many private cars as they could: "It was just a game to them," says Tamari. "Sheer bravado. The tank commanders would drive along the pavements rather than the roads, taking out as many cars as they could. Then they started driving up into people's drives and garages, wrecking anything they could find. For weeks afterwards, all these smashed-up cars were lying around: people kept them, hoping to sell bits of the engine, or perhaps the seats. They didn't want to face the fact that something so expensive was completely lost. Of course, there is no insurance for an act of war. "A friend of mine had a little red Beetle that we used to go out for drives in. It was one of the cars that was destroyed, and when I saw it all smashed up with its legs in the air like some dead insect, I had the idea of making an installation with these cars. I got the PA to lay a stretch of tarmac on the edge of the El Bireh football field - a road symbolically going nowhere - and arranged the crushed cars in a line, as if in a traffic jam. We had a big party to open the exhibit - le tout Ramallah - and went home at midnight. "Then, at four that morning, the Israelis invaded again. My house was opposite the playing field and I could see the Israeli tanks passing. They would stop when they got to the installation, and you'd see these two heads pop out of their turrets and you could see them transfixed by this sight, trying to make sense of it. Eventually, after about a week, a whole cohort of Merkavas turned up and the tank commanders got out and discussed what to do. Then they got back into their tanks and ran over the whole exhibit, over and over again, backwards and forwards, crushing it to pieces. Then, for good measure, they shelled it. Finally they got out again and pissed on the wreckage. "I got the whole thing on video, and was delighted - of course. I have always been a great admirer of Duchamps. He had a nihilist-dadaist show in Paris once in the 1930s. And when they were putting it up, one of the workmen dropped a case of his paintings, smashing the glass. Duchamps was thrilled: 'Now it is complete,' he said. I felt exactly the same. The cars were now in tiny, tiny pieces. Before the second incursion I had had to make simulation tracks to mimic the path of the tanks. Now we had real ones. This was the ultimate metamorphosis for my work." Across the corridor from Laidi's room is the office of Hassan Khader, a John Simpson lookalike who works as managing editor of al-Karmel, the leading Arabic literary magazine and the most prestigious arts journal in the Middle East. In style and typeface, the magazine is closely modelled on Granta: a thick, serious-looking paperback book with long prose articles interspersed with poems and grainy black and white photographs. Khader's office is piled high with papers and unopened Jiffy bags full of unread submissions. His desk is a sea of A4, though much of this relates to his other life as a translator: he greatly admires David Grossman's work and has translated his first novel into Arabic. Khader was born in Khan Yunus camp in Gaza in 1953. Five years earlier his parents had lost everything - including their extensive ancestral landholdings - when his family was ethnically cleansed from their (now bulldozed) village of al-Jaladyah on the creation of Israel in 1948. But Hassan was a clever child, and a series of scholarships got him out of the camps and into university in Cairo. It was there that he made contact with the PLO, and before long he had risen to edit the PLO literary magazine. He continued to edit it throughout the siege of Beirut, as the Israelis pounded the offices with phosphorus shells. Compared with which, he says, bringing out al-Karmel under occupation is child's play. "When they broke in here at Easter, they knew the place was a cultural centre, but they still smashed it up. They broke open the door with explosives, destroyed all our computers, took all the hard disks. When the curfew was lifted, I came back to find papers all over the floor. They had upended all our filing cabinets and wandered back and forward over our latest proofs. There were the marks of jackboots all over our poetry." Khader is a sociable sort, and his office is a beacon for the writers and novelists of the West Bank, several of whom dropped in for a chat as we were talking: Ramallah is under curfew so often these days that everyone seems to take the opportunity to get out and see friends on the few days the Israelis allow them to do so. While I am there, the talented Palestinian film-maker, Mai Masri, wanders through, discussing her latest project in the Ramallah camps, and five minutes later the novelist Yahia Yakhlef drops in for a cup of coffee. Together he and Khader sit bemoaning the state of the Ramallah bookshops. "The Israelis have always stopped books coming in from Jordan and they censor what they do allow in," says Khader. "It's almost impossible to get any decent novels in Ramallah these days." "The al-Shouq bookshop hasn't managed to get new stock for two years," adds Yakhlef. "There hasn't been a single delivery since the second intifada. Only cookbooks are left." "We all try to get around the problem by ordering stuff from Amazon," says Hassan, "but the Israelis still hold up deliveries for two or three months. You can't get anything until long after you have lost interest in it." If Hassan is the man who does most of the daily grind of putting together al-Karmel, then the figurehead who started the magazine and whose name gives it its prestige is Mahmud Darwish, the most celebrated modern Arabic poet and the man who represents the apex of Palestinian artistic achievement. He has sold more than a million books of poetry and is such a hero in the Arab world that, when he gave a poetry reading in Beirut, they had to move the venue to a sports stadium: more than 25,000 people attended. Even in Ramallah, besieged as it is, he attracts capacity crowds of more than 1,000 when he reads his work at the local Kassaba theatre. Darwish, a thin, handsome, articulate man of 60, was out of Ramallah during the incursion and was aghast when he found that the Sakakini had been trashed and that his manuscripts and poetry had been ransacked: "The Israelis wanted to give us a message that nobody and nothing is immune - including our cultural life," he says. "I took the message personally. I know they're strong and can invade and kill anyone. But they can't break or occupy my words. That is one thing they can't do. My poetry is the one way I have to resist them. I have to deal with this with the pen, not by stones." Here he raises his hands in exasperation: "For us the tunnel is so dark that you cannot even see the light at the end. In a different situation I would like to give up my poetry about Palestine. I can't keep writing about loss and occupation for ever. I feel it deprives me of my freedom as a poet. Am I obliged to express my love for my country every day? You have to live for love, for freedom. The subject of occupation itself becomes a burden. I want, both as a poet and as a human being, to free myself from Palestine. But I can't. When my country is liberated, so shall I be. "When that happens, all Palestinian artists can go off and write about love and hope and all the other things in the world. But until that time, our duty is clear. We have no choice." William Dalrymple's book, White Mughals: Love & Betrayal in 18th-Century India is published next week by HarperCollins, price £19.99. He will be lecturing on the book at the Royal Geographical Society on Friday October 25. Tickets from Stanfords, 12-14 Long Acre, London WC2E 9LP. Tel: 020-7836 1321. See also www.williamdalrymple.uk.com -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net From contact at eipcp.net Thu Oct 3 16:31:15 2002 From: contact at eipcp.net (contact) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 13:01:15 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] REPUBLICART MANIFESTO Message-ID: REPUBLICART MANIFESTO REPUBLICart "An effective concept of postmodern republicanism must be defined au milieu on the basis of the lived experience of the global multitude." (Michael Hardt/Antonio Negri) Republic is not about reforming a form of state, nor countering the crisis of the nation-state, nor transforming it into one or several super-states. Our investigations focus on the concrete experiences of non-representationist practices, the constituent activities particularly in the movements against economic globalization. Yet, the art of res publica does not imply acclaiming a new global community with revolutionary pathos. It is about experimental forms of organizing, which develop in precarious micro-situations for a limited period of time, testing new modes of self-organization and interplays with other experiments. The "organizing function" of art (Walter Benjamin) creates new spaces in the overlapping zones of art practices, political activism and theory production. rePUBLICart "We are experiencing a politicization that is much more radical than any we have known before, because it tends to dissolve the distinction between the public and the private sphere - not in the sense of an invasion into the private sphere by a unified public space, but rather in the sense of a multiplication of radically new and different political spaces." (Ernesto Laclau/Chantal Mouffe) Public is neither preexistent substance nor immutable terrain. What counts is not claiming or conceptualizing a single public sphere (whether it is one exclusively for privileged classes or for an all encompassing meta-public), but rather permanently constituting plural public spheres corresponding to the many facets of the multitude: a multiplicity of public spheres, not imagined statically, but rather as the becomings of articulatory and emancipatory practices. Such space-time situations create the preconditions for mutually exchanging different positions, for the different relating to the different. Their boundaries are permeable, they themselves are neither exclusive-excluding, nor inclusive-uniforming. It is not a matter of consensually unifying public spheres, but rather of conflictually opening them. It is not a matter of homogenization and total transparency, but rather of permanent conflict, the constant renegotiation of different positions. Public as a consuming voyeuristic figure is unthinkable here; the reception of the spectacle is countered by producing singular events, "public man" is countered by plural modes of subjectification. rePUBLICART Public Art was already booming in the early 90s in manifold variations: participatory practices, community arts, new genre public art, communication guerilla, concrete interventions, activism, etc. introduced a shift in artistic interests from questions of perception to social and political activities. Temporary projects prevailed over objects, communities over individual artists, participation over art consumption. Beginning in the mid-90s, more and more critical voices accused these political art practices of depoliticizing or even endorsing the implementation of neoliberal expansion. Arguments given in support of this included the dubious function of art projects in processes of gentrification or in disguising the reduction of social state structures, the appropriation of the projects as a means of tourism marketing on behalf of enhancing city images, the instrumentalization of the difference of marginal themes and groups, a return of the "artist-father" through the back door. As a partial aspect/effect of this wave of criticism, there was a noticeable backlash in mainstream art as well, a retreat into the old spaces, a return to issues of perception and experience in reception. Now, however, there are signs of a certain change again. What was lacking in the practices of the 90s seems to be given in a new situation: being embedded in a larger context, being cross-connected with social movements. Joining the heterogeneous activities against economic globalization, the old forms of intervention art are being transformed and new ones are emerging. In the context of current political movements, art is becoming public again. Around the issues and activist strands of globalization, border regimes and migration, the conditions are being created to get "revolutionary machine, artistic machine and analytical machine working as mutual components and gears of one another" (Gilles Deleuze/Felix Guattari). Gerald Raunig, 07/08 2002 Translated by Aileen Derieg http://republicart.net/manifesto.htm ---- eipcp - european institute for progressive cultural policies a-1060 vienna, gumpendorfer strasse 63b contact at eipcp.net www.eipcp.net www.republicart.net From yazadjal at vsnl.net Thu Oct 3 18:54:00 2002 From: yazadjal at vsnl.net (Yazad Jal) Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 18:54:00 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] two super quotes Message-ID: <003501c26ae0$2ef01620$593fc7cb@vsnl.net.in> Scientific research sooner or later, but inevitably, encounters something ultimately given that it cannot trace back to something else of which it would appear as the regular or necessary derivative. Scientific progress consists in pushing further back this ultimately given. -- Ludwig von Mises The sort of dependence that results from exchange, i.e., from commercial transactions, is a reciprocal dependence. We cannot be dependent upon a foreigner without his being dependent on us. Now, this is what constitutes the very essence of society. To sever natural interrelations is not to make oneself independent, but to isolate oneself completely. -- Frederic Bastiat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021003/1fb42cf9/attachment.html From yazadjal at vsnl.net Fri Oct 4 14:34:22 2002 From: yazadjal at vsnl.net (Yazad Jal) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 14:34:22 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The poor's best hope Message-ID: <010e01c26b85$0d8c0de0$bd01c5cb@vsnl.net.in> http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1188714 The poor's best hope Jun 20th 2002 | WASHINGTON, DC From rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com Fri Oct 4 16:27:03 2002 From: rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 03:57:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] the clearing of Barakhamba Lane last week Message-ID: <20021004105703.87355.qmail@web14604.mail.yahoo.com> I've written before to another list that some of you are on about the row of shelters on Barakhamba Lane behind the office where I work. The office is on Barakhamba Road where there is a row of major corporate buildings. Behind the lane was a row of huts housing some 200 people. There was frequent conflict between the corporate workers and these people, since the former parked their cars there, which then during the day became part of the apparatus of street life - hiding places for kids at play, for women washing themselves, etc. The men of this community also smoked a lot of hard drugs which was a subject of much corporate conversation. Last week the whole community was moved out. There had been some signs. Increased police presence in the days before. Presumably they had issued some kind of notice, though I don't think anyone did much in response. On this particular day, however, as I arrived at work at 9.30 am, both ends of the streets were closed with barricades and there were about 30 policemen there. The officer in charge was surrounded by about 20 women clamouring and protesting. some men had started to dismantle their own houses at one end of the row. they worked carefully, untying canvasses from the wall, folding them up... it looked like they were allowing roughly two weeks for the task. But there was a bunch of men walking around spreading lime around, disinfecting the street before they'd even gone, so it looked as if other people were thinking on shorter timeframes. three hours later, when i came down at lunch time to see what had happened, the street was completely empty. no houses, no people. i don't know where the people went. the remains of their houses were piled high on the back of trucks that were just leaving. about 100 policemen were standing around with sticks, eating lunch. young boys were loading the last things into the back of a truck (marked, for some reason, 'Press') - the most immobile things: all the bricks and stones that were used for furniture and cooking in the homes. It was an extraordinary transformation. Three hours before life was pretty normal. People were cooking and kids were playing in the street. Watching TV inside. How these 200 people and all their possessions had been moved out in such a short time I don't know. They had been there a long time and had a lot of stuff, including TV, radio etc. Even with the use of considerable force it would be a difficult thing to achieve. the only real signs left were the various things hanging on the brick wall at the back against which they had made their shelters: calendars, religious pictures, religious designs and some texts painted on the wall, bottles of medicine, various rags and bags hanging from nails and, in one place, a fragment of mirror rather neatly concreted to the wall. one of the things that was surprising was that these people had been allowed to stay so long. the corporate crowd had always been unhappy about it. so why now? the plot of land behind the wall they that formed the back of their houses bears a big sign saying , 'proposed plot for energy finance company headquarters'. i assume this is the immediate motive. or maybe the laying of cables which is going on like crazy in this area. anyway: now the cars of people working in the buildings have gratefully taken over the space where they lived and it looks as if they were never there. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo! http://sbc.yahoo.com From fred at bytesforall.org Mon Oct 7 13:44:26 2002 From: fred at bytesforall.org (Frederick Noronha) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 13:44:26 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] Words save lives... India, the BJP and the Constitution Message-ID: WORDS SAVE LIVES - INDIA, THE BJP AND THE CONSTITUTION India's constitution shapes and limits the actions even of the country's Hindu nationalist government, argues RAJEEV BHARGAVA. http://www.opendemocracy.net/forum/document_details.asp?CatID=103&DocID=1880 From ajayraina at vsnl.com Fri Oct 4 11:33:41 2002 From: ajayraina at vsnl.com (AJAY RAINA) Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 11:33:41 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fw: REPORT OF WORK DONE IN KASAI KI CHALI AND GASIRAM KI CHALI Message-ID: <017e01c26b6f$2192b5c0$423bc5cb@a> REPORT OF WORK DONE IN KASAI KI CHALI AND GASIRAM KI CHALI Dear Friends, This is another report from Kasai Ki Chali in the series of e-mails we have been sending out to all our friends on the net. Kasai Ki Chali is a basti of 60 households near the Behrampura Police Chowki. Jain and Hindu societies surround the 60 houses on two sides. Adjoining on of the boundary walls is Gasiram ki Chali, a predominant Hindu basti that includes about 46 Muslim households. In the Gujarat carnage of 2002, on February 28, the 20 odd houses of 46 Muslim families in Gasiram ki Chali were totally razed to the ground. The Muslim residents escaped with no loss of life. Kasai ki Chali was attacked much later, after police discovered some bombs and acid bottles in a public toilet here (We came to know about this much later, though our knowledge of this fact should not make any difference to us in our intent). A few of the houses were burnt, some were destroyed partially. Whatever property was found was either burnt or looted, though most people had already emptied out their houses. The residents of both the chali's stayed in the Behrampura Relief Camp or in rented house in safer areas. (Bombay Hotel, Shah Alam, Allah Nagar etc). The reconstruction of the damaged houses in both the Chali's was undertaken by a local NGO the 'Islami Relief Committee'. The reconstruction work in Kasai ki Chali is mostly over. The work in Gasiram ki Chali was first held up due to a Pan ka dukkan, which was constructed illegally on the way to the chali. This was demolished recently but the work is still held up due to a court stay order and other complications. The result is that the Muslims residents of this Chali are still not home. All the money collected has been in the name of Gujarat Education Society/ PRASHANT. Father Cedric Prakash was supportive enough of us to let two total strangers collect money in the name of his organization for working in a small chali in Ahmedabad. All the work we have done in the chali would not have been possible without the help of friends in Delhi and Bombay. Besides monetary contribution and spreading our e-mails further, the collection, sorting and transportation of Relief / Rehabilitation material from Delhi was organized by Reena Mohan, Anshu Gupta, Loveleen, Afzal Mirza and others. Jabeen Merchant, Swati, Punam, Gazala and others organized similar efforts in Bombay. Manjushree in Ahmedabad collected money for kerosene stoves and also gave us about 15,000 in cash. She also helps the girls with the design of the hand made paper greeting cards. RELIEF MATERIAL DISTRIBUTED Note: This list does not include the relief material distributed by NGOs and other Organisations. (RED CROSS, UNICEF, SAATH, ACTION AID etc). When we started our work in the two chali's we were told that they had received no relief till then. 1. Stove 2. Pressure Cooker, Tawa, Bucket, Mug 3. Thali's and Bohugna's 4. Bed Sheets and Towels 5. Footwear (Hand me downs) 6. Warm Clothes (Hand me downs) 7. Utensils (Hand me downs) 8. Sewing Thread 9. Sanitary Cloth 10. 4 sets of cloth to each family member - more to different age groups according to availability - (Hand me downs) 11. Stationary for school going children · 10 notebooks · 5 pens · Pencils · Pencil box/ Tiffin box/ Water Bottle/ School Bag 12. Toys (Hand me downs) 13. Material for infants · Set of Nappies · Bichana · Clothes The kitchen materials were not distributed in Gasiram ki Chali as they had already received a comprehensive set of kitchen utensils. We distributed 48 table fans made available by Sonia Rashid of Bhopal to the residents of Gasiram ki Chali only. HELP RENDERED TO INDIVIDUALS: 1.. Raiz Babu Bhai is a 12-year-old boy with a medical condition involving his nervous system and heart. This is a terminal genetic disorder. His condition was not diagnosed though he had been undergoing treatment for more than 4 years. Though this has nothing to do with the riots, we gave financial assistance for a complete diagnosis and a long-term treatment plan. The tests cost Rs 1900 only. The treatment will increase his life span to his 20s. Though with motor disabilities, he is a very intelligent, cheerful and naughty child. 2. Chand Bibi: Chand Bibi is a childless widow who lives alone in a one-room house in Kasai ki Chali. Her house was totally burnt and looted. She lives on the goodwill of her nephew who has spent a considerable sum of money to help her rebuild her home. (Door, flooring, plastering the walls, whitewashing, curtains, clothes, etc) Along with the general list above, we have given her in addition: 1.. Gas stove 2.. Ceiling fan 3.. Comprehensive utensil set 4.. Matka 5.. One suitcase 6.. One steel Trunk 1.. Munna Bhai: Munna Bhai is the resident 'shayar' of Kasai ki Chali. He was married twice but both his wives left him. In his old age he lives alone in Kasai ki Chali. He works as a manual laborer whenever he can find work. His house is among the row of houses adjoining the boundary wall with Gasiram ki Chali. His house was totally burnt, but he received a compensation cheque for Rs 1000 only. In his case we have given him double sets of every material according to the availability. He has been living on the kindness of Farooq Kale Khan. Farooq's wife Raisa cooks a little extra each time for Munna Bhai. Munna Bhai has promised to pay back whatever that must have cost once he starts working. We gave him Rs 100 only on one occasion when he had no money to buy essentials. 1.. Hasan Ali was given Rs 1250 only in cash to buy implements to restart his door-to-door plumbing business. 1.. Zakir was given Rs 1270 only in cash to buy implements to re start his roadside puncture repairing shop. 1.. Shakeel Bhai was given Rs 800 only to buy a bicycle. His cycle was burnt during the riots. He works at Naroda, which is approximately 20 Kms from Kasai ki Chali. He used to walk to work. 1.. Batul Bibi was give Rs 400 only in cash to buy utensils to start selling fried items again. 1.. Raisa appa was given 1600 in cash to buy a wheel chair for her handicapped child. The earlier wheelchair was burnt during the recent riots. 1.. Dilip, a Hindu boy in Gasiram ki Chali was helped in his educational needs. His house is one among the few houses that form the cluster of Hindu houses within the stretch of 46 Muslim houses that were destroyed. (This is one small stretch within the much larger mostly Hindu Gasiram ki Chali). These few Hindu houses were also looted but not burned. Dilip's family had run away to their native village in Uttar Pradesh and his father was out of work till the local businesses started working. (4 months after the riots.) 1.. Kanti Bhai is the Hindu who owns a Provision Store in the Chali. He saved some of the women of the Chali and his shop was fully destroyed in the backlash. All the relief / rehabilitation material distributed was distributed to him also. Other than the second hand items, which were distributed, he acknowledged and received all the other items. He has asked for nothing. REHABILITATION MATERIAL DISTRIBUTED 1.. Hand operated sewing machines. Khalid Ibraim Mobin Walli Mohammad Toto Bhai Shaira Bibi Sharifabibi Yakub Bhai Ali Hussain Fazal 2. Motor Sewing Machines 2 Machines to Showkat Ali Imtiaz Ali (We were told later by Chand Bibi that he never had motor sewing machines. He is only a dealer; he does not stitch the clothes himself.) 2 Machines to Khwaja Mian, which he returned. (We had pledged him four machines if he was agreeable to the idea of starting sewing classes for the women of the chali in his spare time. He refused the proposal; he wanted to get his younger brother started in independent business. We eventually gave him 2 new motor machines and asked him to exchange his old motor machines with us. He refused and instead returned the new machines to us. One Machine to Karim Khan of Gasiram Ki Chali One Machine to Salim Khan of Gasiram ki Chali 3. Hand Lorries A local NGO, SPRAT, Society for Protection of Rational Thinking, had a re- employment scheme running. SPRAT gave handcarts to the following residents of Kasai ki chali and Gasiram Ki chali. 1.. Jaffar Bhai Sugrati 2.. Gulam Mohammad Ramzani Bhai 3.. Sukha Bhai Mewati 4.. Gisa Bhai 5.. Nooru Bhai 6.. Liaqat Ali Imtiaz Ali 7.. Sheikh Allauddin 8.. Riyasat 9.. Allahrakkha Jamal Bhai 10.. Sakira Bibi 11.. Imamudin 12.. Bodhubahi Some claimed that their handcarts were also destroyed, but they had no FIRs as proof. In these cases we provided them with handcarts. 1. Jaffar Bhai 2. Mohammad Rafiq 3. Sharifa Bibi 4. Barkat Bano 5. Ali hussain Fazal Hussain 6. Sahira Bano 7. Batul Bibi 8. Mohammad Atiq Nannubhai 9. Shariffuddin Rasulmiya RE-EPLOYMENT MEASURES Kite Making As part of the re-employment project we made 2 rounds of 10,000 and 20,000 kites respectively. The women and children of the chali work in the unorganized sector of the kite making business in Ahmedabad. The first round of 10,000 kites was made for the occasion of AZADI DIVAS. The cost price of the kites was Re 1 per kite. The cost price was Rs 5 per kite. Transportation charges came up to another Re 1 per kite. The kites were sold out (to schools in Bombay, Delhi and to organizations and individuals in Bombay, Delhi, Bhopal and Bangalore). We actually ran short of kites. The profit of Rs 3 per kite (Rs 30,000 only) was put back into our efforts in the chali. The kites to Delhi and Bombay were hand delivered by people from the chali. This gave rise to some politics within the chali. The persons who delivered the kites tried to voice personal un-employment grievances. The other chali people were resentful of any help/ opportunity that went to only some of the chali residents. The success of the first round of kites prompted us to make a second round of 20,000 kites for the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti. However, this time orders were not forthcoming. We have managed to sell 3300 kites only. The distribution of the motor sewing machines and handcarts caused a lot of bad temper and tension in the chali. The machines cost around Rs 3400 each. The hand carts Rs 1150. Suddenly most houses claimed that they also had sewing machines (of various kinds, the pedal operated one being the most popular.) and handcarts. Fights broke out within the people of the chali. Many came to fight with us. This is one of the reasons why we eventually discontinued distributing anything to individuals. We decided that anything that was distributed had to be distributed to the entire chali. That effectively ruled out the re- employment scheme. NON FORMAL SCHOOL The distribution of material was becoming more and more complicated. It was also increasing their dependency on us. However, we felt our work was still incomplete. The hatred and resentment needed some counter measures. We thought the best thing we could do for them would be to create a positive and creative space for the children of the chali. With this in mind we explored the possibility of a non-formal school in the chali. We have one paid teacher Sulekha on our rolls. Since this was new territory for us we took all the help available. Everyone has been most supportive of the idea and has helped us in whatever way possible. The Bombay based NGO SAATHI visited the school twice, in last two months. They give Sulekha whatever guidance possible. Raja and Bindu (Bindu is from Bangalore) are favorites with the children. So are Namita and Shah Rukh from Meljol, Bangalore who also visit the school and the children. This gives Sulekha much needed ground support. Jenny Pinto from Bangalore did a hand made paper work shop with the children. The workshop was quite therapeutic. The children enjoyed the whole process immensely. Tearing paper into bits, making pulp out of it, making paper out of the pulp, creating designs on the wet paper, and finally painting on the dried hand made paper. Jenny suggested that we could try this project as an employment-generating scheme for some women in the chali. She agreed to sell the greeting cards made till December/ January in Bangalore as part of one of her own projects for creating awareness of communalism among the school children of Bangalore. This project is currently being stream lined. The raw material supply is being made regular. We have approached SEWA and MANAV SADANA who run similar projects to help us with marketing once the Dec/ Jan project is over. Junuka, Manjushree from National Institute of Design and Prayas, a visual artist, are helping the women with design support. Another project for employment generation for women is the sewing classes, which Sulekha has started. 18 girls attend the lasses. We have recently bought 3 pedal operated sewing machines for the class. Simantini Dhuru of AVEHI ABASCUS, Mumbai has sent us one of their comprehensive kits. This will help Sulekha to organize the everyday activities of the school. Sulekha visited the Surjen School in Juhapura (Run by Ahmedabad Study Action Group). Sulkha has also visited the Manav Sadhana School in Sabarmati Gandhi Ashram premises. We are exploring the possibilities of child-to-child contact programmes with Surjan and Manav Sadhna schools. We were in the process of arranging an outing to a magic show to be held in Darpana Dance Academy, when the Ashardan temple incident happened. This has, for the time being, frozen our child-to-child exchange activities with respect to our school. In fact, when the people of the chali started shifting to safer places, we were quite apprehensive about the future of he school. If this insecurity and circle of violence persists it will not be long before the people of Kasai ki Chali fully shift out and sell out. The ghettoisation, which has accelerated will further gather momentum. The activities of the non-formal school in Kasai ki chali and our own work in Kasai ki Chali will depend on these developments over which we have no control. To end this mail, we would like to quote from one of our contributors, A Kashmiri Pandit living in USA who sent us the following mail along with a cheque for Rupees 10,000. Dear Ajay, Thanks for the mail. I was wondering how you are doing so I am glad to hear from you. Gujarat and Kashmir represent two faces of the same coin. When Pandits were killed and thrown out of Kashmir, no one in India gave a damn. Now Muslims were butchered in Gujarat, and no one in India gave a damn. By and large the rest of the country with its Hindus and Muslims remained unaffected. And yet there are differences between the situation with Pandits and hapless Muslim victims in Gujarat - not in what happened, but in the manner how the social conscience in India reacted. Very few humanists in India came to the aid of KP's, no one linked militant Islam to growing fundamentalism in the National Conference, and almost no one blamed the State government for its ineptitude or demanded the CM should be declared a criminal. Gujarat, on the other hand, has become the hollowed ground for Indian humanists, who are eager to link berserk Hindus to the Party in power, want CM's head on a platter and see the "dubious hand" of the Center in the tragedy. In the end, however, Indian traditions of fate, indifference, passivity and burdens of day-to-day living have again triumphed in keeping the silent majority silent, whereas Hindu and Muslim criminals and humanists keep busy dispensing justice by tools of their trades. Having said all that, I do feel that as a true brave fool you are setting a disturbing example for your fellow travelers in the journey to Gujarat - because while you are eager to help those who are in the same situation as KP's were a decade back, none of your compatriots showed the same courage then. I hope that bothers their conscience. I think you are doing a great job. In fact, to show my support of your efforts, I want to send some financial contribution towards the two precincts that you have adopted. It will not be a lot (Rs. 10,000), but that is all that I can afford at this time. I will send it to your Mumbai address as stealing of mailed envelopes is becoming a big problem for overseas people. I will make the check to Gujarat Education Society. It will be mailed in the first week of September. Regards, Vijay People wishing to contribute in cash can send us their Cheques and DD's in the name of: "GUJARAT EDUCATION SOCIETY / PRASHANT", Addressed to: AJAY RAINA. C/O RAIS SHEIKH, ELITE FLATS, OFF NARAYAN NAGAR ROAD, NEAR JETTABHAI PARK, PALDI, AHMEDABAD 380 007. AJAY RAINA / LEYA MATHEW ajayraina at vsnl.com rainaajay at hotmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021004/ff1c8c8b/attachment.html From announcements-request at sarai.net Sun Oct 6 09:55:48 2002 From: announcements-request at sarai.net (announcements-request at sarai.net) Date: Sun, 06 Oct 2002 06:25:48 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Announcements digest, Vol 1 #101 - 1 msg Message-ID: <20021006042548.11538.76002.Mailman@mail.sarai.net> 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. Invitation to SSGRR conferences in ITALY! (ssgrr2003w at rti7020.etf.bg.ac.yu) --__--__-- Message: 1 Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2002 10:35:48 +0200 From: ssgrr2003w at rti7020.etf.bg.ac.yu To: announcements at sarai.net Subject: [Announcements] Invitation to SSGRR conferences in ITALY! CALL FOR PAPERS AND PARTICIPATION AT SSGRR CONFERENCES IN YEAR 2003 The SSGRR (Scuola Superiore G Reiss Romoli) Congress Center, Telecom Italia Learning Services, L'Aquila (near Rome), ITALY (www.ssgrr.it). Respected Dr. We are honored to invite you to submit and present your paper(s) at the two SSGRR conferences specified below: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES ON ADVANCES IN INFRASTRUCTURE FOR ELECTRONIC BUSINESS, EDUCATION, SCIENCE, MEDICINE, AND MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES ON THE INTERNET WINTER Conference 2003: >From Monday January 6 at 5pm till Sunday January 12 at 10am To submit paper or ask questions: ssgrr2003w at rti7020.etf.bg.ac.yu Keynotes: Lyman (Berkeley), Neuhold (Fraunhofer), Neal (Tufts Medical School), ... SUMMER Conference 2003: >From Monday July 28 at 5pm till Sunday August 3 at 10am To submit paper or ask questions: ssgrr2003s at rti7020.etf.bg.ac.yu Keynotes: Kroto (Nobel Laureate), Patt (IEEE Eckert-Mauchly Laureate), Carlton (US Air Force Surgeon General), ... For details, see IEEE COMPUTER, Aug 2002 (page 33) and the WWW site www.ssgrr.it (written carefully+precisely, with answers to all FAQ). Check with past participants (their names/emails are on the WWW). Most of them believe this is the most interesting, rewarding, and definitely the most hospitable conference they ever attended! Fast professional and peer review in 15 days. Capacity of the SSGRR congress center is 200 participants. The list of participants will be closed after 200 papers accepted. Consequently, SUBMIT YOUR PAPER(S) AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE! ______________________________________________________________________ Location (see WWW for details): SSGRR is the DE-LUX congress and education center of the Telecom Italia Learning Services, located about 60 miles from Rome, near Gran Sasso (the highest Appenini peak), with fast access to the major Appenini ski resorts (in winters, 15 minutes by car), and Adriatic sea beaches (in summers, 45 minutes by car). Keynotes (see WWW for details): A Nobel Laureate was the keynote speaker each year in the past (Jerome Friedman of MIT, Robert Richardson of Cornell, etc...), and the major 2003 keynote is also reserved for a Nobel Laureate (Harry Kroto from United Kingdom). Other 2003 keynote speakers are Yale Patt from UofTexas at Austin (an IEEE Eckert-Mauchly Laureate), Paul Carlton (US Air Force Surgeon General), etc. Schedule (see WWW for details): Monday = Arrival day, registration, and cocktail Tuesday = Gran Sasso Nat'l Lab tour, tutorials, and opening ceremony Wednesday/Thursday/Friday = Presentation of research papers Saturday = Tutorials and peripathetic discussions Sunday = Departure day Deadlines (see WWW for details): For title and abstract (about 100 words): October 15, 2002 (for Winter 2003) April 30, 2003 (for Summer 2003) For papers (IEEE Transactions format, min 4 pages, max 1MB): November 15, 2002 (for Winter 2003) May 30, 2003 (for Summer 2003) For payment (stay, and fee if applicable): December 10, 2002 (for Winter 2003) June 30, 2003 (for Summer 2003) Payment (see WWW for details): No conference fee for those with papers to present (others: euro600). No fee for tutorials. All participants must stay inside SSGRR (no outside stays allowed). Full 6-day stay (from Monday evening till Sunday breakfast): euro1200. A 5-day stay (without one tutorial day): euro1000. Minimal 4-day stay (for research papers only): euro 800. Favourable conditions for accompanying persons (see the WWW). For late payment rules see the WWW. Important (see WWW for details): When submitting your paper, insert the 3-letter field code (exact codes on WWW), so the placement of papers per sessions is more efficient. Insert your WWW site URL (if you have one). If you submit a paper, you will get 2 other papers for a fast review (in up to 10 days). Your presentation time is 25 minutes, plus 5 minutes for discussions. Chairman of the session is the presenter of the last paper in that session. Moving of presentation slots is not permitted (in cases of non-show-up). If you like to be reinvited for a future SSGRR conference, let us know. If you like to be removed from the list, please let us know, too. WE HOPE TO SEE YOU AT SSGRR! Professor Veljko Milutinovic, General Chairman --__--__-- _______________________________________________ Announcements mailing list Announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements End of Announcements Digest From aiindex at mnet.fr Mon Oct 7 21:26:07 2002 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 16:56:07 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Passwords Message-ID: Far Eastern Economic Review Issue cover-dated October 10, 2002 LOOSE WIRE Try Cracking This Code By Jeremy Wagstaff Passwords. People are always banging on at you to change them, keep them secret, don't put them on a sticky on the side of your screen, don't use your pet Komodo's name and all that, right? Jeez, would they just lighten up already? Well, I hate to be a killjoy but they have a point. With more financial transactions being made on-line--from air miles to banking, to bill-paying, to book-buying--more and more of our personal data is at risk of being compromised. The development of the Internet relies on people like us feeling comfortable hanging out there. I'm not going on-line shopping, banking or gambling if I don't think my data, bank account and credit cards aren't safe. This means privacy, and security must be assured. And yet all this information is deeply compromised --not only by other people, but by ourselves. You may not think your password protects much: Most of us believe we don't have that much that other people would want to expend a great deal of effort to try and take from us: "Who's going to go to all that trouble to get my e-mail password, for crying out loud?" I hear you cry. The problem is that, for a ne'er-do-well, a password is a foot inside the door to a much larger treasure trove. If they can get your password, they might be able to hack into a bigger network; or, in your case, if they know the password to your Yahoo mail account they might figure--with good reason, I'd wager--that it's the same as, or similar to, your password to other, more lucrative on-line treasures, like your on-line bank account. A chink in the armour is all that is needed. What to do? Passwords are very easy to crack if they're simple. The longer and more complex your password, the harder and longer it's going to take someone to crack. If the program, or Web site, you're signing into allows you to use 14 characters or more, use them; if it allows capital letters and other characters, use them. It's the difference between a ne'er-do-well taking about 30 seconds to crack a password like "johnbrown" and days, even months, if it's "j()7*~n_b50%N." The trick is to make up something you can remember. A great password forgotten is no use. So here are some tips: -- Base the password on mnemonics or acronyms, not words or names. Use your favourite song titles, movies, football teams as starters. It's got to be something that you know a lot about, but not something that other people can find out about you--such as your birthday, your place of birth, or your kids' names. The first letters of the movie The Year of Living Dangerously, for example, could be used in conjunction with its two main stars, Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver, to read "tyoldmgsw." -- That's just the start. Now you have something you can remember, but it's still just basic letters. You need to turn some of them into numbers, punctuation symbols and capitals. Try turning the o into a similar-looking zero, the l into a one and the s into a five. That would give you "ty01dmg5w" which is a lot better, and still easy to remember, since the numbers are similar to the letters they've replaced. -- This, sadly, is still not good enough. The people who write hacking programs are on to this kind of trick, so your password is still vulnerable. It needs an extra trick or two. Try capitalizing the family-name letters, alter the 0 to similar-looking bracket marks (), and move the numeric characters one key to the left on your keyboard. If your passwords are as good as that, then you should be safe. But there's still a weakness, and it's still human. Never give your passwords to anyone, don't reuse them for different accounts, and change them every few months. Store them on your personal digital assistant if you like, but remember that, even if it's in a well-encrypted file, all your valuable info is just one password away from being accessed by someone. If they steal your device, chances are they're eager enough to try to crack the password protecting all your passwords. Passwords are better kept in your head, triggered by things you'll never forget. Now, if you'll excuse me, since I've told you my password I've got to go make up a new one. Write to me at jeremy.wagstaff at feer.com From bijoyinic at yahoo.com Tue Oct 8 00:00:26 2002 From: bijoyinic at yahoo.com (Bijoyini) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 11:30:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Passwords In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20021007183026.58734.qmail@web20907.mail.yahoo.com> In addition to just a word, some applications now have the ability to accept passPHRASES (as opposed to passWORDS). So you can type in a whole sentence instead of just a word. It is harder to hack if you think of all the permutions involved in hacking a sentence instead of a word. Moreover, a password is chose from a the set of symbols that include alphabets, numbers and some special characters. This set of symbols is small. A passphrase is selected from the natural language dictionary that typically comprises of 10 000 words to 500 000 words (for a range of users). This set is larger than the set of alphabets. Some claim that it is also easier to remember "I l0ve m0vies, f00tball, f00twear and gr00ve" (letter O replaced by number zero) than "rt34fd0". > -- Base the password on mnemonics or acronyms, not > words or names. > Use your favourite song titles, movies, football > teams as starters. > It's got to be something that you know a lot about, > but not something > that other people can find out about you--such as > your birthday, your > place of birth, or your kids' names. The first > letters of the movie > The Year of Living Dangerously, for example, could > be used in > conjunction with its two main stars, Mel Gibson and > Sigourney Weaver, > to read "tyoldmgsw." > > -- That's just the start. Now you have something you > can remember, > but it's still just basic letters. You need to turn > some of them into > numbers, punctuation symbols and capitals. Try > turning the o into a > similar-looking zero, the l into a one and the s > into a five. That > would give you "ty01dmg5w" which is a lot better, > and still easy to > remember, since the numbers are similar to the > letters they've > replaced. > > -- This, sadly, is still not good enough. The people > who write > hacking programs are on to this kind of trick, so > your password is > still vulnerable. It needs an extra trick or two. > Try capitalizing > the family-name letters, alter the 0 to > similar-looking bracket marks > (), and move the numeric characters one key to the > left on your > keyboard. > > If your passwords are as good as that, then you > should be safe. But > there's still a weakness, and it's still human. > Never give your > passwords to anyone, don't reuse them for different > accounts, and > change them every few months. Store them on your > personal digital > assistant if you like, but remember that, even if > it's in a > well-encrypted file, all your valuable info is just > one password away > from being accessed by someone. If they steal your > device, chances > are they're eager enough to try to crack the > password protecting all > your passwords. Passwords are better kept in your > head, triggered by > things you'll never forget. > > Now, if you'll excuse me, since I've told you my > password I've got to > go make up a new one. > > Write to me at jeremy.wagstaff at feer.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: __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More http://faith.yahoo.com From supreet at sarai.net Tue Oct 8 06:16:38 2002 From: supreet at sarai.net (Supreet) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 02:46:38 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Passwords In-Reply-To: <20021007183026.58734.qmail@web20907.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20021007183026.58734.qmail@web20907.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20021008004638.GA29831@mail.sarai.net> But as the saying goes, " A chain is as strong as its weakest link", once a machine has been 0wned then any program that runs on it could passing information to the cracker. So enforcing security means asking your peers to keep tough passwords or pass phrases. Which may not be easy On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 11:30:26AM -0700, Bijoyini wrote: > > In addition to just a word, some applications now have > the ability to accept passPHRASES (as opposed to > passWORDS). So you can type in a whole sentence > instead of just a word. It is harder to hack if you > think of all the permutions involved in hacking a > sentence instead of a word. Moreover, a password is > chose from a the set of symbols that include > alphabets, numbers and some special characters. This > set of symbols is small. A passphrase is selected from > the natural language dictionary that typically > comprises of 10 000 words to 500 000 words (for a > range of users). This set is larger than the set of > alphabets. > > Some claim that it is also easier to remember "I l0ve > m0vies, f00tball, f00twear and gr00ve" (letter O > replaced by number zero) than "rt34fd0". > > > > -- Base the password on mnemonics or acronyms, not > > words or names. > > Use your favourite song titles, movies, football > > teams as starters. > > It's got to be something that you know a lot about, > > but not something > > that other people can find out about you--such as > > your birthday, your > > place of birth, or your kids' names. The first > > letters of the movie > > The Year of Living Dangerously, for example, could > > be used in > > conjunction with its two main stars, Mel Gibson and > > Sigourney Weaver, > > to read "tyoldmgsw." > > > > -- That's just the start. Now you have something you > > can remember, > > but it's still just basic letters. You need to turn > > some of them into > > numbers, punctuation symbols and capitals. Try > > turning the o into a > > similar-looking zero, the l into a one and the s > > into a five. That > > would give you "ty01dmg5w" which is a lot better, > > and still easy to > > remember, since the numbers are similar to the > > letters they've > > replaced. > > > > -- This, sadly, is still not good enough. The people > > who write > > hacking programs are on to this kind of trick, so > > your password is > > still vulnerable. It needs an extra trick or two. > > Try capitalizing > > the family-name letters, alter the 0 to > > similar-looking bracket marks > > (), and move the numeric characters one key to the > > left on your > > keyboard. > > > > If your passwords are as good as that, then you > > should be safe. But > > there's still a weakness, and it's still human. > > Never give your > > passwords to anyone, don't reuse them for different > > accounts, and > > change them every few months. Store them on your > > personal digital > > assistant if you like, but remember that, even if > > it's in a > > well-encrypted file, all your valuable info is just > > one password away > > from being accessed by someone. If they steal your > > device, chances > > are they're eager enough to try to crack the > > password protecting all > > your passwords. Passwords are better kept in your > > head, triggered by > > things you'll never forget. > > > > Now, if you'll excuse me, since I've told you my > > password I've got to > > go make up a new one. > > > > Write to me at jeremy.wagstaff at feer.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: > > > > __________________________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More > http://faith.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: From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Tue Oct 8 01:41:49 2002 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Mon, 07 Oct 2002 16:11:49 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] amiria baraka Message-ID: dear sarai list, some poetry from New Jersey's poet laureat...who the governor is trying to fire. more info below. looks like whack ass poetry to me... but so does (some of) michael harpers shit but they be famous. i like to think of them as the basquiats of poetry. its like reading about rd berman and sd berman in fader magazine as just RD and SD. ------- does anyone where i can find good books, sites or information on amrita shergil? (artist, pre partition). thanks, z > > >in case you haven't heard as yet: > > >Bill Could Let Governor Fire Poet Laureate >New Jersey's poet laureate has been under fire lately because of a recent >piece of work that referred to the Sept. 11 attacks and an alleged warning >of >the event given to Jews. Gov. James McGreevey has called for Amiri Baraka >to >resign from his post, but the poet has refused. The governor doesn't have >the >power to fire him, but it's something McGreevey is trying to do. He says >legislation giving him that authority could be introduced in the coming >days. >The poet laureate position is a two-year term and comes with a $10,000 >stipend. The governor's new legislation would reportedly give him more >control in hiring or firing anyone in that position. Baraka's "Somebody >Blew >Up America" was released in August. In it he writes, "who told 4,000 >Israeli >workers at the Twin Towers to stay home that day?" > > >http://www.amiribaraka.com/blew.html > >SOMEBODY BLEW UP AMERICA > > (All thinking people > oppose terrorism > both domestic > & international… > But one should not > be used > To cover the other) > > They say its some terrorist, some > barbaric > A Rab, in > Afghanistan >It wasn't our American terrorists >It wasn't the Klan or the Skin heads >Or the them that blows up nigger >Churches, or reincarnates us on Death Row >It wasn't Trent Lott >Or David Duke or Giuliani >Or Schundler, Helms retiring > >It wasn't >the gonorrhea in costume >the white sheet diseases >That have murdered black people >Terrorized reason and sanity >Most of humanity, as they pleases > >They say (who say? Who do the saying >Who is them paying >Who tell the lies >Who in disguise >Who had the slaves >Who got the bux out the Bucks > >Who got fat from plantations >Who genocided Indians >Tried to waste the Black nation > >Who live on Wall Street > The first plantation >Who cut your nuts off >Who rape your ma >Who lynched your pa > >Who got the tar, who got the feathers >Who had the match, who set the fires >Who killed and hired >Who say they God & still be the Devil > >Who the biggest only >Who the most goodest >Who do Jesus resemble > >Who created everything >Who the smartest >Who the greatest >Who the richest >Who say you ugly and they the goodlookingest > >Who define art >Who define science > >Who made the bombs >Who made the guns > >Who bought the slaves, who sold them > >Who called you them names >Who say Dahmer wasn't insane > > Who/ Who / Who/ > >Who stole Puerto Rico >Who stole the Indies, the Philipines, Manhattan > Australia & The Hebrides >Who forced opium on the Chinese > >Who own them buildings >Who got the money >Who think you funny >Who locked you up >Who own the papers > >Who owned the slave ship >Who run the army > >Who the fake president >Who the ruler >Who the banker > > Who/ Who/ Who/ > >Who own the mine >Who twist your mind >Who got bread >Who need peace >Who you think need war > >Who own the oil >Who do no toil >Who own the soil >Who is not a nigger >Who is so great ain't nobody bigger > >Who own this city > >Who own the air >Who own the water > >Who own your crib >Who rob and steal and cheat and murder > and make lies the truth >Who call you uncouth Who live in the biggest house >Who do the biggest crime >Who go on vacation anytime Who killed the most niggers >Who killed the most Jews >Who killed the most Italians >Who killed the most Irish >Who killed the most Africans >Who killed the most Japanese >Who killed the most Latinos > >Who/Who/Who > >Who own the ocean > >Who own the airplanes >Who own the malls >Who own television >Who own radio > >Who own what ain't even known to be owned >Who own the owners that ain't the real owners > >Who own the suburbs >Who suck the cities >Who make the laws > >Who made Bush president >Who believe the confederate flag need to be flying >Who talk about democracy and be lying > WHO/ WHO/ WHOWHO/ > >Who the Beast in Revelations >Who 666 >Who decide > Jesus get crucified > >Who the Devil on the real side >Who got rich from Armenian genocide > >Who the biggest terrorist >Who change the bible >Who killed the most people >Who do the most evil >Who don't worry about survival > >Who have the colonies >Who stole the most land >Who rule the world >Who say they good but only do evil >Who the biggest executioner > >Who/Who/Who ^^^ > >Who own the oil >Who want more oil >Who told you what you think that later you find out a lie >Who/ Who/ ??? > >Who fount Bin Laden, maybe they Satan >Who pay the CIA, >Who knew the bomb was gonna blow >Who know why the terrorists > Learned to fly in Florida, San Diego > >Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion > And cracking they sides at the notion > >Who need fossil fuel when the sun ain't goin' nowhere > >Who make the credit cards >Who get the biggest tax cut >Who walked out of the Conference > Against Racism >Who killed Malcolm, Kennedy & his Brother >Who killed Dr King, Who would want such a thing? > Are they linked to the murder of Lincoln? > >Who invaded Grenada >Who made money from apartheid >Who keep the Irish a colony >Who overthrow Chile and Nicaragua later > >Who killed David Sibeko, Chris Hani, > the same ones who killed Biko, Cabral, > Neruda, Allende, Che Guevara, Sandino, > >Who killed Kabila, the ones who wasted Lumumba, Mondlane , Betty Shabazz, >Princess Margaret, Ralph Featherstone, Little Bobby > >Who locked up Mandela, Dhoruba, Geronimo, >Assata, Mumia,Garvey, Dashiell Hammett, Alphaeus Hutton Who killed Huey >Newton, Fred Hampton, > MedgarEvers, Mikey Smith, Walter Rodney, >Was it the ones who tried to poison Fidel >Who tried to keep the Vietnamese Oppressed > >Who put a price on Lenin's head >Who put the Jews in ovens, > and who helped them do it >Who said "America First" > and ok'd the yellow stars > WHO/WHO/ ^^ > >Who killed Rosa Luxembourg, Liebneckt >Who murdered the Rosenbergs > And all the good people iced, > tortured , assassinated, vanished > >Who got rich from Algeria, Libya, Haiti, > Iran, Iraq, Saudi, Kuwait, Lebanon, > Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, > >Who cut off peoples hands in the Congo >Who invented Aids >Who put the germs > In the Indians' blankets >Who thought up "The Trail of Tears" W > >ho blew up the Maine >& started the Spanish American War >Who got Sharon back in Power >Who backed Batista, Hitler, Bilbo, > Chiang kai Chek who WHO W H O/ > >Who decided Affirmative Action had to go > Reconstruction, The New Deal, The New > Frontier, The Great Society, > >Who do Tom Ass Clarence Work for >Who doo doo come out the Colon's mouth >Who know what kind of Skeeza is a Condoleeza >Who pay Connelly to be a wooden negro >Who give Genius Awards to Homo Locus > Subsidere Who overthrew Nkrumah, Bishop, >Who poison Robeson, > who try to put DuBois in Jail >Who frame Rap Jamil al Amin, > >Who frame the Rosenbergs, Garvey, > The Scottsboro Boys, The Hollywood Ten > Who set the Reichstag Fire > >Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed >Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers > To stay home that day >Why did Sharon stay away ? > / >Who,Who, Who/ > explosion of Owl the newspaper say >the devil face cd be seen Who WHO Who WHO > >Who make money from war >Who make dough from fear and lies >Who want the world like it is >Who want the world to be ruled by imperialism and national oppression and >terror > violence, and hunger and poverty. > >Who is the ruler of Hell? >Who is the most powerful > >Who you know ever >Seen God? > >But everybody seen >The Devil > Like an Owl exploding >In your life in your brain in your self >Like an Owl who know the devil >All night, all day if you listen, Like an Owl >Exploding in fire. We hear the questions rise >In terrible flame like the whistle of a crazy dog > >Like the acid vomit of the fire of Hell >Who and Who and WHO (+) who who ^ > Whoooo and Whooooooooooooooooooooo! > > > AMIRI B 10/01 > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ Join the world�s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com From bijoyinic at yahoo.com Tue Oct 8 03:06:54 2002 From: bijoyinic at yahoo.com (Bijoyini) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 2002 14:36:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Passwords In-Reply-To: <20021008004638.GA29831@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20021007213654.92446.qmail@web20907.mail.yahoo.com> Of course - especially in Windows. However, keeping a strong passphrase is not suffucient in compromising a machine. Take for example the Nimda virus I had in my machine 2 weeks ago that created a backdoor to god-knows-who :-<. I guess my only point was that passphrases are stronger, easier to remember and harder to crach amongst security experts than passwords. http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html --Bijoyini --- Supreet wrote: > > But as the saying goes, " A chain is as strong as > its weakest link", once a > machine has been 0wned then any program that runs on > it could passing > information to the cracker. So enforcing security > means asking your peers to > keep tough passwords or pass phrases. Which may not > be easy > > > On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 11:30:26AM -0700, Bijoyini > wrote: > > > > In addition to just a word, some applications now > have > > the ability to accept passPHRASES (as opposed to > > passWORDS). So you can type in a whole sentence > > instead of just a word. It is harder to hack if > you > > think of all the permutions involved in hacking a > > sentence instead of a word. Moreover, a password > is > > chose from a the set of symbols that include > > alphabets, numbers and some special characters. > This > > set of symbols is small. A passphrase is selected > from > > the natural language dictionary that typically > > comprises of 10 000 words to 500 000 words (for a > > range of users). This set is larger than the set > of > > alphabets. > > > > Some claim that it is also easier to remember "I > l0ve > > m0vies, f00tball, f00twear and gr00ve" (letter O > > replaced by number zero) than "rt34fd0". > > > > > > > -- Base the password on mnemonics or acronyms, > not > > > words or names. > > > Use your favourite song titles, movies, football > > > teams as starters. > > > It's got to be something that you know a lot > about, > > > but not something > > > that other people can find out about you--such > as > > > your birthday, your > > > place of birth, or your kids' names. The first > > > letters of the movie > > > The Year of Living Dangerously, for example, > could > > > be used in > > > conjunction with its two main stars, Mel Gibson > and > > > Sigourney Weaver, > > > to read "tyoldmgsw." > > > > > > -- That's just the start. Now you have something > you > > > can remember, > > > but it's still just basic letters. You need to > turn > > > some of them into > > > numbers, punctuation symbols and capitals. Try > > > turning the o into a > > > similar-looking zero, the l into a one and the s > > > into a five. That > > > would give you "ty01dmg5w" which is a lot > better, > > > and still easy to > > > remember, since the numbers are similar to the > > > letters they've > > > replaced. > > > > > > -- This, sadly, is still not good enough. The > people > > > who write > > > hacking programs are on to this kind of trick, > so > > > your password is > > > still vulnerable. It needs an extra trick or > two. > > > Try capitalizing > > > the family-name letters, alter the 0 to > > > similar-looking bracket marks > > > (), and move the numeric characters one key to > the > > > left on your > > > keyboard. > > > > > > If your passwords are as good as that, then you > > > should be safe. But > > > there's still a weakness, and it's still human. > > > Never give your > > > passwords to anyone, don't reuse them for > different > > > accounts, and > > > change them every few months. Store them on your > > > personal digital > > > assistant if you like, but remember that, even > if > > > it's in a > > > well-encrypted file, all your valuable info is > just > > > one password away > > > from being accessed by someone. If they steal > your > > > device, chances > > > are they're eager enough to try to crack the > > > password protecting all > > > your passwords. Passwords are better kept in > your > > > head, triggered by > > > things you'll never forget. > > > > > > Now, if you'll excuse me, since I've told you my > > > password I've got to > > > go make up a new one. > > > > > > Write to me at jeremy.wagstaff at feer.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: > > > > > > > > __________________________________________________ > > Do you Yahoo!? > > Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More > > http://faith.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: > > _________________________________________ > 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: __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More http://faith.yahoo.com From tmr_s at netvision.net.il Tue Oct 8 13:17:28 2002 From: tmr_s at netvision.net.il (tmr_s) Date: Tue, 08 Oct 2002 09:47:28 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] amrita shergil - search results Message-ID: <01e801c26e9e$f3a685a0$0200a8c0@t> dear z, alexa is an interesting search engine and I found lots of valuable links there: http://www.alexa.com/search?amzn_id=&q=%22amrita%20shergil%22 Tamar >> ------- > does anyone where i can find good books, sites or information on amrita > shergil? (artist, pre partition). > thanks, > z From aiindex at mnet.fr Wed Oct 9 00:08:27 2002 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 19:38:27 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Eavesdropping Risks of CRT Displays by Markus Kuhn Message-ID: Optical Time-Domain Eavesdropping Risks of CRT Displays. Markus Kuhn To quote from the conclusion, "The information displayed on a modern cathode-ray tube computer monitor can be reconstructed by an eavesdropper from its distorted or even diffusely reflected light using easily available components such as a photo-multiplier tube and a computer with suitably fast analog-to-digital converter." Full Text at: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ieee02-optical.pdf From yazadjal at vsnl.net Wed Oct 9 11:49:35 2002 From: yazadjal at vsnl.net (Yazad Jal) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2002 11:49:35 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] At Peace With the Market Message-ID: <003e01c26f5b$da3049e0$9301c5cb@vsnl.net.in> http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/hardman1.html At Peace With the Market by Charley Hardman It has been a long road coming to terms with the market. I would like to claim that it was in my bones, and perhaps it was, but it was not in my rearing. The virtue of entitlement. That was my youthful American dogma from the 60's onward, encouraged by parents who should have known better. We weren't treated as we saw fit? We railed indignantly at vendors, trying to get them to see exactly how relations between business and client should be. Get charged 75% over market rates for a horrible sandwich at Disneyworld? We'd complain with the indignity of a slave. As we saw it, there was a certain way to treat people, and that was the way it was going to be. As stupid as it sounds to me now, transactions were not voluntary in our minds; they were expected. Our way of treating the world was to be mirrored by all businesses, even in cases where terms were known before the transaction was begun. What fools. What unnecessary heartache we suffered through delusion bordering on socialist. I look back in shame at letters I wrote to a software vendor years ago. I used their software all day long for my business. When they moved to higher versions, they left some basic functions behind. Was that their right? Not according to me! They got page after page describing how screwed up they were, how wrong it was to do what they did, and . . . well, it's too embarrassing to recall accurately - all over software with which I had been very happy before they moved on. Idiot! Even a shallow foray into economics brings peace that could never exist with an entitlement mind set. A business now offers terms which I find ludicrous? Wonderful! I will abstain. A policy makes no sense? To hell with it! It could work out for me in the long run. The key is understanding and embracing the voluntary nature of the market. Voluntary. What a word. We do not deserve any service merely by existing. Ice cream vendors weren't born to serve us. Something else which never hit me was the value of my time. Even recently I spent hours on the web finding the perfect combination of offers for various products I wanted: This business has lower prices, but high shipping. Another is out of stock on one item, has lower shipping, but requires a coupon. The variety is endless, as it should be. However, I saw this as a monstrosity - as an unfairness which shouldn't exist. How unfair for this business to get everything so right and then tag on a crazy "shipping and handling" charge. Something needed to be done! I was blind. I did not realize that the idea is to balance. Balance the cost of perfection with the loss of life (time). Balance the "righteousness" of low prices with ultimate value. I now happily click the button for imperfect transactions. I embrace imperfection. I trust the direction of my transactions, and the information they give to the businesses I buy from and those I don't. Voting with money is the only democracy for me. The beauty of cherishing the free market is the brevity of the trip, and the longevity of the payoff. I have made the transition, and things which used to be frustrating are now delicious items of choice. It is possible to revel in the stupidity of business, and even give dispassionate, constructive feedback when crippling hatred of the market is left behind for good. I have been graduated to freedom and contentment. Now, onward to government! October 9, 2002 Charley Hardman (saltypig at saltypig.com) works with databases in Washington, DC. Copyright © 2002 by LewRockwell.com From yazadjal at vsnl.net Wed Oct 9 11:55:50 2002 From: yazadjal at vsnl.net (Yazad Jal) Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2002 11:55:50 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Give Dueling a Chance Message-ID: <005101c26f5c$bdfacd80$9301c5cb@vsnl.net.in> Give Dueling a Chance by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. The vice president of Iraq has made the greatest contribution to geo-politics of any statesman in many years. Taha Yassin Ramadan, in an interview for Abu Dhabi television that has received much attention in the United States, suggested that Bush and Saddam, as well as he and Cheney, have an old-fashioned duel to settle their dispute. "Bush wants to attack the whole Iraq, the army and the infrastructure," Ramadan said. "If such a call is genuine, then let the American president and a selected group with him face a selected group of us and we choose a neutral land and let [UN Secretary-General] Kofi Annan be a supervisor and both groups should use the same weapon." "A president against a president and vice president against a vice president, and a duel takes place, if they are serious," the Iraqi vice president said. "And in this way we are saving the American and Iraqi people." It is hard to know what to add to that brilliant suggestion. It would mean a complete departure from the evil tradition of modern war, which, as Joseph Stromberg continues to argue, is necessarily total war. That means it destroys the way of life, and often life itself, in the entire country. That is its essence, and the source of unthinkable horror for longer than a century. Is there any greater humanitarian priority than to break this cycle of violence? To personalize foreign policy in this way would mean the end of war as we know it. To institute duel-based dispute resolution among statesmen would help make them accountable in a way in which they are not now. Consider, after all, what Bush has to risk by beating war drums, and, well, nothing comes to mind. It generally increases poll ratings and gives him a shot at being featured in the history books. This is a very bad incentive structure for the cause of international peace. The duel suggestion underscores the great unspoken truth of our time and anytime as regards war: war is brought about by governments and for governments. Nations do not start and fight wars; only governments do. A duel between heads of state only brings the conduct of war in line with its cause. Even Bush has said "we have no argument with the Iraqi people." Good, then leave them, and the American people as well, out of it. The duel is the surest means. Under the new duel system, Bush would be free to be as belligerent as he wants to be, and call any foreign head of state any name he finds appropriate. He clearly has an appetite for conflict, and under this system he would be free to indulge that as much as he likes, provided that it is he and not others who bear the risk associated with violent conflict. The stipulation that they use the same weapons is also very valuable. This is how it was done under the old system of duels. The weapons were the same and the participants could chose either/or. In short, it approximated the playground ideal of a "fair fight." After all, with a military budget that is more than twice as large as the second largest military power (Russia), it seems rather unsporting to go around threatening people with death and destruction. There is even something to say for the suggestion that the United Nations serve as an overseer in the duel. Though I have never been a fan of the UN, this does seem to be one useful role for the thing, so long as it does exist. The UN in this case would actually become an instrument of peace. Taha Yassin Ramadan's point is so cogent, insightful, and practical that it was, of course, dismissed by the White House out of hand. This is an "irresponsible statement," said spokesman Ari Fleischer, that does not justify a "serious response." He did manage the actually dismissive observation that "when Iraq had disputes, it invaded its neighbors." And this makes Iraq different from the United States? Well, perhaps it does to the extent that the US does make any distinction between neighbors and far-flung countries anywhere in the world, like Somalia and Serbia, which the US has freely invaded without hesitation. (It's been more than 90 years since it invaded Mexico, so no one but the Mexicans remember.) Even more recently, the US has a dispute with the Taliban over whether there needed to be proof of Bin Laden's involvement in 9-11. The US ruled out negotiation, and, in fact, saw the invitation to negotiation as an outrage worthy of invasion. There are other points to make in response to Fleischer. The dispute between Iraq and Kuwait was based on a claim that Kuwait was stealing oil from Iraq, and the invasion option driven by the historical reality that Kuwait itself is a country of non-organic origins. Now, a good libertarian should favor the secession of anyone anytime, so surely Kuwait should have the right to independence. On the other hand, the same claim about Georgia or Virginia would have a stronger historical rationale. Finally, it is worth a mention that the US ambassador to Iraq at the time of the invasion of Kuwait - this would be April Glaspie - had given her implicit approval of the military move, saying, with the OK of the administration, that the US took no position on Iraq's long-running border dispute with Kuwait. In any case, all of this is ancient history by now. Why not congratulate Iraq on its newfound interest in peace before war? As for the idea of a duel, one might say it is barbaric. Indeed, anti-duelism became an essential part of late Enlightenment thought. The idea of a duel is that men who feel they had been insulted should have some means by which satisfaction could be achieved. The popular sense was that fate would ensure the death of the guilty and the victory of the innocent. It was also said that men should not settle violently what might be otherwise settled through negotiation and personal compromise. There is a certain charm to this critique of the duel, and it is hard to disagree. The duel in this form should probably not be brought back. The US was one of the last countries to see the duel fall out of favor, in fact, and it was mostly unknown by the latter half of the nineteenth century. And yet, the fact is that many men are prone to violent means. The violence didn't disappear; it took a new brutal form. What replaced the duel? Total war. Instead of constraining the violence, the abolition of the duel ended up doing the opposite, expanding it beyond anything that had been known in the history of the world. War in the age of the great monarchies was a dispute between rulers and their private armies. It was limited by the inability to overtax or conscript. The ambitions were narrow, and did not typically involve grand moral aims. Indeed, Voltaire once wrote that most people would go on with their lives, knowing nothing and caring nothing about their rulers' wars. In the age of democracy, the age of what Hans-Hermann Hoppe calls public government, war has been a people's war. It involves high taxation, inflation, conscription, a "home front," mass destruction of the enemy, unlimited war aims, huge ideological agendas, and unconditional surrender. In short, where premodern war was limited, modern war is unlimited and leads to unimaginable human suffering. When assessing the merits of the duel, the proper comparison is not the duel versus an ideal of negotiation that everyone should favor, but rather the duel versus total war. This is what the Iraqi vice president meant by "Saving the American and Iraqi people." A duel would do that, where modern war would not. He knows whereof he speaks, because the US war against Iraq, now eleven years running, has resulted in untold hundreds of thousands of deaths. Would a duel have been preferable? Certainly. Choose your weapons, fellas, and leave us out of it. October 7, 2002 Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail] is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and editor of LewRockwell.com. Copyright © 2002 LewRockwell.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021009/56cf0887/attachment.html From shernoam at filmwatcher.com Tue Oct 8 22:43:31 2002 From: shernoam at filmwatcher.com (Noam Sher) Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 19:13:31 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] A site with downloadable short films that helps to promote filmmakers & cg animation artists... Message-ID: <006b01c26eee$09bc4380$0100a8c0@mshome.net> FilmWatcher.com - A site with downloadable short films that helps to promote filmmakers & cg animation artists... You Can Go to: http://www.filmwatcher.com/ Or read: Independent films or "Indie" films are steadily gaining popularity these days and distributing mainly over the Internet which is relatively inexpensive, very quick, offers circulation and is limited only by bandwidth.. The main reason for the popularity is the falling prices of digital equipment and the increased power of computers. Both high and low-end 3D modeling and animation software and digital cameras have put film making within the financial grasp of the public. Just as starting musicians sought alternatives to breaking into their business, and certain established artists disaffected from bloated recording companies with the Napster phenomenon, the Indies have brought about a new sort of net experience - the Virtual Theatre. Other contributors to the cinema´s presence on the web include enthusiastic amateur movie makers, animators and film-school students who, through whose art, are simply trying to make themselves heard. Like certain music-sharing services, most of the works presented are if not freely-downloadable, free to view online. Computer-Generated ("C.G.") animation also plays a key role, as the same machines which can bring these movies into your home via the internet can,through digital special effects, be used to enhance and now even more easily create that very medium. What follows (again - like those music- sharing services) is a somewhat less-than-random surf through some currently available on-line short movies, or "shorts" . A high or low "click" rate can mean the difference between The Blair Witch (which started out as a web site) and a film that we´ll never hear about. Starting a web site is the first step in the right direction. The problem is exposure - and a single html page coded by your brother´s friend just won´t do. FilmWatcher´s mission is to serve the creators of independent entertainment (creators and fans), to provide a world-wide exhibition platform to showcase their material to a potential audience of millions. And unlike other short film sites that only give online access FilmWatcher specifically provides links to downloadable shorts! ... FilmWatcher´s mission is also to create a community for the film makers (& the film consumers) and to keep current on industry news. FilmWatcher.com Team Noam Sher | Manny Cort -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021008/5b5adfff/attachment.html From announcements-request at sarai.net Wed Oct 9 09:55:45 2002 From: announcements-request at sarai.net (announcements-request at sarai.net) Date: Wed, 09 Oct 2002 06:25:45 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Announcements digest, Vol 1 #102 - 3 msgs Message-ID: <20021009042545.10115.11279.Mailman@mail.sarai.net> 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. FW: Alternative Perspective Newsletter (Jeebesh Bagchi) 2. Invitation for dyd02 (Monica Narula) 3. Poetry Workshop (Dr. Reyhan Chaudhuri) --__--__-- Message: 1 From: Jeebesh Bagchi To: announcements at sarai.net Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 11:50:28 +0530 Subject: [Announcements] FW: Alternative Perspective Newsletter -----Original Message----- From: Madhukar Shukla [mailto:madhukar at xlri.ac.in] Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2002 8:37 AM To: madhukar at xlri.ac.in Subject: Alternative Perspective Newsletter Hello � I am sending you the first issue of a newsletter "Alernative Perspective" which I have started. The frequency of the newsletter would be weekly/fortnightly (not decided).� � If you find it interesting, you can subscribe by sending a blank mail to: � AlternativePerspective-subscribe at yahoogroups.com � If you know of someone, who would find this interesting, please also pass on this to him/her - thanks � ciao madhukar � ============== Alternative Perspective Issue 1, September 23rd, 2002 Compiled byMadhukar Shukla Introduction: Alternative Perspective is an attempt to widen our awareness about issues related to business, environment, role and influence of media, geo-politics, religion & culture, etc. It aims to share, on a regular basis, some of those pieces of news and information, which do not find place in the mainstream media. In This Issue: Backing Globalisation with Miltary Might In a 1999 New York Times article Thomas Friedman advocated: ""For globalism to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is....The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist..." This article describes how Economic Globalisation was always backed by military power, and how war is actually a part of doing business. http://www.covertaction.org/full_text_68_03a.htm The Enron Fact Files Enron made history from the time it won the "laughable bid" for the Argentinian pipeline in 1989 to Dec 4, 2001, when it filed for bankruptcy. This site - and the links - describe in details Enron's history, its relationship with government and World Bank, how it won the business from Bolivia to energy deregulation in Texas. Very Comprehensive and interesting!!! http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PII.jsp?topicid=145 Role of Religion in the Palestinian Conflict Much of what we (I??) know about Israel-Palestinian conflict looks political (Jewish lobby in US, American oil interests in Middle East, etc. etc.), or at a best, a dispute around a piece of land. If at all, there is a mention of religious motivation, it is attributed to the Islamic Palestinians. There is hardly any analysis of the role of Temple Mount/haram-al-Ashraf or Dome of Rock in this potential armaggadoon... or even a mention of the Red Heifa or the Masada Complex. In context of the next article, this is a perpective which is worth appreciating. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/middle_east/2000/holy_p laces/ Clash of Civilization Samuel Huntington's classic article in 1993, which later he elaborated in the form a book of the same title. Huntington's hypothesis that the future wars are less likely to be between nations or ideologies, but that the fault lines lie between civilizations, was provoking and was criticised. Yet, in many ways it also helps explaining many things happening right now in the world. http://www.lander.edu/atannenbaum/Tannenbaum%20courses%20folder/POLS%201 03%20World%20Politics/103_huntington_clash_of_civilizations_full_text.ht m Our World: Some Astonishing Facts Well, these are astonishing..... - and unsettling - facts!!! http://members.tripod.com/goklassen/websectors/facts/factast.htm Click to subscribe to AlternativePerspective ------------------------------------------------------- --__--__-- Message: 2 Date: Tue, 8 Oct 2002 14:16:01 +0530 To: announcements at sarai.net From: Monica Narula Subject: [Announcements] Invitation for dyd02 On behalf of the organizing committee, we invite your participation in the 2nd International "Development by Design" conference in Bangalore, India on December 1-2, 2002. This conference is in continuation of the successful conference held at MIT Media Labs in August 2001, and seeks to establish critical dialogue towards open collaboration in sustainable and appropriate technology, design and development. We invite diverse perspectives from academia, nonprofit organisations, industry, and independent innovators. The conference is sponsored by Media Lab Asia, Infosys Technologies and MIT Alliance for Global Sustainability, in cooperation with MIT Media Lab, ThinkCycle, Srishti School of Art Design & Technology, Indian Institute of Science, Digital Nations, ACM SIGCHI and Concept Labs. Please look up link [1] below for more details (revised from earlier announcements). There are many ways to get involved. * In order to participate you must submit any one of the following: - a 2 page position paper - a 5 to 10 page technical paper - a poster or video abstract of your work or project (10-15 minutes) Student projects are also invited which will be shown in a design exhibition at the conference. Papers are to be submitted online (if you have bandwidth or technical constraints in uploading your paper, you may also email it to us at dyd02-submit at media.mit.edu and we will load it on to the dyd02 website). For more details see paper submission guidelines [2] on the dyd02 website. * Along with reviews by the program committee, we encourage open peer review of all papers submitted (although authors can indicate "private review" if desired). Subscribe to receive email alerts [3] on new papers and conference updates. * Main Conference Dates: - Pre-conference Workshops: Nov 30th, 2002 (Saturday) - Conference sessions: Dec 1-2, 2002 (Sunday & Monday) * Revised conference deadlines: - Full length technical papers: Oct 7th - 2 page position papers: Oct 25th - Posters/videos: Oct 25th - Student posters/videos: Oct 25th - Acceptance of full papers: Oct 28th - Acceptance of position papers/videos/posters: Nov 8th - Final papers due: Nov 11th * This year you have the opportunity to set up Pre-Conference Workshops on selected topics of interest with small groups of participants. To organise a workshop submit a short proposal by *October 7th*. See workshop submission guidelines [4]. Accepted workshops will be listed on the dyd02 website by October 15th. Short position papers from participants in workshops are due by November 4th. Notification of acceptance to participants will be sent by November 8th. * Please forward this mail to anyone you know who could provide a positive contribution to this event. We look forward to your participation in dyd02. Program Co-chairsPoonam Kasturi, Vijay Chandru and Nitin Sawhney Contact: dyd02 at media.mit.edu [1] http://www.thinkcycle.org/dyd02 [2] http://www.thinkcycle.org/dyd02/dydPubRules.htm [3] http://www.thinkcycle.org/tc-bboard/forum?forum_id=33861 [4] http://www.thinkcycle.org/dyd02/dydWorkshopCall.htm -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net --__--__-- Message: 3 From: "Dr. Reyhan Chaudhuri" To: Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2002 00:23:15 +0530 Subject: [Announcements] Poetry Workshop South Delhi Polytechnic for Women is hosting a Poetry Workshop for the academic staff .This is being held within it's own campus from 7th.October to 11th.October,2002. Guest Poets participating include:Ashok Chakradhar, Prayag Shukla, Shama Futehally and Shaili Kwatra. For more details please contact organizer/Incharge :R.Chaudhuri at: polytech at nda.vsnl.net.in --__--__-- _______________________________________________ Announcements mailing list Announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements End of Announcements Digest From rmazumdar at vsnl.net Thu Oct 10 06:51:18 2002 From: rmazumdar at vsnl.net (Ranjani Mazumdar) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 06:51:18 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Advanced film appreciation course Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20021010065111.00b101f0@mail.vsnl.net> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021010/b925fd99/attachment.html From yazadjal at vsnl.net Thu Oct 10 16:01:43 2002 From: yazadjal at vsnl.net (Yazad Jal) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 16:01:43 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Economic Value, the Value of Economists, and the Meaning of Life Message-ID: <008401c27048$5f84f360$9b01c5cb@vsnl.net.in> http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/Courseyvalue.html Economic Value, the Value of Economists, and the Meaning of Life by Don Coursey* September 16, 2002 "The next time you come down here you better bring a gun, son. And it better be loaded." Thus ended a phone conversation I had with a concerned citizen from southern Florida in February 1994. I was bewildered by this comment: why would I need to bring a gun to insure my safety in Florida, and why did this gentleman, a stranger, care so much about my welfare? Earlier that month I publicly presented a report about my research concerning how monies are distributed over the various species that are protected under the Endangered Species Act. As an academic economist, my work usually does not get much attention other than that derived from other academic colleagues. And while these colleagues have not always liked my work or its conclusions, it has never been suggested to me that I ought to be armed when defending myself. In the study, I looked at every land animal on the official list of endangered species. Then I took the total amount of spending by the government on each species and divided it by the population of that species. The result was a measure of value, not value defined by its biological importance, but a measure of how much we as a nation are willing to spend on each member of each endangered species. The full study can be found on line at New York University's Environmental Law Journal (http://www.nyu.edu/pages/elj/). The bottom line of the study will be transparent to any reader of the Econlib site: when making trade-offs between species policy makers have favored the few-the so-called glamour species-at the expense of many. Florida panthers, California condors, whooping cranes, grizzly bears, and the bald eagle have won a disproportionate share of the funds for habitat preservation, captive breeding, and the like. Half of the money has been spent on eight species, none at all on some others. But when I made my presentation concerning funding levels for endangered species, the media went abuzz. The study received a lot of attention and kept my phone ringing for weeks. One of these phone calls came from a major Southern Florida newspaper. As I talked to the reporter, she kept returning to a point that she found key. The highest valued animal in my study, the Florida panther, was treated financially almost exactly the way in which human lives are treated in a cost-benefit analysis where there is some probability that lives will be lost. That is, we tend to treat for policy purposes each panther or person as if they are worth about $5,000,000. I had not noted this point before and found it interesting myself. The fact that we do treat the most highly valued animal in the study almost exactly how we treat humans raises interesting economic, moral, and philosophical questions. But that was not what was bothering her. She kept trying to convince me that the value for the panther was too high. She did not want to write a story that implied that a cat was equal to a human. For a while I was polite and recited the standard lines about no study being perfect, how point estimates have noise associated with them, and how this study was just a beginning and warranted further research. But this did not make her happy. She wanted an outright statement that I had over-valued the panther. This I would not do. We went back and forth over this for over two hours. It became clear to me that her definition of value and my definition of value were not the same. My measure of value was based on analyzing a set of political and bureaucratic outcomes. My measures had no morality attached to them. What she wanted was the "true" metaphysical value of the species. In a bit of a huff, I ended the conversation. When she wrote her story I understood why she was so dogged in her attempt to make me retract or reduce my conclusions regarding the value of a panther. Unknown to me, the results of my research made national news during a time when environmentalists and ranchers were openly squaring off about the fate of Florida's panthers. The debate had evolved into a duel of opposing apocalypses. To the environmental groups, the world would end if society spared any costs in the preservation of panthers. To the ranchers, the economy of the region would collapse if land and other resources were devoted to panther preservation. I then understood that the reporter from Florida did not want to want to write a story that stated that we are treating panthers as well as we treat humans; to her that would be ammunition that the ranchers might use to further their argument that people and jobs should come before endangered species preservation. I also understood why I was bewildered by the warning to bring a gun to Florida. This suggestion did not come from any pick-up driving, gun-toting, Florida red-neck. It did not even come from the Florida ranchers or their representatives. It was made by the Florida state president of a leading and nationally respected environmental association! He did not want an economist, mucking around with his tools of economic valuation, to have a place at the table where decisions about the panther's future are being debated. To many, my conclusions about species value seem at odds with the basic instinct that all life is worth saving. This is what makes public policy involving economic valuation of life so difficult. It also makes economists unpopular at cocktail parties. The fundamental notions of budgets, opportunity costs, and trade-offs become complicated when they are publicly applied to the value of life. The challenge facing the economist in these settings is to find a way of advancing economic reality through the cloud of emotional attachment people hold toward life. Consider this conundrum: The Endangered Species Act places absolute value on privileged plants and animals, a value enjoyed by no other being in society, even a human child. And what is a child worth? The question itself may be repugnant. Some may say that the value of a child's life is infinite, that it is hierarchically more important than other values, or that it is only appropriate to use philosophical or ethical tools to describe a child's value. But while we may all feel that the value of a child's life is infinite, in most cases we do not act as if that is the case. A claim that society and the law do everything possible to save the lives of all children is obviously untrue. Constraints force us to make choices about how to divide resources between children and other arenas of policy. Sadly, often tacitly, we recognize that the desire to serve our children cannot be satiated; that as a society we cannot afford to place an infinite value on their lives. Election results, government budgets, and agency behavior show that people's willingness to tax themselves is finite, and does not extend to universal care for all. We cannot treat children as if their worth is infinite-that is the reality of the world we live in. We do not have unlimited resources so we must make choices. And we do; even the hard ones. Stunningly, however, the Endangered Species Act puts an absolute value on privileged animals and plants. The United States Supreme Court held in TVA v. Hill, that the Act "shows clearly that Congress viewed the value of endangered species as 'incalculable' or in practical terms infinite." It may seem morally admirable to values any species infinitely, but this position is not much more than a myth, and the practical affect of turning that kind of sympathetic idea into federal policy has been devastating. Because the Act creates an absolute, judicial right for certain species to exist, decisions that ought to be debated among scientists and balanced by the public are now fought in the courts. Rhetorical arguments, often unrealistically extreme, hold sway. One side paints a picture of mass extinction while the other side says that human life will end if its arguments do not prevail. Resulting judgments issue from the mix-master of motion practice and procedural constraints, often based on incomplete science. And ultimately, the law is applied unevenly. A small proportion of the listed species, the "charismatic mega-fauna," end up receiving the lion's share of monetary resources; and my work shows that other species receive little or no attention at all. What's missing is the anchoring of endangered species protection within the human and natural economy, rather than within absolutist, moral rhetoric. The choices we face require an accounting of the benefits and costs of various programs for saving endangered species. Criteria and analyses that discriminate among species will be controversial but are unavoidable. It's time to acknowledge that endangered species policy is about biology and social choice. We must make discriminating choices about species. But under the current Endangered Species Act regime, the discrimination is done by lawyers and judges rather than a Congress that looks at the impact of choices on the quality of public life. Congress should take the opportunity to review the unwieldy regime created by the Endangered Species Act. In the present implementation of the Act, lawyers and judges, not scientists and the public, make existential decisions about species in an environment that ignores human-and societal-realities. A new process based upon broader public debate, and focusing on real costs and science, should supplant the existing system. We cannot ignore the laws of nature when valuing species or humans; neither can we ignore the laws of economics. My point is that accomplishing the latter is much harder than accomplishing the former. We implicitly value life all of the time. But talking in a public policy setting about putting a value on human or animal life makes many people uneasy. Often, the instinctive reaction is that the task is impossible or that life of any form has infinite value. Both problems are perceived as being outside of the realm of economic analysis and belonging to another area of discussion. These arguments are intellectually bankrupt. But they are strongly and emotionally held by most of the public. The challenge to economists is to tailor their arguments towards this audience. Economists will do well in public policy discussions about life if they get even the basic notions of constraints and opportunity costs onto the table. Economists need to carefully and cleverly make their best principles of economics arguments in these settings. And remember, the other side may be bringing guns. * Don Coursey is the Ameritech Professor of Public Policy at the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago and a partner at the firm Policy Solutions Ltd. in Chicago. His email address is d-coursey at uchicago.edu From aiindex at mnet.fr Thu Oct 10 17:22:10 2002 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 12:52:10 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Pakistan's Computerized National Identity Card Message-ID: Pakistan's National Database and Registration Authority Computerized National Identity Card http://www.nadra.gov.pk/products/cnic.php From vidyashah at hotmail.com Fri Oct 11 08:50:07 2002 From: vidyashah at hotmail.com (vidya shah) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 03:20:07 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Music/spirituality Message-ID: Dear Friends, This is an invitation to a program that we are doing at the Max mueller Bhavan. It would be wonderful if you could come. Its starts at 6.30pm. Vidya Singing Spiritual Spaces This project is conceived as a cross-cultural / cross-religious interaction which the various spiritual traditions in India have shared philosophically as well as musically. The need to create such soulful singing spaces in our cultural lives cannot be overemphasized especially in view of the alarming growth of an exclusivist and very often intolerant approach to the 'other'. Panel: Dr.Madan Gopal Singh,Vidya Shah, Dr.Sudhir Chandra _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com From chris at madeupstuff.com Fri Oct 11 05:47:16 2002 From: chris at madeupstuff.com (chris caines) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 10:17:16 +1000 Subject: [Reader-list] sixteen days - announce References: <20021010125324.57721.qmail@web21102.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <002801c270bb$9a5a9c60$526dfea9@lodestone> A new short film by Chris Caines "sixteen days" has just been posted for download in divx format at http://madeupstuff.com/vid One of the outcomes of work done during residencies at Chulalongkorn Uni in Bangkok & Hull Time Based Arts during 2001. Supported by the Asialink Foundation, the Australian Network for Art & Technology and the Visual Arts & Crafts Board of the Australia Council. Available as a DVD release with the rest of the collected short film & video works in November 02. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------- If you wish to be removed from this nakedly self promotional mailout list please email Chris (chris at madeupstuff.com) . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021011/0d3ab6ff/attachment.html From yazadjal at vsnl.net Fri Oct 11 14:33:10 2002 From: yazadjal at vsnl.net (Yazad Jal) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 14:33:10 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Heaven on Earth Message-ID: <00de01c27106$798818a0$183fc7cb@vsnl.net.in> I have been reading this stunning new book, _Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism_ by Joshua Muravchik. Here's the prologue. At the bottom are links to a few reviews. -yazad http://www.encounterbooks.com/heea/HEEAprologue.html Prologue to _Heaven on Earth_: Socialism was the faith in which I was raised. It was my father's faith and his father's before him. My grandfather, Avraham Chaim Muravchik, grew up in a small shtetl outside Kiev in what was then the Russian empire. Born in 1878, he received the orthodox religious training of every boy of his time and place. But like many others of that generation he turned away from formal Judaism by the time he entered high school, or gymnasium, as it was called. It was in the radical student circle at gymnasium that he met my grandmother, Rachel. She was several years his junior since he had not been able to afford the school until he had worked for a time as a lumberman, while her family, which manufactured paper bags and lived in Kiev proper, was better off. Together they joined the most radical of the newly formed Russian leftist parties, the Socialist-Revolutionaries. It was distinguished from the more Marxist-oriented Social Democrats by its endorsement of terror tactics and by its theory that the leading role in the revolution would be played by Russia's peasantry rather than its proletariat. Avraham Chaim and Rachel left for America in 1905, part of a wave of Jewish emigration touched off by an orgy of anti-Semitic violence that followed Russia's defeat by Japan and the abortive attempt to overthrow the tsar. The peasants, it turned out, were more easily mobilized for pogroms than for revolution. In America, the couple found work with the Yiddish language Jewish Daily Forward, whose masthead was emblazoned with the famous injunction of the Communist Manifesto: "Workers of the world unite!" And they settled in a Harlem tenement, in which my father, Emanuel, was born in 1916. His boyhood was filled with the comings and goings of the exile branches of the Russian Students Organization and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries. (The party had split in 1917, and my grandparents stuck with the more radical half.) In 1929, Norman Thomas ran for mayor of New York on the Socialist Party ticket, and the campaign crystallized my father's budding interest in socialism. He chose it as the topic of an eighth grade paper, and after four intense days in the library pronounced himself a convert. A few months later, just after his thirteenth birthday, he joined the party. It was a coming of age that substituted for a bar mitzvah. My mother, Miriam, shared my father's views albeit with softer ideological definition. But being of liberal spirit, they decided to refrain from systematically indoctrinating me and my brother as they raised us. Systematic indoctrination was scarcely necessary. The political cause was the center of their lives. It was talked about over the family dinner table and with their friends who were mostly comrades. On car trips, we would while away the time by singing "We Shall Not be Moved" and other old labor songs. I first visited our nation's capital in 1958 at the age of eleven when my parents took us on the Youth March for Integrated Schools, one of the earliest civil rights demonstrations. By my teens, I was a seasoned protestor. By then I, too, had joined the party, eventually becoming the leader of its youth wing, the Young People's Socialist League. It was a small organization because socialism never caught on in this country despite all my efforts and my father's. (His have persisted for more than seventy years, while in my thirties I became an apostate and began to grope my way back to Judaism.) But if we were out of step with America, we took heart from knowing that America was out of step with the world. My comrade, Michael Harrington, the famous writer who became chairman of the party in 1968 at the same moment that I became chairman of the youth, boasted: "Most of the people in the world today call the name of their dream 'socialism.'" I could not vouch for his math, but, Socialism was undoubtedly the most popular political idea ever invented. Arguably, it was the most popular idea of any kind, surpassing even the great religions. Like them, socialism spread both by evangelization and by the sword, but none ever spread so far or so fast. Islam conquered an empire that at its height embraced twenty percent of mankind. Christianity, the largest religion, can, after two millennia, claim the adherence of about one third of the human race; it took 300 hard and bloody years before Christianity could speak for ten percent of the world's people. By comparison, within 150 years after the term "socialism" was coined by the followers of Robert Owen in the late 1820s, roughly 60 percent of the earth's population found itself living under socialist rule of one kind or another. Of course, not all who lived under socialism believed in it, but not all who were counted as Christians or Muslims were believers either. Yet once empowered, socialism refused to yield its promised rewards. The more dogged the effort, the more the outcome made a mockery of the humane ideals that it proclaimed. For a century and a half, no amount of failure dampened socialism's appeal. Then, suddenly, like a rocket crashing back to earth, it all collapsed. In the span of a couple decades, socialism was officially repealed in half the places where it had triumphed. And in the other half, it continued in name only. Today, in but a few flyspecks on the map is there still an earnest effort to practice socialism, defended as if by those marooned Japanese soldiers who held out for decades after 1945, never having learned that their emperor had surrendered. In this book I trace socialism's phenomenal trajectory. It is the story of man's most ambitious attempt to supplant religion with a doctrine about how life ought to be lived that sought to ground itself on science rather than revelation. Although its provenance was European, it was taken up with ardor in China and Africa, India and Latin America and even in that most tradition-bound of regions, the Middle East. No other faith ever appealed as widely. It was not confined to salons and libraries but exerted itself as well in statehouses and on picket lines, barricades and battlefields. It did more than anything else to shape the history of the twentieth century. Ironically, the power of this faith was to some degree obscured by the popularity of Marxist theory, which held that ideas were merely the surface froth thrown up by underlying currents of technological progress and material interests. This, too, was a seductive notion because it answered that most puzzling question: why do people think what they do? But this "materialist" interpretation has not stood the test of time, least of all in explaining socialism's own history. What interests or technology caused socialism's triumph or its defeat in Russia? Its transmission to China, Cuba, and North Korea? Its appearance in other forms in Sweden, Israel, Tanzania, Syria? The idea of socialism did not march through history of its own accord. It was invented, developed, popularized, revised, exploited and abandoned by a chain of thinkers and activists. It was modified again and again, sometimes for ulterior motives but also because, for all its unmatched allure, it proved maddeningly difficult to implement. I have chosen to tell the story of socialism by means of sketches of key individuals each of whom exemplifies a critical stage or form in its evolution. Some of these were seminal figures, responsible more or less single-handedly for a major turning point. Who can imagine Communism without Lenin, Fascism without Mussolini, or the peaceful self-nullification of the Soviet Union without Gorbachev? Other important episodes, such as the rise of utopianism or social democracy or the embrace of socialism by "Third World" states, cannot be traced to a single individual, so I have selected for portraiture the one whom I believe best represents each such element in the drama. The manger in which socialism was born was the French revolution with its emphasis on equality, its profound anti-clericalism, and its promise that all things could be made new. Amidst the chiliastic confusion of serial upheavals, one impassioned visionary, "Gracchus" Babeuf, proposed that the way to give substance to the slogan "liberty, equality, fraternity" was to collectivize all property. Thus did his Conspiracy of Equals, as it called itself, serve as midwife to the new idea, which grew and developed over the next hundred and twenty years. In the early 1800s, with most of Europe still recoiling from the Napoleonic bloodbath, socialism turned away from revolution to direct experimentation. This took the form of small communities in which people could practice the life of collective ownership. The most important of these-in America and England - were led or inspired by the Robert Owen. The socialist experiments did not turn out well, and the idea itself might have wasted away in infancy were it not then taken up a symbiotic team of unique prophetic power-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. They shifted the basis of socialist hopes from individual experiments to broader historic trends which fortified it against empirical failure. Although Owen's movement had adopted the physical trappings of religion, erecting church-like "halls of science" where sermons were delivered at Sunday services, Marx and Engels achieved the far more profound breakthrough of imbuing socialism with something of the intellectual and spiritual force of the great religious texts. Their doctrine provided an account of man's history, an explanation of current sorrows, and a vision of a redemptive future. But half a century after the publication of The Communist Manifesto, the socialist idea hit another crisis as Marx and Engels's leading heir, Eduard Bernstein, observed that economic development was contradicting the prophecy. The theory was rescued by Lenin, who kept it alive by performing heart transplant surgery, replacing the proletariat by the vanguard. Still, into the early twentieth century, although socialism had stirred millions it remained a dream. Then, World War One gave Lenin the opportunity to put his idea into practice, and in 1917 socialism achieved its first momentous triumph. Even those socialists who decried Lenin's methods or who viewed his state as little more than a caricature of their goals, nonetheless felt strengthened in the conviction that history was flowing from capitalism to socialism. But the debate over the Russian model, and the war's demonstration of the power of nationalism, shattered the movement. Of the fragments, the most outre was fascism which seemed to turn socialism on its head. But the leap from Lenin to Mussolini was no bigger than from Marx to Lenin. Each man distilled theory from the exigencies of revolutionary action. The fascist chapter was explosive and brief, and socialism emerged strengthened from the defeat of this heresy in World War Two. Not only did many more Communist regimes emerge but social democracy found a new lease on life, spearheaded by Clement Attlee's stunning electoral triumph over Churchill in Britain at the end of the war. The aftermath also saw the appearance of dozens of new post-colonial states and with them the birth of "Third World Socialism." It was a hybrid of Communism and social democracy exemplified by Julius Nyerere's Tanzania modeled part after Chinese Maoism, part after British Fabianism. At some point in the late 1970s, socialism reached its apogee when Communist, social democratic, or Third World Socialist regimes governed most of the world. There were, however, two chinks in socialism's armor. One was its dismal economic performance: much of socialism's appeal sprung from the wish to ameliorate want and deprivation, yet in practice it often made things worse. The other was its utter failure to gain a foothold in America, the world's most influential nation where, to add insult to injury, the leading anti-socialist force seemed to be none other than the working class-personified by leaders like Samuel Gompers and George Meany. As America's continued economic success mocked socialism's failures, various Third World nations began to rethink their economic direction. Astoundingly, so did the two Communist giants, China and the USSR, which, under the stewardship of restless reformers Deng Xiaoping and Mikhail Gorbachev, embarked on uncharted courses away from socialism. It remained only for the social democratic branch of the socialist family to beat a retreat in order for the reversal to be complete. And in 1997, Tony Blair resuscitated Attlee's moribund party by campaigning with the slogan "Labour is the party of business." Thus, 201 years from the date of Babeuf's failed coup, the story was brought full circle. I complete my telling with a digression from history to laboratory science, as it were, by training a microscope on an Israeli kibbutz. Like most such settlements, kibbutz Ginosar was secular, built by Jews who, like my father and grandfather, preferred the teachings of Marx to those of Moses. And like most, they succeeded where people in other lands had failed, in creating a pure socialism, faithful to the blueprint, only to see their progeny turn its back on this way of life. After so much hope and struggle, and so many lives sacrificed around the world, socialism's epitaph turned out to be: if you build it they will leave. Links to reviews: www.weeklystandard.com/content/public/articles/000/000/001/122awpfo.asp http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/08/20/222733.php http://www.aei.org/bs/bs13910.htm http://www.gopusa.com/lindachavez/lc_0528.shtml http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/20/apr02/social.htm Transcript of a TV debate: http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript988.html Chapter 1 of _Heaven on Earth_ is available on the web by going to Amazon's web page for the book and clicking on "excerpt". The chapter is titled "Conspiracy of Equals -- Babeuf Plots a Revolution" From prajaf at vsnl.com Fri Oct 11 14:13:11 2002 From: prajaf at vsnl.com (Praja Foundation) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 14:13:11 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Reverse Gear Message-ID: <00e101c27106$83593800$183fc7cb@vsnl.net.in> Nice joke about cultural misconceptions -yazad One day I met a friend of mine. He was a salesman for a Cola company, posted in the Middle East. Seeing him back home, I got surprised and asked, "Weren't you supposed to be in Arabia ?" He gave his account thus. "I got posted in the Middle East. I was very confident that I would make a good sales pitch as Cola is virtually unknown there. But, I had a problem. I didn't know any Arabic. So, I planned to convey the message through pictures. I made 3 posters First, A man crawling through the hot desert sand.. totally exhausted and panting. Second, The man is drinking our Cola. Third, Our man is now totally refreshed." "Thats a very good ad", I said, "what can be a problem with that?" He replied, "Well, I didn't know Arabic, neither did I realize that Arabs read from right to left..." From bea at nungu.com Fri Oct 11 19:00:19 2002 From: bea at nungu.com (:bea::) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 06:30:19 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] :::::::::nungu project launched::::::::::::::] In-Reply-To: <20021011042545.30998.67189.Mailman@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: hi all nungu has just launched its telematic surveillance project and we'd love some feedback. take a peek! some explanatory blurb below www.gaisecurity.com // telematic surveillance. The willingness to watch and to be watched is perpetuated by capital. The intersection of spectacle and surveillance evident in contemporary postmodern phenomena like the cult of the celebrity and reality TV is not a new idea. Surveillance has already been sold. The events of September 11 and December 13 (attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi) merely clinched the deal. Within hours of the attacks the surveillance industry had mobilized itself. Cloaked behind vague global security rhetoric, it set out with the aim of profiting from a new and improved anxiety economy. The surveillance industry sees India as one of its most lucrative potential markets, with a growth potential of 25% in an industry that already has a turnover of close to US $120 million per annum. On an everday level, CCTVs are cropping up in all the usual places. There is growing excitement about electronic security devices. As Shuddhabrata Sengupta observes, modernising elites in the so-called Third World are often better placed (due to lack of constitutional safeguards to privacy or lack of awareness at the public level of privacy issues) to put in place technologies of mass surveillance. It comes as no surprise then when www.tradeport.org states on its website that "installation of security devices has gained popularity among the upper segment of Indian society, including the very rich and celebrities who experience security threats. It has become a status symbol to install high-tech safety equipment in homes and residential complexes." Surveillance is creeping into India almost invisibly, with little discussion and an alarming lack of public awareness. Telematic Surveillance as a project is operating in the context of a country on the periphery of late capitalism. As such its reach is numerically limited but the significance of those numbers is incredibly wide ranging. Technologies are always, to some extent, linked with capitalist interests and often function as tools of oppression. This makes it increasingly crucial to expose the wired Indian consumer to the underlying power relations inherent in new technologies--in short, to a politics of information. GaiSecurity.com is an intelligent surveillance solutions provider (cum tactical entity) based in Mumbai, India. By offering surveillance as a commodity, Gai attempts to satirise the banalization or popularization of global surveillance. Gai wants to demonstrate the sheer strangeness of this emerging global tele-surveillance market in the public (market) domain and the mechanisms of power that lie behind it by playing it back to itself in a distorted and exaggerated remix. Gai attempts to adopt a pedagogical role, informing its customers of exactly what they might be buying into, by subliminally(?) linking surveillance industry jingle to contesting voices in the network. In subscribing to Gai's Service, Gai's customers implicitly turn from tele-spectators to tele-actors. They become voyeuristic electronic agents and their PC--a personal domestic device--is turned into an apparatus of behaviour control. They may gain permanent direct access and thus control over events, but at a price. They simultaneously become subject to control, and are willingly(?) entered into a spectacular, viral, surveilling loop. Gai, then, is also about digitized subjectivity. Being watched in the information age means more than simply screen. It means database. Both screen and database or digital profile are part of a larger genre of vision technologies that essentially operate by abstracting bodies and/or spaces from their territorial settings and transforming them into abstract flows of data. These flows of data, these images, become the locus of social control; identity becomes locked in reductive, repressive data systems more real than their fleshy referent. People are classified primarily in terms of potential risk, the most obvious being the profiling of those with Arab or Islamic backgrounds. Gai wants to function as a subtle tactical entity exposing the skewed agenda of the continued and uncontested transformation of public bodies into scanned and controlled grids. Technology is not ahistorical; it has dubious modes of power inscribed within its nodes and questionable values encoded in its software. Gai tries to make visible to its customers the collective loss of sight perpetuated by the surveillance society. Credits Collaborators: Sejal Chad, Shefali Chad, Beatrice Gibson, Rahul Guha and Vivek Sasikumar From aiindex at mnet.fr Sun Oct 13 06:07:51 2002 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 01:37:51 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Karachi under surveillance! Message-ID: The News on Sunday (Pakistan) 13 October 2002 Karachi under surveillance! By Rubina Jabbar Installation of security cameras with FBI's help in Pakistan's largest city has brought forth the question of civil liberties in the country and their protection after 9/11 According to a report in The News of September 25th, US intelligence agency FBI is installing 3,216 close-circuit cameras in Karachi while 13, 000 such cameras will be installed later in other parts of the country. The report has raised concerns in many quarters for the respect of civil liberties of Pakistani citizens. Though people have generally welcomed the security cameras as they have greatly been facilitating security agencies in the developed countries to check crime and apprehend culprits in cases of theft, arson, road accidents and other events, they oppose the involvement of a foreign agency in the whole affair. According to public opinion, the job should be executed by our own people and not by foreigners as it would not help control terrorism and crime but complicate the matters. "It's just like putting a device on every citizen, and it will not help control terrorism," said Dr Riaz Ahmed of Karachi University. "Instead, it will terrorise people by making them feel as if they are being watched." He warned that terrorism would become more lethal and sophisticated after employing such tactics, and it would be a very dangerous development. "Security cannot and must not take precedence over human rights," said Syed Shamsuddin of Amnesty International. "We must not allow fundamental freedoms to be eroded." Shamsuddin quoted Article 12 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence." He said that a number of governments all over the world rushed through legislation and other 'anti terrorism' measures in the name of security after 9/11. These measures include indefinite detention without trial, special courts, cultural and religious restrictions and interference in personal privacy. "Amnesty International urges all governments that respect for human rights encompasses not only universally but also the indivisibility of all rights," Shamsuddin added. "If the purpose of these cameras is to snub terrorists and check the movement of drugs, arsenal and weapons, they should be installed at ports, airports and railway stations, and not in cities or at public places. It would be against people's fundamental right to freedom and privacy," said Jawed Iqbal Barqi, a senior advocate. Expressing reservations over the involvement of FBI he said they should provide Pakistan's security forces training and equipment, but they should not be allowed to take over the job themselves. The constitutions of almost all developed countries ensure right to movement and privacy to their citizens, Barqi informed. "Installing hundreds of cameras by a foreign agency is tantamount to direct interference in the affairs of a country only to protect their own interests," commented Abdul Hayee, an HRCP activist. "The move will be considered a direct intervention of America in our affairs, if it materialises," he said. It should be up to the Government of Pakistan to decide what to do and how to deal with the terrorist threat, and not outsiders, he observed. Ishak Soomro of Sindh Journalists' Network (SJN) said that surveillance cameras in developed countries have greatly been facilitating security agencies in nabbing offenders quickly in cases of road accidents or other crimes; therefore, we should welcome it as it would ensure security and check the loss of precious human lives. "We should welcome FBI's co-operation in launching the operation, but they should not take over the whole operation," Soomro said. "Why this hue and cry when the movement of citizens is already being monitored at places like banks, hotels, shopping plazas, airports and the Karachi Press Club," commented a concerned citizen who wished not to be named. "Terrorist threat is invisible,which requires an invisible security," he said adding that security agencies should improve strategy and infrastructure. "We saw roadblocks and extra numbers of police guarding foreign missions and five-star hotels after bomb attacks while other sensitive spots remain unguarded. Security was increased at churches in the city after attacks in Bahawalpur and Islamabad, but vulnerable places were left unguarded, which resulted in the killing of seven innocent Christians at Idarae Amno Insaf," he observed. In Sri Lanka, Tamil Tigers used a different strategy in each new attack and even struck at the air bases while the Sri Lankan government was busy guarding buildings in cities, he pointed out. America has made itself so powerful that it thinks that increased State power is the answer to crush every problem disregarding the fact that what has currently been happening against it around the world is the result of its policy in the Middle East and Afghanistan," said Dr Ahmed. "After installing hi-tech top of the line computer system-PISCES-at Karachi and more recently at Lahore Airport to check the US-wanted citizens boarding international flights, the FBI is going to install close-circuit cameras (CCs) at selective spots in Karachi to monitor the movement of suspects," said the news report. According to it, in the first leg, 3,216 CCs will be installed in Karachi while installations of more than 13,000 such cameras will be completed later in other parts of the country. The report further said that the FBI team stationed at a specific place in Karachi was busy in locating and identifying the spots and localities, which are suspected to be frequently used by the terrorists. Though it would be a new phenomenon in Pakistan to have such a wide ranging network spread over the entire city, there are certain localities, particularly five-star hotels, big shopping plazas and other sensitive buildings, where the system is already functional. Earlier, the computer system called PISCES--which is directly connected with the FBI data bank and the newly upgraded Interpol data store--had been installed at Karachi Airport on the insistence of the US following the same process at Lahore Airport. The system is directly connected with the FBI data bank through satellite for instant transmission and retrieval of information to check more than 4,000 al Qaeda activists, those who are on the government's Exit Control List (ECL) or any US wanted citizen boarding international flights. Capital City Police Officer (CCPO), Asad Jehangir Khan, expressed ignorance about the report and said that police with the co-operation of hotel associations had installed cameras at five-star hotels. He said that they had seriously been seeking people's co-operation in installing as many numbers of cameras as was possible because it would greatly help in prevention of crime. He rejected the impression that the practice, in any way, would raise the question of civil liberties. "How could it be so when they are fixed on roads and not inside their homes?" he questioned. From mithi at silchar.com Sun Oct 13 18:59:18 2002 From: mithi at silchar.com (SAGNIK CHAKRAVARTTY) Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 06:29:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] City as Novel - an essay by Wordsmith Message-ID: <20021013132918.E7F0F445F@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021013/ab95d1c9/attachment.pl From milkbar at milkbar.com.au Mon Oct 14 11:50:08 2002 From: milkbar at milkbar.com.au (Craig Bellamy) Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2002 16:20:08 +1000 Subject: [Reader-list] Milkbar: Globalisation and the Everyday City In-Reply-To: <20021014042545.28633.41127.Mailman@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20021014161801.00ab5308@mail.milkbar.com.au> Dear Sarai Readers, I would like to introduce my project to you. It is a local oral-history that speculatively tries to understand globalisation within an inner-city Australian community. It is almost due for submission as part of a Doctorate program here at RMIT University in Melbourne. Your comments are most appreciated and I will try and enact on them if you have any major suggestions. www.milkbar.com.au Milkbar.com.au: Globalisation and the Everyday City Creator Bellamy, Craig Subject Humanities; History; Oral History; Local History; Melbourne, Fitzroy Description This is a project that seeks to offer a speculative encounter with the set of ideas called 'globalisation' through utilising some of the new tools offered to researchers. Using a mini digital video camera, I have recorded a number of people in the suburb of Fitzroy, an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Australia. The creator has asked people what they identify with in the suburb, how this has changed over time, and what they see as negative or positive changes. Succinctly, the raison d'être of the project is to create an oral history archive of the area in a period of rapid change and to try and understand some of these changes within larger analytical frameworks. take care, Craig From dfontaine at fondation-langlois.org Sat Oct 12 01:12:32 2002 From: dfontaine at fondation-langlois.org (Dominique Fontaine) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 15:42:32 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Recent news from the Daniel Langlois Foundation - Fall 2002 Message-ID: Pour la version française : [ Apologies for cross-posting / Veuillez excuser les envois multiples ] _____________________________________________________________________ Recent news from the Daniel Langlois Foundation - Fall 2002 LAUNCH OF THE DVD-ROM *ANARCHIVE 2: DIGITAL SNOW* After spending three years developing a prototype and seeking partners and funding, we are proud to launch an electronic catalogue that brings together a wealth of information and documentation on the Canadian artist Michael Snow and all areas of his work. A co-production by the Foundation and Époxy Communications, this DVD-ROM is put out by Les Éditions du Centre Pompidou. For further details, consult: DESCRIPTIONS AND FILES FOR PROJECTS BY INDIVIDUALS FUNDED IN 2002 Given the importance we place on making public the research and findings of the projects we fund, we invite you to consult the files describing the funded projects and the artists or groups of researchers involved. Fully illustrated with photo reproductions and audio or video excerpts from past works, the section on projects supported by the Foundation lets you explore a whole spectrum of artistic projects at the vanguard of research in science and technology, daring and relevant projects in our hypermediatized world. The 2002 projects : CHANGES TO THE PROGRAMS FOR ORGANIZATIONS Note that the Exhibition, Distribution and Performance Program for Organizations and the Program for Organizations from Emerging Regions have been suspended and are being reviewed. In December, we will announce the guidelines for the new program designed for organizations. The program for individuals, artists or researchers remains unchanged, and the deadline for applying is still *January 31, 2003*. Funding programs: DR. GERALD O'GRADY, THE RESEARCHER IN RESIDENCE AT THE FOUNDATION'S CENTRE FOR RESEARCH AND DOCUMENTATION (CR+D), IS IN MONTREAL TILL JANUARY 2003 A retired academic, Dr. O'Grady contributed greatly to the early years of electronic arts by founding several departments of media studies, in particular at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The faculty at SUNY Buffalo included such eminent artists as the Vasulkas, Hollis Frampton, Paul Sharits, Tony Conrad, Peter Weibel and James Blue. During his stay in Montreal, Dr. O'Grady will help the Foundation analyze the Steina and Woody Vasulka Archives and interpret the findings in an on-line publication by the Foundation. University professors in Montreal who are interested in inviting Dr. O'Grady to address their class (in English) can contact the Foundation at: Press release: _____________________________________________________________________ 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 aiindex at mnet.fr Sat Oct 12 02:45:31 2002 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 22:15:31 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Leaks at India's nuclear-power plants: cause for concern? Message-ID: The Christian Science Monitor October 11, 2002 Leaks at India's nuclear-power plants: cause for concern? Even the country's safest reactors don't meet international standards, according to its atomic regulations agency By V. K. Shashikumar | Special to The Christian Science Monitor NEW DELHI – Kakrapara Atomic Power Station (KAPS), in the western city of Surat, is India's well-groomed nuclear workhorse. Huge concrete domes enclose its two reactors, which generate a surplus of power for the country. And when it comes to controlling radiation leakage, KAPS is "our best station," says S.P. Sukhatme, chairman of India's Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB). That, it turns out, is bad news. KAPS may be India's prized nuclear plant, but radiation emitted from its reactors is three times as much as the international norm, says Mr. Sukhatme. It's a shocking admission that puts the rest of the country's nuclear-power plants in grave perspective. "The main implication is that other nuclear-power plants are much worse than even Kakrapar," says Suren Gadekar, considered to be India's top antinuclear activist. Four months ago, world leaders fretted about the possibility of two nuclear-weapons rivals, India and Pakistan, approaching the brink of war. That problem apparently on hold, India's nuclear scientists say the country could still face an equally devastating nuclear catastrophe – without a shot being fired. This time, the threat is not Pakistan or terrorists, but India's power plants themselves. Some scientists say that the plants are so poorly built and maintained, a Chernobyl-style disaster may be just a matter of time. "The fact that India's nuclear regulator acknowledges that reactors in India are not operated to the standards of reactors in the US and Europe is not much of a surprise," says Christopher Sherry, research director of the Safe Energy Communication Council in Washington. "But it is very disturbing." India tested its first nuclear device in May 1974. In 1998, the country successfully conducted five underground nuclear tests, heralding its entry into ga select group of countries capable of waging nuclear war. Today, the country has 14 nuclear power reactors including two at KAPS. Most are modeled after a design first built in Shippingport, Penn. in 1957, and considered by experts to be the most cost-effective way to produce electricity through nuclear energy. However only three of those nuclear reactors fall under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) standards. The rest – which were built with local technology – are accountable only to national standards set by the AERB. This February, Sukhatme asked the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd – a government-owned manufacturer of nuclear plants – to plug leakage of water contaminated with tritium, a highly radioactive substance, from reactors. "There is a clear need for reducing the exposure to workers," he says. Also earlier this year, the AERB ordered the closure of India's first nuclear plant in the state of Rajasthan. The reactor that put India on the nuclear world map developed a series of defects, starting with "turbine-blade failures." Gradually the reactor was wrecked by "cracks in the end-shields, a leak in the calandria overpressure relief device, a leak in many tubes in the moderator heat exchanger." While the government releases no information about leaks or accidents at its nuclear power plants, Dhirendra Sharma, a scientist who has written extensively on India's atomic-power projects, has compiled figures based on his own reporting. "An estimated 300 incidents of a serious nature have occurred, causing radiation leaks and physical damage to workers," he says. "These have so far remained official secrets." According to critics like Mr. Gadekar, India's nuclear-power program has always been secretive because politicians use it as a cover for the country's weapons program. "Right from Jawaharlal Nehru [India's first prime minister] onward, our leaders have always claimed that the nuclear-power program is a 'peaceful' program, whereas the weapons implications were always there in the background," says Gadekar. "As a result, secrecy has become a way of life for these people." The chairman of India's Atomic Energy Commission, Anil Kakodkar, has repeatedly asserted that his group is doing what it can to ensure that the country's power plants are safe. Still, leaks continues to raise serious questions about safety. Part of the problem, says N.M. Sampathkumar Iyangar, a former manufacturer of nuclear reactor components, is that well-connected manufacturers are able to cut deals with politicians in India's Department of Energy, often selling defective parts, which are then used to build reactors. But others, like Dr. Kakodkar, say the real problem is that new technology designed to upgrade safety at power plants is too expensive for developing countries like India. According to Kakodkar, India should not be held accountable to international standards until the international community helps make such technology available to developing countries. "Safety and technology cannot be divorced," he says. source URL: http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1011/p07s01-wosc.html From arunlists at softhome.net Sat Oct 12 23:32:00 2002 From: arunlists at softhome.net (Arun Mehta) Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2002 23:32:00 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Global Learn Day 6 Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20021012232450.02625f60@mail.holisticit.com> Global Learn Day is the most unusual event in the whole world of education -- and one I hope you don't miss. Once more we open in the South Pacific and travel through all 24 time zones showcasing exceptional people who increase access to affordable education. It's a Mission of importance, therefore I would most especially like you to come along (at least for part of it). The event begins 00:01 GMT, Sunday October 12: --- that's the wee hours, Sunday, if you live in Europe and Africa --- or, Sunday morning, if you live in East Asia or the South Pacific --- or Saturday afternoon if you live in anywhere in the Americas. What make Global Learn Day really special is audience participation. Therefore I sincerely hope you can make it. Click for more information. I'm handling the South Asia part starting about 1pm Indian time -- please do join in, whoever can. This is a combination of audio and text chat, and web pages to illustrate what is being said, automatically pushed at you. ____ Arun Mehta, moderator india-gii. To join this list which discusses India's bumpy progress on the global infohighway, go to https://ssl.cpsr.org/mailman/listinfo/india-gii members.tripod.com/india_gii is our neglected website. From geert at xs4all.nl Sun Oct 13 05:27:21 2002 From: geert at xs4all.nl (geert lovink) Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 09:57:21 +1000 Subject: [Reader-list] The Shiksha India Initiative Message-ID: <01eb01c27271$7dd83ef0$b7af9bca@geert> from: shikshaindia at ciionline.org Shiksha Bridging the Digital Divide The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), and the Global Leaders Of Tomorrow (GLT) of the World Economic Forum (WEF), have launched an initiative called 'Shiksha India' primarily to bridge the digital divide that exists between different sections of Indian society. Shiksha India is a non- profit organization, governed by a Board of Trustees consisting of eminent personalities from the corporate sector as well as other sections of society, both from India and abroad. Mr. Jamshyd Godrej is the first Chairperson of the Board of Trustees. Mr. Narayana Murthy, Mr. Rajendra Pawar, Mr. Arun Maira are among other eminent personalities on Board. Boston Consulting Group helped us in structuring the programme. Shiksha is a platform for industry, academia and government to work together to equip schools with the 5 Cs : Computers, Connectivity, Coaching (teacher Training), Content and models of Commercial sustainability. Its mission is to spread better education, uniform quality of education across India to develop their creativity and problem solving skills. By providing computer literacy, Shiksha strives to increase the earning capacity, reduce information arbitrage in rural India and promote entrepreneurship. Shiksha India along with SchoolsOnline, a well known NGO head-quartered in USA, pilot tested in 6-7 schools in and around Delhi by equipping the schools with all the 5Cs and handholding the entire implementation process. Shiksha India is now working in partnership with The Ministry of Information Technology in the project Vidya Vahini which aims to connect 60.000 schools(approximately 20 million students) across the country in next three years. Shiksha India is developing the National Educational Portal through which students and teachers across the nation can access good quality educational content in the public domain. The teachers and students will be able to interact with each other to get information, discuss and explore new ideas, share knowledge and work under collaborative environment. We have collaborated with Intel for the teacher training programme to train the teachers. Further the portal will be used disseminate important information on health, environment, nature etc. to students and the community. The pilot testing would officially be conducted in 8 districts in India in October 2002 and around 2000 schools would be benefit from it initially. Shiksha India is associated with the Ministry of Human resources for the project CLASS (Computer Literacy and Studies in School) under which States are being funded to provide computers to 35,000 schools in respective states. Shiksha is aiding the States for effective implementation of the scheme. Shiksha India in the long term envisions to equipping the underprivileged schools with all the 5Cs and handhold the States for implementation of all their IT education initiatives by providing curriculum material, teacher training, Commercial Sustainability Models etc. This mission can achieved only via the support of government, industry, academia, NGOs and the corporate sector working in harmony. Shiksha India c/o Confederation of Indian Industry India Habitat Centre, 4th Floor, Core 4A, Lodi Road, New Delhi-110003 Phone: 91-11-4682230 · Fax: 91-11-4682228 / 9 From kunal_guha at hotmail.com Sun Oct 13 12:25:39 2002 From: kunal_guha at hotmail.com (kunal guha) Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 12:25:39 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Invitation for Liberalism workshop held by AYBI from 24th October 2002-27th Oct Message-ID: Invitation for Liberalism workshop held by AYBI from 24th October 2002-27th October 2002at the Yuva Centre Kharghar. The Association of Youth for a Better India (AYBI) is a non-profit, non-partisan, liberal, youth organization. Our mission is to motivate people tobe active citizens, working towards a clean and accountable society by taking positive concerted action. We would like to invite you for our upcoming project called TOWARDS LIBERAL INDIA a workshop on Liberalism. The workshop will cover all the different aspects of liberalism as well as highlight case studies on property rights and Kashmir. Our aim is to create forums of like-minded liberal individuals and spread awareness in order to take concrete actions. We will assist them to form forums in their respective colleges. We will be creating a movement of aware & active youth in a number of colleges. The workshop will take place on VENUE : Kharghar DAMAGES : Rs. 500 only. (This covers the cost of the camp including food, accommodation, stationary, etc. required for the workshop and the cost to & from Kharghar.) DURATION : 24TH October '02 - 27TH October '02. REGISTRATION: E-mail : aybi at vsnl.com Phone: 2671372/16 We do hope we will get a positive response from you. You could get in touch with us in Mumbai on 2671372/16 or email at kunal_guha at hotmail.com. Regards, For AYBI Kunal Guha Executive body member _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx From broadcaster at syhlleti.org Sun Oct 13 18:46:35 2002 From: broadcaster at syhlleti.org (broadcaster at syhlleti.org) Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 18:46:35 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] THE CALCUTTA SUMMER AND CALCUTTA Message-ID: <55020.203.200.120.192.1034514995.squirrel@smtp.spectrum.in> THE CALCUTTA SUMMER AND CALCUTTA The first summer of Calcutta for a Non-Resdient like me has been a great lession in understanding suffering. The humid and hunting heat of Bengal troubled Babar who despised its rains and dampness, English Colonists who made lime their primary consumption and some as we know from some wordsmiths of Bengal – loved something very Non-English and very desi - panta bhat as we all know. English Ladies had a tougher time and suffered from a veritable irritation. In their moments of folly and despairing heat, they might have thought that the Natives are responsible for the climate and the wrath that was to be directed against Apollo was directed against the Natives. The employees of Company and later, the noble and less-noble functionaries of the Empire – all suffered the heat, long before the place became a Revolutionary hot-bed. My bed, here seems like a mild furnace. The night, an oscillation in the self-generated fluid of perspiration. The sleep – half, plenty, heavy and high but without gratification. Like the very city which excites but gratifies not. Very few cities in the world can claim to be such lucky in earning International fame in so quick a time. Within three hundred years, this place in Eastern India rose to great fame, it has seen the vissictudes of its Fortune and in the last Episode, a study on Fortune itself. In the city of vanishing wealth, the political leaders experimented with great zeal on crushing any unequal distribution of wealth. The city was ruled by Babus just after its inception. Babus, in todays terminology can be said to be Sparkling Consumerists . They consumed with a wonderful apetite things intellectual, sensual, political, moral, erotic and vulgar. The fertile and rich outskirts of Bengal were squeezed to enrich the Capital at Calcutta – came foodgrains, flowers and beauties. Babus reclined in their mansions, drank whisky and desi, flew kites, had cockfight, sang and danced and finally when the Great Sweepstick of history threw them to some Recycle Bin, they vanished. Their legacy remained. When the new ideas swept Bengal, this land was bereft of economic wealth, its craft and art almost destroyed and the default opportunity of becoming the Capital of a growing Empire was fast vanishing in real sense. The Economy was changing. India, itself was becoming a political power, instead of an Economic Colony of British on which Calcutta owes its birth, its rise and prominence and International Fame. While Political India was entangled in the local three body problem of China-Pakistan-Bangladesh, Bengal, always fascinated by novelty rather than of inner value embraced Communism. For last two hundred years, Bengal was a tropical conduit through which European Thoughts travelled, with necessary and inevitable distortion and dispersion. It was a kind of a logical conslusion of the Mind of a Bengali Bhadralok who finds greater pain in not being a Bhadra than Daridra. The lack of shrewdness of a Bengali Bhadralok’s mind was evident when it went against its entire historical whole and embraced something very incongruous to its cultural destiny. Communism in Bengal as a political idea highlighted that becaon light in understanding the cultural essence of Bengal – a passionate urge of not to be left behind in the realm of culture, to embrace the dominant culture of the time, to be always searching for New Culture, New Ideas. The noble manisfestation of this essence came in the personages whom Bengalis love to decorate with the epithet of Viswapathik and the worst ones, as Tagore has once remarked – ".. From their speech, it was evident that they were smearing ink onto the face of English Culture and whitelime onto the face of Bengali Community." This Cultural aspect finds its echo in a character of Ms. Arundhati Roy, Mr. Chacko - an Oxford Scholar, a Marxist, presently a pickle manufacturer. The Author has captured by a single line the entire essence of Mr. Chacko, quite known to a Bengali – "He had a Marxist Mind and a Feudal Libido." Bengal had a tryst with its True Destiny and it chose Life instead of a Mummified Immortality when it came to Babu Rammohan Roy writing that historical letter for English Education. Bengal was always a Cultural Wanderer, always in the lookout for a dominant Culture of the day. This had a high survival value as we know. But in embracing the Mummified Communism with the "feudal intellectual Libido", three far reaching effects happened in the Cultural Life of Bengal – a) The true aristocracy was either crushed, suppressed or left for imaginary homelands b) The remnants of the decadent Babus became apologetic and shifted to the compass of power. c) A great chance of coming in contact with the dominant TransAtlantic Culture of United Sates was either hated, or neglected or forgotten. Post Cold-war made the world order very different. Historically, Bengal was a rare piece of land in the entire Orient to cross-examine its European part with that Transatlantic metamorphosis but the Leadership did not have the potency of seeing that Vision. Bengal missed this great historical opportunity, a great Cultural Cross Examination of hitherto unknown scope in global order was missed. Why ? Because, only true aristicrats of a society could envision, rest operate. Bengal had struck a historical short-cut in Cultural Space and the lack of shrewdness of Benagli Bhadralok do not see a quick recapitualtion. And as a logical conclusion, in the Geopolitics of India, Bengal remained as a land of Strategic Imporatnce only. It could not lead because its Leaders were asked to forget what was Leadership. Because, historically, Leadership is always Aristocratic, not by birth but that essence of which Edmund Burke says – "..This is true and noble Aristocracy. Without this there is nothing great and there is no Nation." But I am not qualified to say anything on this great city to which my residency period is only two months.. But I find that what is Paris for Frenchman, so is Calcutta for a Bengali. It is the nervecenter of Bengali Cultural Space and hence, its decadence affects the Greater Bengal that is a Global Community. This city, whose hospitality and International Concessions have become Urban Legends but alas, the city is fast undergoing a de-urbanaisation phase. Its Politics have no cultural flesh and blood, its citizens have forgotten things aristocratic, it is the city of Cost- Cutting. In its commerial vein does not throb the swell of wealth, its streets do not offer that maddening air of urban excitement but boring and shabby processions. But I cannot lose hope. Calcutta cannot sleep in this dirt for long. In spite of all political mummies which are lying heavily on its shoulder, a flash of true and noble aristocracy will make it see its real situation. The city which has seen giants walking on its streets, on whose tradeposts have come Greeks, Aryans, Persians, Arabs, Mogols, English, Frecnh, Dutch, Portugese cannot lie permanently in a cocoon of self-made isolation. The magic of Calcutta lies elsewhere. I wish what my young son will find a Calcutta very different from what his father had found and he will thank his father for working for the Change. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Contributor wordsmith has been a resident of Calcutta and is a Network Manager by profession. (wordsmith is PRITAM BHATTACHARJEE) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- From aiindex at mnet.fr Tue Oct 15 07:25:08 2002 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 02:55:08 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Easy Access to Public Records Online Raises Privacy Questions Message-ID: The New York Times October 13, 2002   Easy Access to Public Records Online Raises Privacy Questions By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS CINCINNATI, Oct. 12 ‹ Before the Internet, public records were essentially private because of their obscurity ‹ they sat gathering dust in courthouses across the land. Now governments are examining what information should be made public on the World Wide Web and whether different rules should apply to electronic documents. Since the late 1990's, courts have posted records online to manage cases more efficiently and provide easier access. But complaints have followed. Crime victims, jurors and witnesses fear that assailants can easily identify and find them. Others worry about identity theft. Former inmates want their pasts hidden, not publicized. Divorced couples grumble that their neighbors now know their business. Jim Moehring knows firsthand the pros and cons of making public court records available online. A general manager at Cincinnati's hockey arena, Mr. Moehring has used the Hamilton County court's Web site to check out potential employees. He has even turned away a few because of what he found. But someone used the site to get Mr. Moehring's Social Security number and other personal details from a 1996 traffic ticket, opening seven credit cards in his name and charging $11,000. "It was absolutely terrifying," Mr. Moehring said. "I got smoked in a bad way. The information is way too accessible." Though officials knew records would be made more available, "there was an underestimation of the impact that was going to have on the individuals whose documents now were online," said John Bessey, a Franklin County judge and chairman of the Ohio Supreme Court's technology committee. This month, a coalition that includes the National Center for State Courts in Williamsburg, Va., is to recommend guidelines for states drafting online policies. The federal court system decided last year that documents in civil and bankruptcy cases, but not criminal cases, should be available electronically without personal information like Social Security numbers, birth dates and names of minors. The Florida Supreme Court is considering a moratorium on online court records while lawmakers review a 2000 Florida law that requires courts to post by 2006 scanned images of all official records. Other states, including Ohio, New York, Arizona and Wisconsin, have task forces studying the issue. But some fear lawmakers might use the Internet as an excuse to deny the public access to information off-line. "I'm deeply suspicious of anyone tinkering with open records laws because they're usually doing it for a specific self-serving reason," said Timothy Smith, director for the Ohio Center for Privacy and the First Amendment at Kent State University. The better solution, he said, would be to limit the amount of personal information that many public documents require. Randal Bloch, a divorce lawyer in Cincinnati, often hears complaints about privacy from her female clients. Most are concerned, Ms. Bloch said, that criminals may surf the Web for names and ages of children, their addresses and the layouts of their houses. She now asks judges to prohibit her clients' cases from being posted on the Internet. "People don't have good intentions, and the county is laying a road map for them," Ms. Bloch said. "It goes beyond stolen identity. It speaks to personal safety." From coolzanny at hotmail.com Tue Oct 15 10:19:52 2002 From: coolzanny at hotmail.com (Zainab Bawa) Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 10:19:52 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Democracy and Elections Lessons from the J&K Experience Message-ID: Democracy and Elections � Lessons from the J&K Experience The recent election results in J&K have evoked elation among many people including Kashmiris, human rights activists, well-wishers of Kashmir, several other people and institutions. The jubilation is euphoric and to everyone, this is the victory of democracy. Couple of days ago, I was attending a meeting on Kashmir where someone very rightly pointed out that elections in Kashmir were a means to express dissent and protest against the hegemony of the Abdullah clan and National Conference. But they are by no means a solution to the Kashmir problem. I absolutely agree with this. The question I have on my mind is: �Was democracy a clear victor in these elections?� Last week I had mentioned that the situation in Kashmir gets me to think about the deeper meaning of democracy. Democracy is a lofty term in today�s times, a theory and feeling which becomes vibrant only when elections are on. Is democracy only about elections? When I ask people what is the meaning of democracy, the obvious reply is �For the people, of the people, by the people�. This definition has become a convenient way to indicate that we know enough about democracy. It is almost suggestive of the fact that we have taken democracy for granted and this is what it has become today � a slow and a corrupt system! Let us consider the case of the elections in J&K. Kashmiri people were very angry with National Conference and they wanted to teach it a lesson and overthrow it. They voted for parties like Congress and PDP as alternatives, not because they have great love or faith in these parties. In some constituencies where NC won seats, it was because only some cadres of people came out to vote and since they were the only ones who voted, obviously NC won there. This is not to take away from the fact that people have also voted for candidates who were eligible and who did good work in their tenure, including candidates from NC. The fact also remains that people voted for their local candidates and not for candidates who were absentee representatives. I have serious doubts about linking democracy with the electoral system we have or for that matter, electoral systems throughout the world. When India attained independence in 1947, Congress was the only majority party. It kept winning elections till such time when there was absolutely no opposition. Yet, in all these times, India was a democracy, with only one major party in the Parliament. What meaning did elections have in such a scenario? Coming down to a closer, personal experience, I was part of an organization where a President who would head the organization had to be elected every year. Throughout the history of the organization except on one occasion, only one candidate contested elections. This system continued well till such time when there were good Presidents. Couple of years ago, there was a Presidential candidate who was strongly disliked because s/he had not done well in his/her tenure. When s/he contested elections for a second term, s/he won unopposed although s/he received only 50% of the votes. Did the dissent then expressed against him/her make any difference at all? If there was no one to stand in opposition to him/her, how did the dissatisfaction expressed against him/her make any difference? In this respect, at least the recent elections in Kashmir were better because other political parties agreed to participate in them. The function of democracy actually begins after elections are over. We elect representatives in elections, not rulers. But this is the culture practically all over the world where people elect their representatives and forget about them till the next elections are around the corner. The responsibility of development, accountability, etc. is placed completely on their shoulders while we, the lesser mortals, will continue with our jobs, families, etc. And then of course, on several occasions, we will sit back in our armchairs and criticize them for the corrupt people that they are and the corrupt system they have created. Well, honestly, this one-way traffic does not work at all. It requires responsibility and accountability on the part of the elected and the electors to run the system, or else, we are only perpetrating autocracy in the form of a redundant democracy. Zainab Bawa _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com From aiindex at mnet.fr Wed Oct 16 05:42:55 2002 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 01:12:55 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Easy Access to Public Records Online Raises Privacy Questions Message-ID: The Independent (UK) 12 October 2002 In Foreign Parts: With a thunderous salute of stamps, signing and stapling, Mrs Brown has finally arrived By Phil Reeves in Delhi On any given night, between midnight and 2am, another few thousand souls arrive in this world and embark on the hard task of trying to exist in India. At the same time, a host of other forms of life – dogs, donkeys, fruit bats, monkeys, eagles, vultures – is born or hatched, or strays across the borders to join the throngs living on their luck in this giant, overcrowded and overburdened nation. Wildlife drifting in and out from Bhutan and Burma and Bangladesh is undocumented and untaxed. And, though the law says they should be registered, many of the humans born in the countryside also appear on Earth without so much as the thump of a rubber stamp. None of these facts deterred the two portly and impeccably polite gentlemen from the Indian customs service whose task was to determine whether to admit into India a small and unremarkable feline, freshly landed from Jerusalem via London Heathrow, called Mrs Brown. Journalists often write about their pets. Nor should we waste column inches bemoaning bureaucracy, because knowing how to circumvent it is a central part of our job, and complaining about red tape is akin to an undertaker grumbling about the presence of a body in his parlour. But this episode reflects a larger truth about India, and about the crossroads at which she now stands. We arrived to pick up the cat from Delhi International Airport at midnight. She has no worth, being one of a countless community of cats in Jeru-salem whose natural habitat is the household dustbin. We had already spent many hours gathering a fistful of documents, quarantine papers, a health passport, rabies certificate and a bill of health from the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture. The late-night run to the airport was the final stage. To enter the baggage hall had been a challenge in its own right. First, we needed a gate pass. Then a duty police officer had be rustled up, to sign it. Then our chit had to be inspected by another group of security men, who logged my name in a register. Only after this obstacle course were we allowed access to the two portly men. They frowned at our paperwork. They hauled out two big, green folders containing the laws of the land, special reference, cat smugglers. They thumbed through our documents. We waited, and waited. Their otherwise stark, strip-lit office had a brightly coloured poster on the wall that proclaimed the merits of Lord Shiva and spelt out a Hindu mantra, which I noted down. "Om tryambekam yajamohe sugandem pushtu vardanam," it began. Chanting this would, promised the poster, protect you from "snake-bite, motorcycle accidents, lightning strikes and all accidents of all descriptions". It did not have any evident impact on customs men. I do not know exactly how many signatures were required to import our cat. Perhaps 30, more probably 35. She arrived in Asia to a thunderous salute of stamps on paper, of stapling, signing, clipping, copying, hole-punching and filing. The smirking of the porters who finally produced Mrs Brown in her cage – and who were amused by the similarity between her feral features and the expressions worn by scores of other worthless (undocumented) cats who scrounge around the airport every day – was particularly annoying. After we took the cat, we had to hurdle a path back through four separate departments, each merrily stamping, logging and signing, to get permission to leave the area. By then, it was after 2am. Mrs Brown now remains confined to quarters for a month of "home quarantine", by order of the Indian government. India's various institutions of government are monolithic hierarchies, each pared into thousands of slivers. Every person has his role within them, often tiny. The chits and signatures he dispenses often have no meaning, beyond confirming his position in the order of things. His little nugget of power is just enough to snag your progress through the system. To call it Dickensian is to understate the scale; the stacks of paper generated by Jarndyce versus Jarndyce (Bleak House) are nothing to the turrets of paperwork amassed in the offices of power in India, where labour costs a pittance, by its myriad bureaucrats. Getting the cat was by far the hardest part of moving to India. Everything else was easy. While the wheels of government remain clogged with red tape, other aspects of life, especially for the minority with money and consumer habits, are a comparative doddle. Only one call was needed to enrol with an internet service provider, install air-conditioning and receive cable TV. You can acquire a pay-as-you-go mobile phone in 48 hours, a taxi or a Chinese takeaway in 15 minutes, and a television set, delivered to your door, in 30. Once cannot spend a night in Delhi's five-star hotels without somebody thrusting a questionnaire into your hands, asking for an assessment of their services. I filled out four in three days at the Taj Mahal hotel, and was rewarded with a personal e-mail, expressing gratitude for my complimentary remarks. One moves, amazed, between the two worlds, the past century, with its echoes of imperial Britain, and the new. Will the gap ever close? From aiindex at mnet.fr Wed Oct 16 05:43:48 2002 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 01:13:48 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] With a thunderous salute of stamps, signing and stapling, Mrs Brown has finally arrived Message-ID: The Independent (UK) 12 October 2002 In Foreign Parts: With a thunderous salute of stamps, signing and stapling, Mrs Brown has finally arrived By Phil Reeves in Delhi On any given night, between midnight and 2am, another few thousand souls arrive in this world and embark on the hard task of trying to exist in India. At the same time, a host of other forms of life – dogs, donkeys, fruit bats, monkeys, eagles, vultures – is born or hatched, or strays across the borders to join the throngs living on their luck in this giant, overcrowded and overburdened nation. Wildlife drifting in and out from Bhutan and Burma and Bangladesh is undocumented and untaxed. And, though the law says they should be registered, many of the humans born in the countryside also appear on Earth without so much as the thump of a rubber stamp. None of these facts deterred the two portly and impeccably polite gentlemen from the Indian customs service whose task was to determine whether to admit into India a small and unremarkable feline, freshly landed from Jerusalem via London Heathrow, called Mrs Brown. Journalists often write about their pets. Nor should we waste column inches bemoaning bureaucracy, because knowing how to circumvent it is a central part of our job, and complaining about red tape is akin to an undertaker grumbling about the presence of a body in his parlour. But this episode reflects a larger truth about India, and about the crossroads at which she now stands. We arrived to pick up the cat from Delhi International Airport at midnight. She has no worth, being one of a countless community of cats in Jeru-salem whose natural habitat is the household dustbin. We had already spent many hours gathering a fistful of documents, quarantine papers, a health passport, rabies certificate and a bill of health from the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture. The late-night run to the airport was the final stage. To enter the baggage hall had been a challenge in its own right. First, we needed a gate pass. Then a duty police officer had be rustled up, to sign it. Then our chit had to be inspected by another group of security men, who logged my name in a register. Only after this obstacle course were we allowed access to the two portly men. They frowned at our paperwork. They hauled out two big, green folders containing the laws of the land, special reference, cat smugglers. They thumbed through our documents. We waited, and waited. Their otherwise stark, strip-lit office had a brightly coloured poster on the wall that proclaimed the merits of Lord Shiva and spelt out a Hindu mantra, which I noted down. "Om tryambekam yajamohe sugandem pushtu vardanam," it began. Chanting this would, promised the poster, protect you from "snake-bite, motorcycle accidents, lightning strikes and all accidents of all descriptions". It did not have any evident impact on customs men. I do not know exactly how many signatures were required to import our cat. Perhaps 30, more probably 35. She arrived in Asia to a thunderous salute of stamps on paper, of stapling, signing, clipping, copying, hole-punching and filing. The smirking of the porters who finally produced Mrs Brown in her cage – and who were amused by the similarity between her feral features and the expressions worn by scores of other worthless (undocumented) cats who scrounge around the airport every day – was particularly annoying. After we took the cat, we had to hurdle a path back through four separate departments, each merrily stamping, logging and signing, to get permission to leave the area. By then, it was after 2am. Mrs Brown now remains confined to quarters for a month of "home quarantine", by order of the Indian government. India's various institutions of government are monolithic hierarchies, each pared into thousands of slivers. Every person has his role within them, often tiny. The chits and signatures he dispenses often have no meaning, beyond confirming his position in the order of things. His little nugget of power is just enough to snag your progress through the system. To call it Dickensian is to understate the scale; the stacks of paper generated by Jarndyce versus Jarndyce (Bleak House) are nothing to the turrets of paperwork amassed in the offices of power in India, where labour costs a pittance, by its myriad bureaucrats. Getting the cat was by far the hardest part of moving to India. Everything else was easy. While the wheels of government remain clogged with red tape, other aspects of life, especially for the minority with money and consumer habits, are a comparative doddle. Only one call was needed to enrol with an internet service provider, install air-conditioning and receive cable TV. You can acquire a pay-as-you-go mobile phone in 48 hours, a taxi or a Chinese takeaway in 15 minutes, and a television set, delivered to your door, in 30. Once cannot spend a night in Delhi's five-star hotels without somebody thrusting a questionnaire into your hands, asking for an assessment of their services. I filled out four in three days at the Taj Mahal hotel, and was rewarded with a personal e-mail, expressing gratitude for my complimentary remarks. One moves, amazed, between the two worlds, the past century, with its echoes of imperial Britain, and the new. Will the gap ever close? From monica at sarai.net Wed Oct 16 12:18:28 2002 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 12:18:28 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] A new Macarthyism... Message-ID: BLACKLISTING OF PROFESSORS (in the United States) BACKGROUND Over the past year, there has been an escalating series of virulently anti-Islamic and anti-Arab statements made by mainstream clergy (Rev. Jerry Falwell, Rev. Pat Robertson, Rev. Franklin Graham , Rev. Jerry Vines, Rev. Robert Morey, etc.), columnists (e.g. Ann Coulter) political leaders (e.g. John Ashcroft, Rep. Chambliss of Georgia) and even the law enforcement officers sworn to protect American citizens (Dearborn Michigan, July 2002). These bigoted statements have become more and more common. Side by side with such expressions of prejudice there has been an increasing tendency to connect the religion of Islam with the criminal acts of individuals, and to connect any criticism of Israeli policies, U.S. foreign policy, or defense of Islam with anti-Americanism, bigotry, or anti-Semitism. Even the Harvard University President, Lawrence Summers, in a September 17th speech equated criticism of Israel and a divestment campaign with actual reprehensible examples of anti-Semitism. The most recent development appears to be an organized effort to marginalize any scholars who may have questioned any of these policies (particularly Muslim, East Asian or Arab scholars and academics) and to intimidate them into silence. This effort is focused on a website founded by Daniel Pipes, a promoter of anti-Arab and anti-Islamic prejudice who supports an extreme right-wing version of Zionism. Daniel Pipes and the organizations he is associated with (Middle East Forum and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy) are attempting to cast themselves as the "authentic" sources of information on the Middle East and Islam. BLACKLISTING The site, Campus Watch at www.campuswatch.org, has begun with an initial "blacklist" of 8 professors and 14 universities that they consider biased and claim "fan the flames of disinformation, incitement and ignorance", and it proposes to maintain what it calls "dossiers" on professors and academic institutions deemed insufficiently pro-Israel, or too "soft" on Islam, and collect information from students regarding their professors' scholarly conclusions and political views. The dossiers themselves are flimsy and the conclusions drawn are from out of context quotes, innuendo and guilt by association. The problem is that most of those incited to react by these materials will not read past the headlines. The professors are: M. Shahid Alam, Northeastern University; Juan Cole, University of Michigan; Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University; John Esposito, Georgetown University; Rashid Khalidi, University of Chicago; Joseph Massad, Columbia University; Ali Mazrui, State University of New York, Binghamton; Snehal Shingavi, University of California - Berkeley. The reasons these professors need monitoring are varied, they may support the Palestinian cause, oppose war in the Middle East, support human rights, have expressed any criticism of Israel, or have defended Islam. This somehow offends MEF and is seen as contrary to their stated purpose of "defending the interests of America." It seems that the only reason that the list of professors is so short is because these have been singled out to be a test case or example to others. If this tactic is successful, then it seems likely that others will be added and targeted in their turn. The "dossiers on institutions" section leads with numerous condemnations of Colorado College for inviting Palestinian activist Hanan Ashrawi to speak at a symposium. Also included are the University of North Carolina where freshmen were assigned readings from the Qur'an, and Harvard where a student delivered the commencement address originally entitled "My American Jihad." This organized national campaign to silence academic criticism of Israel and to marginalize American Arabs and Muslims is incompatible with the cherished American values of free speech and inquiry. Such intellectual intimidation also serves to cut off avenues for exploring possibilities for peace. It is also clear that any reasonable person could have foreseen (particularly in the current political climate) that this McCarthyite tactic of listing individuals in cyberspace could provoke extremists to respond inappropriately. Expression in cyberspace includes a far greater speed of communication and a capacity to convey messages to a far wider audience. This has been the case and has already generated email spamming, hostile or threatening phone calls, internet identity theft, and harassment of the professors named. In some cases the targeted professors' email communications have been rendered inoperable. Academic freedom in universities is essential. Free speech is not simply an aspect of academic freedom to be weighed against other possibilities, it is the precondition for academic freedom. Professors and students must be able to exercise their legal rights as citizens, and to express opinions whether or not they agree with the majority. Academic expression of ideas may inspire vigorous debate on social, economic, and political issues that arouse strong passions. This debate of ideas is critical. However, when rather than debate ideas, we instead attempt to tarnish the reputation of the individual expressing the ideas that can only be seen as an attempt to coerce silence or acquiescence. The Campus Watch Site of the Middle East Forum states that it is "dedicated to defending the interests of America", however such activities can only harm the interests of America. ------------------------------------------------------------------- This complete statement is on the website of The American Muslim at www.theamericanmuslim.org It is the first article in the "current issues" section. Please, go to the site and leave a comment if you have any additional information, or to give us any feedback at all. RESOURCES Campus Watch self description www.campus-watch.org/about.php Wall Street Journal "Pro-Israel Web Site to Monitor Views of U.S. Academia" by Daniel Golden, 9-18-02 http://www.stlimc.org/front.php3?article_id=3425&group=webcast Counterpunch: "Smear Mongers" by Paul de Rooij, 9-24-02 www.counterpunch.org/rooij0924.html "Web Warfare Comes to America" by Lawrence Davidson 9-23-02 www.counterpunch.org/davidson0922.html "The Vigilante Thought Police" by Will Youmans 9-23-02 www.counterpunch.org/youmans0922.html Electronic Intifida Media Watch "Middle East McCarthyism", Nigel Parry and Ali Abunimah 9-25-02 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article714.shtml Pipes and Kramers views of Muslims in the U.S. and in academia: L.A. Times, "It Matters What Kind of Islam Prevails" by Daniel Pipes 7-22-99 www.danielpipes.org/article/313 National Review Online, "Bin Laden Is A Fundamentalist" by Danield Pipes 10-22-01 www.natioinalreview.com/comment/comment-pipes102201.shtml Middle East Quarterly Spring 2002 "Jihad 101" by Martin Kramer www.meforum.org/article/160 New York Post 6-25-02 "Extremists on Campus", Daniel Pipes and Jonathan Schanzer www.meforum.org/article/pipes/424 New York Post 9-17-02 "The War on Campus" by Daniel Pipes www.danielpipes.org/article/465 Interview with Rashid Khalidi http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article718.shtml "Who Is Daniel Pipes?", CAIR www.cair-net.org/misc/people/daniel_pipes.html Israel Lobby Watch http://electronicintifada.net/v2/israellobbywatch.shtml Professors Ask to Join Daniel Pipes' "Blacklist", by Tamar Lewin, 9-27-02, New York Times, www.nytimes.com/2002/09/27/education/27coll.html Trio of Bay Area Universities Monitored for anti-Semitism, by Carrie Sturrock, 9-21-02, Contra Costa Times, www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/4121173.htm Paranoia at Harvard, by Eileen McNamara, 9-22-02 Boston Globe Online, www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/265/metro/Paranoia_at_HarvardP.shtml Harvard Chief's Comments Criticized, by Theo Emery, Associated Press, www.beliefnet.com/story/113/story_11349.html -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net From shammi_nanda at yahoo.com Wed Oct 16 14:05:05 2002 From: shammi_nanda at yahoo.com (Shammi Nanda) Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 01:35:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Bombay Pune Expressway Message-ID: <20021016083505.98111.qmail@web10503.mail.yahoo.com> Expressway: The expressway between Pune and Bombay bypasses all the villages. It is fenced on both sides to prevent villagers and animals from crossing it. If some ones owns land on both sides of the highway they have to walk miles to go to an overbridge to cross over to the other part of their land. Never have we felt restriction on our freedom to cross a highway in an open landscape. It doesn�t allow cycles, two wheelers and bullock carts. There are no Dhabas where the truck drivers can bathe, eat and sleep. It is a desert landscape. No puncture repair shops, no trickle down benefits of employment for the villagers near the highway. We have a road which denies the existence of villagers around it. It doesn�t even acknowledge them. It is so deserted that now we have highway robberies. The police and newspapers have no shame in saying that it�s tribals. They come out with theories that the industries have closed down in that area leaving the tribals unemployed but nonetheless it�s tribals who are the highway robbers. It is worse than when the newspapers write the native place of the servant who commits a crime in delhi, a Nepali or a Bihari boy. Here they haven�t even arrested any tribal for the crime. Why don�t they ever say that a Gujrati stock broker was involved in the stock market scam? The police comes with it�s Do�s and Donts. Don�t stop at the highway even if some one waves you to stop. The other day a managing director of a private company was robbed, poor guy kept waving at the cars passing by but no one stopped. It doesn�t even have any service lanes. It�s sad we just copy the model of a highway from US or Europe. How can we have a highway without Dhabas? Are these the future roads of India? Where are the truck drivers supposed to rest? Who are we to put restrictions on the movements of the villagers? I am sure the lives of the people must have been affected by the highway but no one bothers. Man with a mobile phone: The other day I saw someone walking with bucket of water in one hand while talking on a mobile phone. He was going to shit on the road. In Bombay you can afford a mobile but you can�t get a decent place to shit. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More http://faith.yahoo.com From coolzanny at hotmail.com Wed Oct 16 14:32:16 2002 From: coolzanny at hotmail.com (Zainab Bawa) Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 14:32:16 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Democracy and Elections - The J&K Experience Message-ID: Democracy and Elections � Lessons from the J&K Experience The recent election results in J&K have evoked elation among many people including Kashmiris, human rights activists, well-wishers of Kashmir, several other people and institutions. The jubilation is euphoric and to everyone, this is the victory of democracy. Couple of days ago, I was attending a meeting on Kashmir where someone very rightly pointed out that elections in Kashmir were a means to express dissent and protest against the hegemony of the Abdullah clan and National Conference. But they are by no means a solution to the Kashmir problem. I absolutely agree with this. The question I have on my mind is: �Was democracy a clear victor in these elections?� Last week I had mentioned that the situation in Kashmir gets me to think about the deeper meaning of democracy. Democracy is a lofty term in today�s times, a theory and feeling which becomes vibrant only when elections are on. Is democracy only about elections? When I ask people what is the meaning of democracy, the obvious reply is �For the people, of the people, by the people�. This definition has become a convenient way to indicate that we know enough about democracy. It is almost suggestive of the fact that we have taken democracy for granted and this is what it has become today � a slow and a corrupt system! Let us consider the case of the elections in J&K. Kashmiri people were very angry with National Conference and they wanted to teach it a lesson and overthrow it. They voted for parties like Congress and PDP as alternatives, not because they have great love or faith in these parties. In some constituencies where NC won seats, it was because only some cadres of people came out to vote and since they were the only ones who voted, obviously NC won there. This is not to take away from the fact that people have also voted for candidates who were eligible and who did good work in their tenure, including candidates from NC. The fact also remains that people voted for their local candidates and not for candidates who were absentee representatives. I have serious doubts about linking democracy with the electoral system we have or for that matter, electoral systems throughout the world. When India attained independence in 1947, Congress was the only majority party. It kept winning elections till such time when there was absolutely no opposition. Yet, in all these times, India was a democracy, with only one major party in the Parliament. What meaning did elections have in such a scenario? Coming down to a closer, personal experience, I was part of an organization where a President who would head the organization had to be elected every year. Throughout the history of the organization except on one occasion, only one candidate contested elections. This system continued well till such time when there were good Presidents. Couple of years ago, there was a Presidential candidate who was strongly disliked because s/he had not done well in his/her tenure. When s/he contested elections for a second term, s/he won unopposed although s/he received only 50% of the votes. Did the dissent then expressed against him/her make any difference at all? If there was no one to stand in opposition to him/her, how did the dissatisfaction expressed against him/her make any difference? In this respect, at least the recent elections in Kashmir were better because other political parties agreed to participate in them. The function of democracy actually begins after elections are over. We elect representatives in elections, not rulers. But this is the culture practically all over the world where people elect their representatives and forget about them till the next elections are around the corner. The responsibility of development, accountability, etc. is placed completely on their shoulders while we, the lesser mortals, will continue with our jobs, families, etc. And then of course, on several occasions, we will sit back in our armchairs and criticize them for the corrupt people that they are and the corrupt system they have created. Well, honestly, this one-way traffic does not work at all. It requires responsibility and accountability on the part of the elected and the electors to run the system, or else, we are only perpetrating autocracy in the form of a redundant democracy. Zainab Bawa _________________________________________________________________ Internet access plans that fit your lifestyle -- join MSN. http://resourcecenter.msn.com/access/plans/default.asp From coolzanny at hotmail.com Wed Oct 16 15:09:08 2002 From: coolzanny at hotmail.com (Zainab Bawa) Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 15:09:08 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Democracy and Elections - The J&K Experience Message-ID: Democracy and Elections � Lessons from the J&K Experience The recent election results in J&K have evoked elation among many people including Kashmiris, human rights activists, well-wishers of Kashmir, several other people and institutions. The jubilation is euphoric and to everyone, this is the victory of democracy. Couple of days ago, I was attending a meeting on Kashmir where someone very rightly pointed out that elections in Kashmir were a means to express dissent and protest against the hegemony of the Abdullah clan and National Conference. But they are by no means a solution to the Kashmir problem. I absolutely agree with this. The question I have on my mind is: �Was democracy a clear victor in these elections?� Last week I had mentioned that the situation in Kashmir gets me to think about the deeper meaning of democracy. Democracy is a lofty term in today�s times, a theory and feeling which becomes vibrant only when elections are on. Is democracy only about elections? When I ask people what is the meaning of democracy, the obvious reply is �For the people, of the people, by the people�. This definition has become a convenient way to indicate that we know enough about democracy. It is almost suggestive of the fact that we have taken democracy for granted and this is what it has become today � a slow and a corrupt system! Let us consider the case of the elections in J&K. Kashmiri people were very angry with National Conference and they wanted to teach it a lesson and overthrow it. They voted for parties like Congress and PDP as alternatives, not because they have great love or faith in these parties. In some constituencies where NC won seats, it was because only some cadres of people came out to vote and since they were the only ones who voted, obviously NC won there. This is not to take away from the fact that people have also voted for candidates who were eligible and who did good work in their tenure, including candidates from NC. The fact also remains that people voted for their local candidates and not for candidates who were absentee representatives. I have serious doubts about linking democracy with the electoral system we have or for that matter, electoral systems throughout the world. When India attained independence in 1947, Congress was the only majority party. It kept winning elections till such time when there was absolutely no opposition. Yet, in all these times, India was a democracy, with only one major party in the Parliament. What meaning did elections have in such a scenario? Coming down to a closer, personal experience, I was part of an organization where a President who would head the organization had to be elected every year. Throughout the history of the organization except on one occasion, only one candidate contested elections. This system continued well till such time when there were good Presidents. Couple of years ago, there was a Presidential candidate who was strongly disliked because s/he had not done well in his/her tenure. When s/he contested elections for a second term, s/he won unopp! osed although s/he received only 50% of the votes. Did the dissent then expressed against him/her make any difference at all? If there was no one to stand in opposition to him/her, how did the dissatisfaction expressed against him/her make any difference? In this respect, at least the recent elections in Kashmir were better because other political parties agreed to participate in them. The function of democracy actually begins after elections are over. We elect representatives in elections, not rulers. But this is the culture practically all over the world where people elect their representatives and forget about them till the next elections are around the corner. The responsibility of development, accountability, etc. is placed completely on their shoulders while we, the lesser mortals, will continue with our jobs, families, etc. And then of course, on several occasions, we will sit back in our armchairs and criticize them for the corrupt people that they are and the corrupt system they have created. Well, honestly, this one-way traffic does not work at all. It requires responsibility and accountability on the part of the elected and the electors to run the system, or else, we are only perpetrating autocracy in the form of a redundant democracy. Zainab Bawa _________________________________________________________________ Surf the Web without missing calls! Get MSN Broadband. http://resourcecenter.msn.com/access/plans/freeactivation.asp From aiindex at mnet.fr Thu Oct 17 05:39:10 2002 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 01:09:10 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Karachi: 100 spots identified for installation of surveillance cameras Message-ID: The News International (Pakistan) October 17, 2002 100 spots identified for installation of surveillance cameras KARACHI: The police department has identified 100 spots in the city for installation of surveillance cameras, however initially five or six sensitive areas including airport will be given priority to combat crimes. The department has invited tenders for purchase of cameras and other electronic gadgets till October 21. The installation work of such cameras in sensitive areas will be completed in two months, said Inspector General of Police Syed Kamal Shah while briefing newsmen at Hotel Sheraton on Wednesday. The police department had set aside sufficient funds for purchasing cameras in addition to making provision of three per cent of the amount released through fines on traffic violations, he said. Cameras to be installed at hotels and other commercial buildings can cover an area in the radius of 1.5 kilometres, which would also help controlling traffic violations, he added. He dispelled the impression that police had got funds from any foreign agency and said all these developments were being done with local resources. However, he said local private sector was being persuaded to share the responsibility like Hotel Sheraton and Pakistan Hotels Association. The IGP said that two electronic gates, fitted with surveillance cameras and x-ray machines would also be erected at highways to control traffic violations besides detect smuggling of weapons and other prohibited items which often were transported to the city in the cover of fruits and vegetables in trucks. These trucks would have to pass through these electronic gates, he said adding that the system would start working with in few weeks, he added. Chairman Pakistan Hotel Association Syed Arshad Ali said that the hotel management had installed 14 cameras recently and would install two more cameras including one that could cover the dark areas. The demonstration of surveillance cameras installed at hotel was held. From bijoyinic at yahoo.com Fri Oct 18 10:05:26 2002 From: bijoyinic at yahoo.com (Bijoyini) Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 21:35:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] article on hunting Message-ID: <20021018043526.29891.qmail@web20904.mail.yahoo.com> This is an interesting article from the british author Jeanette Winterson that seems more pertinent to the european rural life. However, it reminds me of an essay I read by John Berger called "Why look at Animals". He writes that it is hard for urban strangers to understand how a french peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to 'salt the pork'. It is hard for them to understand that animals are bred _and_ sacrificed, subjected _and_ worshipped (note the use of _and_ and not _but_) http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/pages/journalism/guardian/sept_16_countryside_debate.htm --Bijoyini When I moved to the Cotswolds eight years ago, I was anti-hunt. I had never been to a Meet, talked to any of the characters involved, or visited the kennels. I knew nothing about horses. Yet I was wary of imposing my views on people I had only just met, so I decided to test my instincts against the reality of the situation. I agreed to let the Hunt continue to ride over my land a season. In the meantime, I learned to ride myself, and I spent a lot of time listening and watching. I became friendly with a kennel man, who earns very modestly, lives in a tied cottage, and is content. He does not want to win the lottery or be rich and famous; he wants to breed hounds. He explained to me that you have to stick with the job for at least five years, because that's how long it takes to bring on a hound. There is no reward, other than the work itself. The stereotype of hunting is the fat men and loud ladies baying for blood at the weekend after a week's stock-broking. There are some of those, but they are not why hunting happens, or why it should be allowed to continue. I believe it should continue, because I have seen how closely hunting meshes with the economic and social fabric of rural living. It is not enough to argue that country people with real skills, who work with dogs and horses, as breeders, farriers, trainers, grooms, whippers-in, muckers -out, should all go and work in tea-shops or sell postcards. The Countryside March next weekend will not be packed with unspeakable toffs and sinister slit-eyed badger baiters; it will be a march of ordinary people who feel they are being slowly bred to death by an urban drive to make the countryside anaemic. On the new Animal Farm, Tourism is Good. Farming is Bad. Rambling is Good. Landowning is Bad. Foxes are Good. Hunting is Bad. These cheap, dreary polarities tell no truth, but they are politically useful to New Labour, who have handled the issues around Farming, Hunting, and the Right to Roam, clumsily enough to turn genuine questions needing to be asked, into walls of mutual animosity. Labour talks about bring a One Nation Party, but that will never happen while urban values are forced on the Countryside in the name of Democracy. It is true that country sports, and the employment they generate, involve killing animals. If we were a nation of vegetarians, our objections to hunting might carry more weight, but I am out of sympathy with the hypocrisy of those who seize on fox hunting as easy prey, while ignoring the more urgent issues of animal welfare and husbandry. Why is it perfectly acceptable to eat meat that has been reared in misery, brutally transported and badly butchered, but unacceptable to ride to hounds? Why is it fine to keep a large dog in a small city flat, but disreputable to be a terrier man? There is no logic to the hunting issue, and it makes no sense to ban hunting, and licence shooting and fishing. The next target will be eventing and racing. In any case, all equestrian sport begins on the hunting field; it is the only place to socialise horses. Drag hunting? Well, if it placates your conscience, fine, but it won't save the life of a single fox, who may not thank you for your kindness in shooting or gassing him, instead of hunting him. Meanwhile, intensive farming, which is what the public demands because it wants cheap food, will continue. That means declining wildlife and the abject conditions of reared stock. Here's a true story. I keep hens. If you keep hen you also keep rats. Nobody is interested in a Rat Protection Bill, so you can kill them as you wish. The best way - and the most dramatic - is to get in a terrier man. Boots up to the knee are essential, unless you are truly hard, and content to tie the bottoms of your trousers with string. Once the rats are on the move, the terriers are loosed, and will dig them out. It is a fast-moving, high adrenaline pursuit, and when the dogs really get going, two of them will jump a rat and pull it apart like a Christmas cracker. The man who does this for me has a thirteen year old boy who goes to a school in town. He told me how his teacher had over-heard him talking about our ratting weekend, and made an example of him before the class. The teacher said that what James had done was brutal and unnecessary. They are kinder ways to kill rats. 'No' said James, and tried to explain that Warfarin, the poison of choice, takes three days to kill a rat, who bleeds to death through the stomach. Any animal or bird that eats the rat will be poisoned too. To trap a rat humanely, you must bait the trap with a sausage - so too bad for the pig - and the rat still has to be killed somehow. I've tried this method, and either you drown the rat in a bucket or you blow its brains out. Either way it squeals continuously. Is James de-sensitised by his ratting days? Does shooting crows with his air rifle and hanging them upside down to scare off other birds, make him a coarser boy than he would be if he hung around shopping malls or slobbed in front of the telly? In the endless debate about rural and urban values, which seems to obsess around the hunting issue, no-one asks how it has de-sensitised and coarsened human beings to live in cities, cut off from our evolutionary environment, William Wordsworth was one of the first writers to confront the deadness of urban living in the new industrial revolution. We think of him vaguely as a Nature poet, but his work was not about nature, it was about Nature's effect on the soul of Man - and what happens to the soul when it loses Nature's daily presence. What certainly happens is that cut off from the realities of Nature, we become outraged by them. Nature, and animals, are amoral. Our own morality has developed around a careful code of protecting ourselves from others and others from ourselves Freud took the view that we create civilisation to save us from the ruthlessness of the natural world. It is good that we should do so - it is not good when we re-interpret the natural world as a moral failure; a primitive state that needs constant intervention. New Labour believes in constant intervention, but what the countryside needs is to draw up its own agenda for change and sustainability. If that includes hunting, so be it. I hope that the international crisis will not be used as an excuse to dismiss the March as minority moaning. The problems of this small island remain the same in miniature as the problem presently facing the whole world; how do we live side by side, without forcing everyone to live in the same way? __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More http://faith.yahoo.com From dfontaine at fondation-langlois.org Fri Oct 18 01:49:15 2002 From: dfontaine at fondation-langlois.org (Dominique Fontaine) Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 16:19:15 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] PRESS RELEASE Message-ID: Pour la version française: [ Apologies for cross-posting / veuillez excuser les envois multiples ] **************************************************************************** *** **Press Release** THE DANIEL LANGLOIS FOUNDATION GRANTS MORE THAN HALF A MILLION TO 19 PROJECTS Funding Programs for Organizations Montreal, October 17, 2002 - The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology has just granted more than half a million dollars to 19 projects by organizations dedicated to merging art and science through the use of new technologies. The Foundation received 202 applications during its 2002 call for projects for the exhibition, distribution and performance program for organizations and the program for organizations from emerging regions. Its international jury examined 103 of the projects, selecting 19 to benefit from the Foundation's programs for organizations. Of the projects chosen, six are from Canada and three from the United Kingdom. Other projects also come from Brazil, Colombia, Ghana, Latvia, Peru, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United States. Besides Daniel Langlois, the jury included Sarah Cook (Canada/U.K.), Daniel Dion (Canada), Antoni Muntadas (Spain) and Jean Gagnon, the Foundation's Director of Programs. This year, grants for organizations range from $10,000 to $100,000. 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) later this year. -30- SOURCE: JEAN GAGNON, Director of Programs DOMINIQUE FONTAINE, Program Officer dfontaine at fondation-langlois.org http://www.fondation-langlois.org t: (514) 987-7177 f: (514) 987-7492 **************************************************************************** *** PROJECTS SELECTED BY THE DANIEL LANGLOIS FOUNDATION FOR 2002 Funding Programs for Organizations ACADIA UNIVERSITY (Wolfville, Nova-Scotia, Canada) *Ideas in Residence/Creative Dislocations: Sense of Place and Digital Connections in the Rural Landscape* This project focuses on the dynamics of human activities and environmental change in the Bay of Fundy area, a highly sensitive ecosystem with a rich cultural history. Through its artist-curator in-residence program, Acadia University will invite Scottish artist Gair Dunlop. CAPACETE (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) *Mobile Culture* Capacete, through its mobile high-tech office Banca No. 2, wishes to help integrate digital and electronic elements and equipment into local artistic practices and set up a shared space and program for creating and distributing experimental artworks. CREATIVE ROOM FOR ART AND COMPUTING (Stockholm, Sweden) *Crac in Context: RAM ROOM* The project consists in exhibiting, distributing and developing the results of the RAM (re-approaching new media) workshops, an interdisciplinary initiative involving Crac (Sweden), Rixc (Latvia), Vilma/Jutempus (Lithuania), Atelier Nord (Norway), E-media Centre (Estonia) and Olento (Finland). ESPACIO LA REBECA (Bogota, Colombia) *Espacio La Rebeca, Exhibitions 2002-2003* The grant will help develop Espacio La Rebeca's 2002-2003 exhibitions and a screening program that will present emerging Colombian artists and filmmakers as well as international artists. FACULTY OF MUSIC, MCGILL UNIVERSITY (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) *The Daniel Langlois Visiting Professorship CIRMMT at the Faculty of Music* Creating a visiting professor position in music media and technology has become a top priority for the Faculty of Music. Such a position will provide intellectual leadership and add international distinction to the faculty's Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology. FINE ARTS AND VISUAL ARTS MASTER PROGRAM, UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE COLOMBIA (Bogota, Colombia) *Quiasma* Quiasma, a research group within the Fine Arts and Visual Arts Master Program of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, will produce an audiovisual support (DVD) to act as a bridge between symbolic images and media images. The group will also focus attention on areas in Columbia affected by war and conflict. GRAMOPHONE RECORDS MUSEUM AND RESEARCH CENTER (Cape Coast, Ghana) *Ghana's Highlife Music: A Digital Repertoire of Recordings and Pop Art* This project focuses on an existing collection of 20,000 records. The main goals are to develop an interactive research tool based on these records, to include textual information, recorded music and images from disc sleeves and record labels, and to give access to this information through the Internet. INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIONES MUSEOLOGICAS Y ARTISTICAS, UNIVERSIDAD RICARDO PALMA (Peru, Lima) *7th Festival Internacional de video / arte / electronica* The 7th Festival Internacional de video / arte / electronica will analyze, discover and present different ways to use technologies related to expression media. MOBILEGAZE (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) *MobileGaze* MobileGaze develops thematically curated selections of Web art as well as interviews with artists, critical texts about cyberculture, and other ephemeral on-line projects. MUTEK (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) *Festival MUTEK.CL in Valparaiso, Chile* This project entails presenting a South American edition of the MUTEK festival. MUTEK.CL is scheduled for January 2004 in Valparaiso, Chile. NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH (London, United Kingdom) *Nanoscopic Culture* Nanoscopic Culture is the working title for a series of artist interventions that the art program at London's National Institute for Medical Research has initiated and that will culminate in a touring exhibition in 2003. This exhibition suggests that there is a culture of trying to define things beyond the phenomenological world. This culture exists as much in the practice of certain artists as in the field of scientific research. NEUTRAL GROUND (Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada) *Untitled Series* The grant will support Neutral Ground's Soil programs, which will facilitate a professional partnership with the new media lab being built at the University of Regina. NEW MEDIA SCOTLAND (Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom) *Drift: A Festival of Sound Art and Experimental Music Across Glasgow and Liverpool* The Foundation is supporting the second edition of Drift, a sound art and experimental music festival first held in 1999 in Glasgow. The events in Drift 2 will take place in two cities, Glasgow and Liverpool. RIXC - THE CENTRE FOR NEW MEDIA CULTURE (Riga, Latvia) *Media Architecture (Research and Festival)* This project delves into media architecture, the merging of post-modern urban geographies and information networks. The project also investigates how social dynamics from virtual networks, when applied to physical conditions, facilitate the expansion of public space. SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM FOUNDATION (New York, United States) *Variable Media Network: Year Two* Variable Media Network is a consortium dedicated to inventing and sharing approaches to preserving art in new media. The Foundation is supporting the second phase of the network's activities. TATE (London, United Kingdom) *Net Art at Tate, a Program of Net Art Commissions* The grant will be used to commission four artists to create on-line works to be displayed at tate.org.uk and complemented by a program of Tate-wide educational events. V2_ORGANISATION, INSTITUTE FOR THE UNSTABLE MEDIA (Rotterdam, the Netherlands) *Capturing the Unstable Media* V2_Organisation's project involves researching ways to capture unstable media art and preserve it in a medium-independent way. WALKER ART CENTER (Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States) *Translocations* The grant will help commission an interdisciplinary collaboration and installation by Raqs Media Collective (new media, New Delhi) and Atelier Bow Wow (architecture, Tokyo). WALTER PHILLIPS GALLERY (Banff, Alberta, Canada) *Pretty Good Access* The grant will be channelled into creative research, project development, and the creation of Pretty Good Access, an international group exhibition of contemporary art. The exhibition will explore artwork and emerging cultural forms conceived of or related to databases. **************************************************************************** *** 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 REMOVE in the subject line. Thank you. **************************************************************************** *** From monica at sarai.net Fri Oct 18 15:25:58 2002 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 15:25:58 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Said on the US, Iraq and Palestine Message-ID: Essay by Edward Said, taken from the Al-Ahram Weekly Many parts of Lebanon were bombed heavily by Israeli warplanes on 4 June, 1982. Two days later the Israeli army entered Lebanon through the country's southern border. Menachem Begin was prime minister, Ariel Sharon his minister of defense. The immediate reason for the invasion was an attempted assassination in London of the Israeli ambassador, but then, as now, the blame was placed by Begin and Sharon on the "terrorist organisation" of the PLO, whose forces in South Lebanon had actually observed a cease-fire for about one full year before the invasion. A few days later, on 13 June, Beirut was under Israeli military siege, even though, as the campaign began, Israeli government spokesmen had cited the Awali River, 35 kilometres north of the border, as their goal. Later, it was to emerge without equivocation that Sharon was trying to kill Yasser Arafat, by bombing everything around the defiant Palestinian leader. Accompanying the siege was a blockade of humanitarian aid, the cutting off of water and electricity, and a sustained aerial bombing campaign that destroyed hundreds of Beirut buildings and, by the end of the siege in late August, had killed 18,000 Palestinians and Lebanese, most of them civilians. Lebanon had been wracked with a terrible civil war since the spring of 1975 and, although Israel had only once sent its army into Lebanon before 1982, had been sought out as an ally by the Christian right-wing militias early on. With a stronghold in East Beirut, these militias cooperated with Sharon's forces right through the siege, which ended after a horrendous day of indiscriminate bombing on 12 August, and of course the massacres of Sabra and Shatila. Sharon's main ally was Bashir Gemayel, the head of the Phalanges Party, who was elected Lebanon's president by the parliament on 23 August. Gemayel hated the Palestinians who had unwisely entered the civil war on the side of the National Movement, a loose coalition of left-wing and Arab nationalist parties that included Amal, a forerunner of today's Hizbullah Shi'ite movement that was to play the major role in driving out the Israelis in May 2000. Faced with the prospect of direct Israeli vassalage after Sharon's army had in effect brought about his election, Gemayel seems to have demurred. He was assassinated on 14 September. Two days later the camp massacres began inside a security cordon provided by the Israeli army so that Bashir's vengeful fellow-Christian extremists could do their hideous work unopposed and undistracted. Under UN and of course US supervision, French troops had entered Beirut on August. They were to be joined by US and other European forces a little later, although PLO fighters began their evacuation from Lebanon on 21 August. By the 1st of September, that evacuation was over, and Arafat plus a small band of advisers and soldiers were lodged in Tunis.Meanwhile the Lebanese civil war continued until about 1990, when a concordat was fashioned together in Taif, more or less restoring the old confessional system which remains in place today. In mid-1994, Arafat -- still head of the PLO -- and some of those same advisers and soldiers were able to enter Gaza as part of the so-called Oslo agreements. Earlier this year Sharon was quoted as regretting his failure to kill Arafat in Beirut. Not for want of trying though, since dozens of hiding places and headquarters were smashed into rubble with great loss of life. 1982 hardened Arabs, I think, to the notion that not only would Israel use advanced technology (planes, missiles, tanks, and helicopters) to attack civilians indiscriminately, but that neither the US nor the other Arabs would do anything at all to stop the practice even if it meant targeting leaders and capital cities. (For more on this episode see Rashid Khalidi, Under Siege, New York 1986; Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation, London 1990; more specifically on the Lebanese civil war, Jonathan Randall, Going All the Way, New York, 1983). Thus ended the first full-scale contemporary attempt at military regime change by one sovereign country against another in the Middle East. I bring it up as a messy backdrop to what is occurring now. Sharon is now Israel's prime minister, his armies and propaganda machine once again surrounding and dehumanising Arafat and the Palestinians as "terrorists". It is worth recalling that the word "terrorist" began to be employed systematically by Israel to describe any Palestinian act of resistance beginning in the mid-1970s. That has been the rule ever since, especially during the first Intifada of 1987-93, eliminating the distinction between resistance and pure terror and effectively depoliticising the reasons for armed struggle. During the 1950s and 60s Ariel Sharon learned his spurs, so to speak, by heading the infamous Unit 101, which killed Arab civilians and razed their houses with the approval of Ben-Gurion. He was in charge of the pacification of Gaza in 1970-1. None of this, including the 1982 campaign, ever resulted in getting rid of the Palestinian people, or in changing the map or the regime enough by military means to ensure a total Israeli victory. The main difference between 1982 and 2002 is that the Palestinians now being victimised and besieged are in Palestinian territories that were occupied in 1967 and where they have remained despite the ravages of the occupation, the destruction of the economy, and of the whole civilian infrastructure of collective life. The main similarity is of course the disproportional means used to do it, eg, the hundreds of tanks and bulldozers used to enter towns and villages like Jenin or refugee camps like Jenin's and Deheisheh, to kill, vandalise, prevent ambulances and first-aid workers from helping, cutting off water and electricity, etc. All with the support of the US whose president actually went as far as calling Sharon a man of peace during the worst rampages of March and April 2002. It is significant of how Sharon's intention went far beyond "rooting out terror" that his soldiers destroyed every computer and then carried off the files and hard drives from the Central Bureau of Statistics, the Ministry of Education, of Finance, of Health, cultural centres, vandalising officers and libraries, all as a way of reducing Palestinian collective life to a pre- modern level. I don't want to rehearse my criticisms of Arafat's tactics or the failures of his deplorable regime during the Oslo negotiations and thereafter. I have done so at length here and elsewhere. Besides, as I write the man is quite literally hanging on to life by his teeth; his crumbling quarters in Ramallah are also still besieged while Sharon does everything possible to injure him short of actually having him killed. What concerns me is the whole idea of regime change as an attractive prospect for individuals, ideologies and institutions that are asymmetrically more powerful than their adversaries. What kind of thinking makes it relatively easy to conceive of great military power as licensing political and social change on a scale not imagined before, and to do so with little concern for the damage on a vast scale that such change necessarily entails? And how do the prospects of not incurring much risk of casualties for one's own side stimulate more and still more fantasies about surgical strikes, clean war, high technology battlefields, changing the entire map, creating democracy and the like, all of it giving rise to ideas of omnipotence, wiping the slate clean, and being in ultimate control of what matters to "our" side? During the current American campaign for regime change in Iraq, it is the people of Iraq, the vast majority of whom have paid a terrible price in poverty, malnutrition and illness as a result of 10 years of sanctions, who have dropped out of sight. This is completely in keeping with US Middle East policy built as it is on two mighty pillars, the security of Israel and plentiful supplies of inexpensive oil. The complex mosaic of traditions, religions, cultures, ethnicities, and histories that make up the Arab world -- especially in Iraq -- despite the existence of nation-states with sullenly despotic rulers, are lost to US and Israeli strategic planners. With a 5000-year old history, Iraq is mainly now thought of as either a "threat" to its neighbours which, in its currently weakened and besieged condition, is rank nonsense, or as a "threat" to the freedom and security of the United States, which is more nonsense. I am not going to even bother here to add my condemnations of Saddam Hussein as a dreadful person: I shall take it for granted that he certainly deserves by almost every standard to be ousted and punished. Worst of all, he is a threat to his own people. Yet since the period before the first Gulf War, the image of Iraq as in fact a large, prosperous and diverse Arab country has disappeared; the image that has circulated both in media and policy discourse is of a desert land peopled by brutal gangs headed by Saddam. That Iraq's debasement now has, for example, nearly ruined the Arab book publishing industry given that Iraq provided the largest number of readers in the Arab world, that it was one of the few Arab countries with so large an educated and competent professional middle-class, that it has oil, water and fertile land, that it has always been the cultural centre of the Arab world (the Abbasid empire with its great literature, philosophy, architecture, science and medicine was an Iraqi contribution that is still the basis for Arab culture), that to other Arabs the bleeding wound of Iraqi suffering has, like the Palestinian cavalry, been a source of continuing sorrow for Arabs and Muslims alike -- all this is literally never mentioned. Its vast oil reserves, however, are and, as the argument goes, if "we" took them away from Saddam and got hold of them we won't be so dependent on Saudi oil. That too is rarely cited as a factor in the various debates racking the US Congress and the media. But it is worth mentioning that second to Saudi Arabia, Iraq has the largest oil reserves on earth, and the roughly 1.1 trillion dollars worth of oil -- much of it already committed by Saddam to Russia, France, and a few other countries -- that have been available to Iraq are a crucial aim of US strategy, something which the Iraqi National Congress has used as a trump card with non-US oil consumers. (For more details on all this see Michael Klare, "Oiling the Wheels of War," The Nation, 7Oct). A good deal of the bargaining between Putin and Bush concerns how much of a share of that oil US companies are willing to promise Russia. It is eerily reminiscent of the three billion dollars offered by Bush Senior to Russia. Both Bushes are oil businessmen after all, and they care more about that sort of calculation than they do about the delicate points of Middle Eastern politics, like re-wrecking Iraq's civilian infrastructure. Thus the first step in the dehumanisation of the hated Other is to reduce his existence to a few insistently repeated simple phrases, images and concepts. This makes it much easier to bomb the enemy without qualm. After 11 September, this has been quite easy for Israel and the US to do with respectively the Palestinians and the Iraqis as people. The important thing to note is that by an overwhelming preponderance the same policy and the same severe one, two, or three stage plan is put forward principally by the same Americans and Israelis. In the US, as Jason Vest has written in The Nation (September 2/9), men from the very right-wing Jewish Institute for National Security (JINSA) and the Center for Security Policy (CSP) populate Pentagon and State Department committees, including the one run by Richard Perle (appointed by Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld). Israeli and American security are equated, and JINSA spends the "bulk of its budget taking a bevy of retired US generals and admirals to Israel". When they come back, they write op-eds and appear on TV hawking the Likud line. Time magazine ran a piece on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, many of whose members are drawn from JINSA and CSP, in its 23 August issue entitled "Inside the Secret War Council". For his part, Sharon has numbingly repeated that his campaign against Palestinian terrorism is identical with the American war on terrorism generally, Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qa'eda in particular. And they, he claims, are in turn part of the same Terrorist International that includes many Muslims all over Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America, even if Bush's axis of evil seems for the moment to be concentrated on Iraq, Iran and North Korea. There are now 132 countries with some sort of American military presence, all of it linked to the war on terror, which remains undefined and floating so as to whip up more patriotic frenzy and fear and support for military action on the domestic front, where things go from bad to worse. Every major West Bank and Gaza area is occupied by Israeli troops who routinely kill and/or detain Palestinians on the grounds that they are "suspected" terrorists and militants; similarly, houses and shops are often demolished with the excuse that they shelter bomb factories, terrorist cells, and militant meeting places. No proof is given, none asked for by reporters who accept the unilateral Israeli designation without a murmur. An immense carpet of mystification and abstraction has therefore been laid down all over the Arab world by this effort at systematic dehumanisation. What the eye and ear perceive are terror, fanaticism, violence, hatred of freedom, insecurity and, the ultimate, weapons of mass destruction (WPD) which are to be found not where we know they are and never looked for (in Israel, Pakistan, India and obviously the US among others) but in the hypothetical spaces of the terrorist ranks, Saddam's hands, a fanatical gang, etc. A constant figure in the carpet is that Arabs hate Israel and Jews for no other reason except that they hate America too. Potentially Iraq is the most fearsome enemy of Israel because of that country's economic and human resources; Palestinians are formidable because they stand in the way of complete Israeli hegemony and land occupation. Right-wing Israelis like Sharon who represent the Greater Israel ideology claiming all of historical Palestine as a Jewish homeland have been especially successful at making their view of the region the dominant one among US supporters of Israel. A comment by Uzi Landau, Israeli internal security minister (and member of the Likkud Party) on US TV this summer stated that all this talk of "occupation" was nonsense. We are a people coming home. He was not even quizzed about this extraordinary concept by Mort Zuckerman, host of the programme, also owner of US News and World Report and president of the Council of Presidents of Major Jewish Organisations. But, Israeli journalist Alex Fishman, in Yediot Aharanot of 6 September, describes the "revolutionary ideas" of Condoleeza Rice, Rumsfeld (who now also refers to "so-called occupied territories"), Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle (who commissioned the notorious Rand study designating Saudi Arabia as the enemy and Egypt as the prize for America in the Arab world) as being terrifyingly hawkish because they advocate regime change in every Arab country. Fishman quotes Sharon as saying that this group, many of them members of JINSA and CCP, and connected to the AIPAC affiliate the Washington Institute of Near East Affairs, dominates Bush's thinking (if that's the right word for it); he says, "next to our American friends Effi Eitam [one of the Israeli cabinet's most remorseless hard-liners] is a total dove." The other, more scary side of this is the unchallenged proposition that if "we" don't pre-empt terrorism (or any other potential enemy), we will be destroyed. This is now the core of US security strategy that is regularly drummed out in interviews and talk shows by Rice, Rumsfeld, and Bush himself. The formal statement of this view appeared a short time ago in the National Security Strategy of the United States, an official paper prepared as an over-all manifesto for the administration's new, post-Cold War foreign policy. The working presumption is that we live in an exceptionally dangerous world with a network of enemies that does in fact exist, that it has factories, offices, endless numbers of members, and that its entire existence is given up to destroying "us", unless we get them first. This is what frames and gives legitimacy to the war on terrorism and on Iraq, for which the Congress and the UN are now being asked to give endorsement. Fanatical individuals and groups do exist, of course, and many of them are generally in favor of somehow harming either Israel or the US. On the other hand, Israel and the US are widely perceived in the Islamic and Arab worlds first of having created the so-called jihadi extremists of whom Bin Laden is the most famous, and second of blithely overriding international law and UN resolutions in the pursuit of their own hostile and destructive policies in those worlds. David Hirst writes in a Guardian column datelined Cairo that even Arabs who oppose their own despotic regimes "will see it [the US attack on Iraq] as an act of aggression aimed not just at Iraq, but at the whole Arab world; and what will make it supremely intolerable is that it will be done on behalf of Israel, whose acquisition of a large arsenal of weapons of mass destruction seems to be as permissible as theirs is an abomination" (6 Sept). I am also saying that there is a specific Palestinian narrative and, at least since the mid-1980s, a formal willingness to make peace with Israel that is quite contrary to the more recent terrorist threat represented by Al-Qa'eda or the spurious threat supposedly embodied by Saddam Hussein, who is a terrible man of course, but is scarcely able to wage intercontinental war; only occasionally is it admitted by the administration that he might be a threat to Israel, but that seems to be one of his grievous sins. None of his neighbours perceives him as a threat. The Palestinians and Iraq get mixed up in this scarcely perceptible way so as to constitute a menace which the media reinforces time and time again. Most stories about the Palestinians that appear in genteel and influential mass-circulation publications like The New Yorker and The New York Times magazine show Palestinians as bomb-makers, collaborators, suicide bombers, and only that. Neither of these publications has published anything from the Arab viewpoint since 9/11. Nothing at all. So that when administration flaks like Dennis Ross (in charge of Clinton's side of the Oslo negotiations, but both before and after his stint in that job a member of an Israeli lobby affiliate) keeps saying that the Palestinians turned down a generous Israeli offer at Camp David, he is flagrantly distorting the facts, which as several authoritative sources have shown, was that Israel conceded non-contiguous Palestinian areas with Israeli security posts and settlements surrounding them all and with no common border between Palestine and any Arab state (eg, Egypt in the south, Jordan in the east). Why words like "generous" and "offer" should apply to territory illegally held by an occupying power in contravention of international law and UN resolutions, no one has bothered to ask. But given the power of the media to repeat, re- repeat and underline simple assertions, plus the untiring efforts of the Israeli lobby to repeat the same idea -- Dennis Ross himself has been singularly obdurate in his insistence on this falsehood -- it is now locked into place that the Palestinians chose "terror instead of peace". Hamas and Islamic Jihad are seen not as (a perhaps misguided) part of the Palestinian struggle to be rid of Israeli military occupation, but as part of the general Palestinian desire to terrorise, threaten, and be a menace. Like Iraq. In any event, with the US administration's newest and rather improbable claim that secular Iraq has been giving haven and training to the madly theocratic Al-Qa'eda, the case against Saddam seems to have been closed. The prevailing (but by no means uncontested) government consensus is that since UN inspectors cannot ascertain what he has of WMD, what he has hidden and what he might still do, he should be attacked and removed. The whole point of going to the UN for authorisation from the US point of view is to get a resolution so stiff and so punitive that no matter whether or not Saddam Hussein complies he will be so incriminated with having violated "international law" that his mere existence will warrant military regime change. In late September, on the other hand, in a Security Council resolution passed unanimously (with US abstention), Israel was enjoined to end its siege of Arafat's Ramallah compound and to withdraw from Palestinian territory illegally occupied since March (for which Israel's excuse has been "self-defense"). Israel has refused to comply, and the underlying US rationale for the US not doing much to enforce even its own stated position is that "we" understand that Israel must defend its citizens. Why the UN is to be sought after in one instance, ignored in another, is one of those inconsistencies that the US simply indulges in. A small group of unexamined and self-invented phrases such as anticipatory preemption or preventive self-defense are bandied about by Donald Rumsfeld and his colleagues to persuade the public that the preparations for war against Iraq or any other state in need of "regime change" (or, the other somewhat rarer euphemism, "constructive destruction") are buttressed by the notion of self-defense. The public is kept on tenterhooks by repeated red or orange alerts, people are encouraged to inform law enforcement authorities of "suspicious" behaviour, and thousands of Muslims, Arabs and South Asians have been detained, and in some cases arrested on suspicion. All of this is carried out at the president's behest as a facet of patriotism and love of America. I still have not been able to understand what it means to love a country (in US political discourse, love of Israel is also a current phrase) but it seems to mean unquestioning blind loyalty to the powers that be, whose secrecy, evasiveness and willful refusal to engage with an alert public, which for the time being doesn't seem to be awakened into coherent or systematic responsiveness, has concealed the ugliness and destructiveness of the whole Iraq and Middle East policy of the Bush administration. So powerful is the United States in comparison with most other major countries combined that it can't really be constrained by or be compelled to obey any international system of conduct, not even one its secretary of state may wish to. Along with the abstractness of whether "we" should go to war against Iraq 7000 miles away, discussion of foreign policy denudes other people of any thick or real, human identity; Iraq and Afghanistan seen from the bombsights of a smart missile or on television are at best a chess board which "we" decide to enter, destroy, re-construct, or not, at will. The word "terrorism", as well asthe war on it, serves nicely to further this sentiment since in comparison with many Europeans, the great majority of Americans have had no contact or lived experience with the Muslim lands and peoples and therefore feel no sense of the fabric of life that a sustained bombing campaign (as in Afghanistan) would tear to shreds. And, seen as it is, like an emanation from nowhere except from well- financed madrasas on the basis of a "decision" by people who hate our freedoms and who are jealous of our democracy, terrorism engages polemicists in the most extravagant, if unsituated, and non-political debates. History and politics have disappeared, all because memory, truth, and actual human existence have effectively been downgraded. You cannot speak about Palestinian suffering or Arab frustration because Israel's presence in the US prevents it. At a fervently pro-Israel demonstration in May, Paul Wolfowitz mentioned Palestinian suffering in passing, but he was loudly booed and never could refer to it again. Moreover, a coherent human rights or free trade policy that consistently sticks to the endlessly underlined virtues of human rights, democracy, and free economies that we are constitutively believed to stand for is likely to be undermined domestically by special interest groups (as witness the influence of the ethnic lobbies, the steel and defense industries, the oil cartel, the farming industry, retired people, gun lobby, to mention only a few). Every one of the 500 congressional districts represented in Washington, for instance, has a defense or defense-related industry in it; so as Secretary of State James Baker said just before the first Gulf War, the real issue in that war against Iraq was "jobs". When it comes to foreign affairs, it is worth remembering that only something like 25-30 per cent (compare that with the 15 per cent of Americans who have actually travelled abroad) of members of Congress even have passports, and what they say or think has less to do with history, philosophy or ideals and more to do with who influences the member's campaign, sends money, etc. Two incumbent House members, Earl Hilliard of Alabama and Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, supportive of the Palestinian right to self-determination and critical of Israel, were recently defeated by relatively obscure candidates who were well-financed by what was openly cited as New York (ie Jewish) money from outside their states. The defeated pair were berated by the press as extremist and unpatriotic. As far as US Middle East policy is concerned, the Israeli lobby has no peer and has turned the legislative branch of the US government into what former Senator Jim Abourezk once called Israeli-occupied territory. No comparable Arab lobby even exists, much less functions effectively. As a case in point the Senate will periodically issue forth with unsolicited resolutions sent to the president that stress, underline, re-iterate American support for Israel. There was such a resolution in May, just at the time when Israeli forces were occupying and in effect destroying all the major West Bank towns. One of the drawbacks of this wall-to-wall endorsement of Israel's most extreme policies is that in the long run it is simply bad for Israel's future as a Middle East country. Tony Judt has well argued that case, suggesting that Israel's dead end ideas about staying on in Palestinian land will lead nowhere and simply put off the inevitable withdrawal. The whole theme of the war against terrorism has permitted Israel and its supporters to commit war crimes against the entire Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza, 3.4 million of them who have become (as the going phrase has it) non-combatant collateral damage. Terje-Roed Larsen, who is the UN's special administrator for the occupied territories, has just issued a report charging Israel with inducing a humanitarian catastrophe: unemployment has reached 65 per cent, 50 per cent of the population lives on less than $2 a day, and the economy, to say nothing of people's lives, has been shattered. In comparison with this, Israeli suffering and insecurity is considerably less: there aren't Palestinian tanks occupying any part of Israel, or even challenging Israeli settlements. During the past two weeks Israel has killed 75 Palestinians, many of them children, it has demolished houses, deported people, razed valuable agricultural land, kept everyone indoors under 80-hour curfews at a stretch, not permitted civilians through roadblocks or allowed ambulances and medical aid through, and as usual cut off water and electricity. Schools and universities simply cannot function. While these are daily occurrences which, like the occupation itself and the dozens of UN Security Council resolutions, have been in effect for at least 35 years, they are mentioned in the US media only occasionally, as endnotes for long articles about Israeli government debates, or the disastrous suicide bombings that have occurred. The tiny phrase "suspected of terrorism" is both the justification and the epitaph for whomever Sharon chooses to have killed. The US doesn't object except in the mildest terms, eg, it says, this is not helpful but this does little to deter the next brace of killings. We are now closer to the heart of the matter. Because of Israeli interests in this country, US Middle East policy is therefore Israelo-centric. A post-9/11 chilling conjuncture has occurred in which the Christian Right, the Israeli lobby, and the Bush's administration's semi-religious belligerency is theoretically rationalised by neo-conservative hawks whose view of the Middle East is committed to the destruction of Israel's enemies, which is sometimes given the euphemistic label of re-drawing the map by bringing regime change and "democracy" to the Arab countries who most threaten Israel. (See "The Dynamics of World Disorder: Which God is on Whose Side?" by Ibrahim Warde, LeMonde Diplomatique, September 2002 and "Born-Again Zionists" by Ken Silverstein and Michael Scherer, Mother Jones, October 2002). Sharon's campaign for Palestinian reform is simply the other side of his effort to destroy the Palestinians politically, his life-long ambition. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, even Jordan have been variously threatened, even though, dreadful regimes though they may be, they were protected and supported by the US since World War II, as indeed was Iraq. In fact, it seems obvious to anyone who knows anything about the Arab world that its parlous state is likely to get a whole lot worse once the US begins its assault on Iraq. Supporters of the administration's policy occasionally say vague things like how exciting it will be when we bring democracy to Iraq and the other Arab states, without much consideration for what exactly, in terms of lived experience, that will mean for the people who actually live there, especially after B-52 strikes tear their land and homes apart relentlessly. I can't imagine that there is a single Arab or Iraqi who would not like to see Saddam Hussein removed. All the indications are that US/Israeli military action have made things a lot worse on a daily basis for ordinary people, but this is nothing in comparison with the terrible anxiety, psychological distortions and political malformations imposed on their societies. Today neither the expatriate Iraqi opposition that has been intermittently courted by at least two US administrations, nor the various US generals like Tommy Franks, has much credibility as post-war rulers of Iraq. Nor does there seem to have been much thought given to what Iraq will need once the regime is changed, once the internal actors get moving again, once even the Baath is de-toxified. It may be the case that not even the Iraqi army will lift a finger in battle on behalf of Saddam. Interestingly though, in a recent congressional hearing three former generals from the US's Central Command, have expressed serious and, I would say, crippling reservations about the hazards of this whole adventure as it is being planned militarily. But even those doubts do not sufficiently address the country's seething internal factionalism and ethno- religious dynamic, particularly after 30 debilitating years under the Baath Party, UN sanctions, and two major wars (three if and when the US attacks). No one in the US, no one at all has any real idea of what might happen in Iraq, or Saudi Arabia, or Egypt if a major military intervention takes place. It is enough to know, and then to shudder, that Fouad Ajami and Bernard Lewis are the administration's two major expert advisers. Both are virulently and ideologically anti-Arab as well as discredited by the majority of their colleagues in the field. Lewis has never lived in the Arab world, and what he has to say about it is reactionary rubbish; Ajami is from South Lebanon, a man who was once a progressive supporter of the Palestinian struggle who has now converted to the far Right and has espoused Zionism and American imperialism without reservation. 9/11 might have provided a period of national reflection and the pondering of US foreign policy after the shock of that unconscionable atrocity. Such terrorism as that most certainly needs to be confronted and forcefully dealt with, but in my opinion it is always the aftermath of a forceful response that has to be considered first, not just the immediate, reflexive and violent response. No one would argue today, even after the rout of the Taliban, that Afghanistan is now a much better and more secure place from the standpoint of the country's still suffering citizens. Nation-building is clearly not the US's priority there since other wars in different places draw attention away from the last battlefield. Besides, what does it mean for Americans to build a nation with a culture and history as different from theirs as Iraq? Both the Arab world and the United States are far more complex and dynamic places than the platitudes of war and the resonant phrases about reconstruction would allow. That is obvious in post-US attacks on Afghanistan. To make matters more complicated, there are dissenting voices of considerable weight in Arab culture today, and there are movements of reform across a wide front. The same is true of the United States where, to judge from my recent experiences lecturing at various campuses, most citizens are anxious about the war, anxious to know more, above all, anxious not to go to war with such messianic bellicosity and vague aims in mind. Meanwhile, as The Nation put it in its last editorial, the country marches toward war as if in a trance, while with an increasing number of exceptions, Congress has simply abdicated its role of representing the people's interest. As someone who has lived within the two cultures all my life it is appalling that the clash of civilisations, that reductive and vulgar notion so much in vogue now, has taken over thought and action. What we need to put in place is a universalist framework for comprehending and dealing with Saddam Hussein as well as Sharon, the rulers of Myanmar, Syria, Turkey, and a whole host of those countries where depredations are endured without sufficient resistance. Demolishing houses, torture, the denial of a right to education are to be opposed wherever they occur. I know no other way of re-creating or restoring the framework but through education, and the fostering of open discussion, exchange and intellectual honesty that will have no truck with concealed special pleading or the jargons of war, religious extremism, and pre-emptive "defense". But that alas takes a long time, and to judge from the governments of the US and the UK, its little partner, wins no votes. We must do everything in our power to provoke discussion and embarrassing questions, there by slowing down and finally stopping the recourse to war that has now become a theory and not just a practice. © Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved -- Monica Narula Sarai:The New Media Initiative 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.sarai.net From akhardori at lycos.com Fri Oct 18 18:49:41 2002 From: akhardori at lycos.com (doodlebug) Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 09:19:41 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] A new Macarthyism... going more than one way? Message-ID: Campus Hypocrisy By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN he Washington Post recently reported that students and faculty at a growing number of universities are pressuring their schools "into selling their holdings in companies that do business with Israel, prompting a counter-campaign among Jewish groups that consider the effort part of a creeping tide of anti-Semitism on campus." Here's what I would say to both sides on this issue: Memo to professors and students leading the divestiture campaign: Your campaign for divestiture from Israel is deeply dishonest and hypocritical, and any university that goes along with it does not deserve the title of institution of higher learning. You are dishonest because to single out Israel as the only party to blame for the current impasse is to perpetrate a lie. Historians can debate whether the Camp David and Clinton peace proposals for a Palestinian state were for 85, 90, or 97 percent of the West Bank and Gaza. But what is not debatable is what the proper Palestinian response should have been. It should have been to tell Israel and America that their peace proposals were the first fair offer they had ever put forth, and although they still fell short of what Palestinians feel is a just two-state solution, Palestinians were now prepared to work with Israel and America to achieve that end. The proper response was not a Palestinian intifada and 100 suicide bombers, which are what brought Ariel Sharon to power. It is shameful that at a time when some Palestinians are writing that they made a historic mistake in not nurturing the Clinton peace offer, pro-Palestinian professors and students in America and Europe pretend that the only reason the occupation persists is because of Israeli obstinacy. This approach will never gain the Palestinians a state, and those who dabble in it are simply prolonging Palestinian misery. You are also hypocrites. How is it that Egypt imprisons the leading democracy advocate in the Arab world, after a phony trial, and not a single student group in America calls for divestiture from Egypt? (I'm not calling for it, but the silence is telling.) How is it that Syria occupies Lebanon for 25 years, chokes the life out of its democracy, and not a single student group calls for divestiture from Syria? How is it that Saudi Arabia denies its women the most basic human rights, and bans any other religion from being practiced publicly on its soil, and not a single student group calls for divestiture from Saudi Arabia? Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction � out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East � is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest. Memo to Israel's supporters: Just because there are anti-Semites who blame Israel for everything that is wrong does not mean that whatever Israel does is right, or in its self-interest, or just. The settlement policy Israel has been pursuing is going to lead to the demise of the Jewish state. No, settlements are not the reason for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but to think they do not exacerbate it, and are not locking Israel into a permanent occupation, is also dishonest. If the settlers get their way, Israel will de facto or de jure annex the West Bank and Gaza. And if current Palestinian birth rates continue, by around the year 2010 there will be more Palestinians than Jews living in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza combined. When that happens, the demand of the college anti-Israel movements will change. They won't bother anymore with divestiture. They will simply demand: "One Man, One Vote. Since Israel has de facto annexed the territories, and there is now just one political entity between Jordan and the Mediterranean, we want majority rule." If you think it is hard to defend Israel on campus today, imagine doing it in 2010, when the colonial settlers have so locked Israel into the territories it can rule them only by apartheid-like policies. This is not a call for unilateral Israeli withdrawal. This is a call for everyone who wants Israel to remain a Jewish state � and not become a binational state � to urge President Bush to renew the U.S. push for a two-state solution. If you think the Bush team is doing Israel a favor with its diplomacy of benign neglect, if you think the only campaign Jews need to be involved in today is with hypocrites on U.S. college campuses � and not with extremists in their own camp � you too are telling yourselves a very big and dangerous lie. ____________________________________________________________ Get 250 full-color business cards FREE right now! http://businesscards.lycos.com From jchaudhuri at mantraonline.com Sat Oct 19 06:09:43 2002 From: jchaudhuri at mantraonline.com (Jyotirmoy Chaudhuri) Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2002 06:09:43 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] FW: Fear drives tech market In-Reply-To: <200210190056.g9J0uYq18666@bbs.thing.net> Message-ID: Many of you would have already read it. For those who have not. Best, Jyoti ---------- From: Steve Cisler Reply-To: Steve Cisler Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 09:32:39 -0700 To: nettime Subject: Fear drives tech market I was riding in a van used to transport tourists between favorite destinations in Guatemala. The man sitting next to the driver was an American heading for the capital where he hoped to get residency papers for his young Cuban wife. The stretch of road was one where bandits (former soldiers and former rebels) targeted tourists or other vehicles whose drivers looked affluent. We talked about the dangers of life in Guatemala. However, hee was convinced that much of American life was driven by fear: of crime, disease, accidents, strangers, change, food, other countries. He cited the insurance industry, security firms, all sorts of legislation and regulations put in place to reduce the fear and feeling of insecurity. This was in 1997. I wonder what he thinks now. Five years later the whole country follows the news about the Washington area sniper(s), mosquitoes spreading West Nile virus to a new state every week, and weapons of mass destruction (not automobiles or tainted meat--as John Barlow noted) in countries thousands of kilometers away. Today's headline has a strong warning from the head of the CIA, saying that Al Qaeda has regrouped and the threat to die Heimat , er...homeland is as great as the summer of 2001. The San Jose Mercury news includes a personal technology section every wednesday. This week the consumer products writer tested GPS devices for kids. GPS makes use (free of charge) of a network of U.S. Defense satellites to give you longitude and latitude of the receiver to an accuracy withing 10 meters. There's some talk of Europe building its own GPS network, the Galileo Satellite system. These coordinates can be mapped onto road maps, satellite photos, and other spatial databases. for amusement geocaching web sites allow for electronic treasure hunts. GPS has been used by soldiers, by hikers who can find out how lost they really are, and now parents can track their kids. Wherify Wireless is a start-up in Silicon Valley (yes, there's still VC available for new firms; 1/10 of all venture capital is going into wireless firms). They will sell you a wrist device (cosmic purple or galactic blue) that will lock on the wrists of kids. It's meant for the 4-12 age group. You can locate the kid by using your special web page or by calling the Wherify command center using a toll-free number. The price is $399 plus a monthly subscription cost of $25 to $50 a month! It uses Sprint PCS to make the wireless connection. The low monthly price point allows 20 locates a month. The kid can alert the emergency 911 service by pressing 2 buttons on the face of the device. Parents can lock it electronically or unlock it for bathing and swimming. Mike Langberg tested it with mixed results. He concluded, "I love my 2 year old..but I'm not prepared to pay $400 up front for a location tracking device and a minimum of $300 a year for service...I'd be willing to spend $100 and $10 a month for service." A competing firm, Digital Angel, sells a locator for adults but has only sold 100 units, but it's not doing well financially. If these make headway, I can see schools being offered site licenses and deals for parents, much like some computers are being marketed. "If you care about your child's safety, don't miss out on this special deal..." The rest of the section has in depth articles about surveillance and the tradeoffs with this technology. One great anecdote: a driver was in a hit-and-run accident. His airbag went off and he fled the scene. The airbag had a GPS beacon that was triggered, and the police were given the location, and he was apprehended. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo at bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime at bbs.thing.net From announcements-request at sarai.net Sat Oct 19 09:55:46 2002 From: announcements-request at sarai.net (announcements-request at sarai.net) Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2002 06:25:46 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Announcements digest, Vol 1 #106 - 3 msgs Message-ID: <20021019042546.16398.51948.Mailman@mail.sarai.net> 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. Public Health and the City (PUKAR @ The Paperie) 2. Fwd: www.scholarsnet.info (ravi vasudevan) 3. Concert - "SECULAR TRADITIONS IN HINDUSTANI MUSIC" (Sagnik Chakravartty) --__--__-- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 11:58:28 -0400 To: Recipient List Suppressed:; From: "PUKAR @ The Paperie" Subject: [Announcements] Public Health and the City Dear Friends: PUKAR cordially invites its Associates, Advisors, and friends to a discussion on "Public Health and the City", with presentations by: NEHA MADHIWALA PhD Candidate, Mumbai University Dept of Sociology Senior Research Officer, CEHAT, Mumbai SVATI SHAH PhD Candidate, Columbia University Depts of Anthropology and Public Health, U.S.A. NEHA MADHIWALA has been pursuing her PhD at the Department of Sociology, University of Mumbai since June 2000. She has worked as a senior research officer in the Centre for Enquiry in Health and Allied Themes (CEHAT), Mumbai between 1996 and 2000, and from 2001 onwards. She will share her experiences of working on health issues in Mumbai. Urban health issues in India fall between the cracks of public health policy. There is no clear model into which one can situate the existing reality of India's cities. To unravel the complexity of urban health, one must understand the paradox created by a medical sector which exists in a highly developed market -- which mesmerises professionals and lay-persons alike, but whose dynamic excludes the most vulnerable, and makes it impossible for larger community-based public health solutions to emerge. SVATI SHAH is a PhD candidate in Columbia University's joint programme in Public Health and Anthropology. Her dissertation work is on migration, sex work and gender in the Mumbai construction industry. This paper will provide a brief description of preliminary findings on sex work among women in the construction industry in Navi Mumbai. Intersections with health issues on the ground will be discussed in the context of the growing NGO market for HIV/AIDS related interventions among poor migrant labourers. The field research will also be connected with issues of sexuality, agency and broad categories such as "feminization of migrancy" being adopted by international funders and the Breton Woods organizations. Date: SATURDAY 26 OCTOBER 2002 6.00 p.m. to 8.00 p.m. At: The BOMBAY PAPERIE Mezzanine Floor, Soonawalla Building 59, Bombay Samachar Marg Opposite the Stock Exchange Fort, Bombay 400001 R.S.V.P. Phone Shekhar Krishnan or Rahul Srivastava at 2077779 E-Mail About PUKAR @ The Paperie: This discussion, and future gatherings focused on discussing issues of common interest and concern to the PUKAR Associates, is part of a monthly programme organised by PUKAR for invited friends and guests at The Bombay Paperie, Fort. These gatherings are usually held on the third or fourth Saturday of every month at 6.00 p.m. PUKAR thanks the Manager of The Bombay Paperie, Neeta Premchand, for hosting PUKAR @ The Bombay Paperie. We look forward to your attendance and participation, and suggesting names of people and organisations to add to our mailing list. Regards, Rahul Srivastava, Shekhar Krishnan and Vyjayanthi Rao Coordinators _____ 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 --__--__-- Message: 2 Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2002 12:20:46 +0530 To: announcements at sarai.net From: ravi vasudevan Subject: [Announcements] Fwd: www.scholarsnet.info >South Asia Research Network for the Social Sciences and Humanities > >The South Asia Program of the Social Science Research Council, New York >is pleased to announce the creation of www.scholarsnet.info, a new website >dedicated to social science >and humanities research in South Asia. Scholarsnet.info is a research >network linking scholars, researchers, teachers, students and >practitioners whose primary area of interest is South Asia and South >Asian Studies. Scholarsnet.info provides information on research >centers, archives, libraries located throughout the region, and includes >updated listings on fellowship opportunities, journals, on-line >publications, workshops and conferences pertinent to South Asia. In >addition, scholarsnet.info will soon provide content pages for journals >published in South Asia. For more information, please visit the South >Asia Research Network for Social Sciences and Humanities at >http://www.scholarsnet.info. 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 --__--__-- Message: 3 Date: 18 Oct 2002 15:44:07 -0000 From: "Sagnik Chakravartty" Reply-To: "Sagnik Chakravartty" To: announcements at sarai.net Cc: arunimadb at yahoo.com Subject: [Announcements] Concert - "SECULAR TRADITIONS IN HINDUSTANI MUSIC" October 9, 2002 My dear friends, Let me very cordially invite you for a rare evening of MUSIC : �SECULAR TRADITIONS IN HINDUSTANI MUSIC�. based on poetry, on October 19 at 6 p.m., in the Conference Hall of our Academy. The Musical Programme will be presented by Dr. Subhendu Ghosh, with his group. This is a musical narrative of the history of Hindustani poetry. The programme features various poets in an historical order from 13th century to the present day. The idea of this musical journey is to highlight the fact that the poetry and music the people of India have loved over centuries uphold secularism and human values. The narrative includes Hazrat Amir Khusro, Kabir, Lalan Faqir (the legend of Bengali folk music), Nazeer Akbarabadi (the sufi poet who talked about realism), the tribal poets (narrating the life of the martyr Birsa Munda), Ramprasad Bismil (the author of Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna), Kazi Nazrul Islam (the revolutionary poet of Bengal), Faiz Ahmed Faiz (the legend of Urdu poetry from Lahore), Sahir Ludhianwi and the contemporary poet Gorakh Pandey (Bhojpuri). While each poet is introduced / discussed a representative poetry of the same poet is musically recited. Most of the music compositions are by Subhendu based on Hindustani & Carnatic Ragas where various musical forms like ghazal, dadra, bhajan, geet, qawali have been used. However, the folk songs are sung in the traditional tunes. Our Academy is just opposite Gate No. 2 of Siri Fort Auditorium. Do come, please! With Regards, AJEET COUR --__--__-- _______________________________________________ Announcements mailing list Announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements End of Announcements Digest From broadcaster at syhlleti.org Mon Oct 21 00:10:20 2002 From: broadcaster at syhlleti.org (broadcaster at syhlleti.org) Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 00:10:20 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) Message-ID: <1086.203.197.208.40.1035139220.squirrel@smtp.spectrum.in> A MOMENT OF SILENCE, BEFORE I START THIS POEM Before I start this poem, I'd like to ask you to join me In a moment of silence In honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last September 11th. I would also like to ask you To offer up a moment of silence For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, For the victims in both Afghanistan and the U.S. And if I could just add one more thing... A full day of silence For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of U.S.-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation. Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year U.S. embargo against the country. Before I begin this poem, Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country. Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin And the survivors went on as if alive. A year of silence for the millions of dead in Vietnam - a people, not a war - for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives' bones buried in it, their babies born of it. A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of a secret war ... ssssshhhhh.... Say nothing ... we don't want them to learn that they are dead. Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia, Whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped off our tongues. Before I begin this poem An hour of silence for El Salvador ... An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua ... Two days of silence for the Guatemaltecos ... None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years. 45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas 25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky. There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains. And for those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees in the south, the north, the east, and the west... 100 years of silence... For the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples from this half of right here, Whose land and lives were stolen, In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears. Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness ... So you want a moment of silence? And we are all left speechless Our tongues snatched from our mouths Our eyes stapled shut A moment of silence And the poets have all been laid to rest The drums disintegrating into dust. Before I begin this poem, You want a moment of silence You mourn now as if the world will never be the same And the rest of us hope to hell it won't be. Not like it always has been. Because this is not a 9/11 poem. This is a 9/10 poem, It is a 9/9 poem, A 9/8 poem, A 9/7 poem This is a 1492 poem. This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written. And if this is a 9/11 poem, then: This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971. This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977. This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York, 1971. This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992. This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks The 110 stories that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored. This is a poem for interrupting this program. And still you want a moment of silence for your dead? We could give you lifetimes of empty: The unmarked graves The lost languages The uprooted trees and histories The dead stares on the faces of nameless children Before I start this poem we could be silent forever Or just long enough to hunger, For the dust to bury us And you would still ask us For more of our silence. If you want a moment of silence Then stop the oil pumps Turn off the engines and the televisions Sink the cruise ships Crash the stock markets Unplug the marquee lights, Delete the instant messages, Derail the trains, the light rail transit. If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window of Taco Bell, And pay the workers for wages lost. Tear down the liquor stores, The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the Penthouses and the Playboys. If you want a moment of silence, Then take it On Super Bowl Sunday, The Fourth of July During Dayton's 13 hour sale Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful people have gathered. You want a moment of silence Then take it NOW, Before this poem begins. Here, in the echo of my voice, In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand, In the space between bodies in embrace, Here is your silence. Take it. But take it all...Don't cut in line. Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime. But we, Tonight we will keep right on singing...For our dead. EMMANUEL ORTIZ, 11 Sep 2002. From mi320 at nyu.edu Mon Oct 21 23:06:51 2002 From: mi320 at nyu.edu (Maham Iftikhar) Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 13:36:51 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Nandi's Article on Violence in Gujarat Message-ID: <786aaf78333d.78333d786aaf@homemail.nyu.edu> Hey, Could anyone email me Ashish Nandi's article on Violence in Gujarat please? Thanks, Maham **************************************************** "The road is only as smooth as the path you carve out" **************************************************** Maham Iftikhar 251 Bergen Street, Apt# 3, Brooklyn, New York, NY 11217 Phone: (917) 514-0633 E-mail: mi320 at nyu.edu From jchaudhuri at mantraonline.com Tue Oct 22 21:43:21 2002 From: jchaudhuri at mantraonline.com (Jyotirmoy Chaudhuri) Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 21:43:21 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Finally, they have grown up. Message-ID: Yes, finally the Bengalis have grown up. Their dormant fascism finds it perfect expression. Jyoti http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/oct/22bengal.htm West Bengal plans I-cards for residents M Chhaya in Kolkata The West Bengal government has decided to issue identity cards to all its residents, around 80 million, in an attempt to stall illegal migration from neighbouring Bangladesh. Earlier, the government had plans to issue photo I-cards only to the residents of 10 districts that border Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. According to an official in the state home ministry, the department is 'coordinating with the central government for logistical and financial support for the project', which is expected to start by the end of this year. The official said the government decided to issue I-cards to all residents as it 'realised that the immigrants were not restricting themselves to specific districts'. Apart from the census department, the state's health ministry will also be included in the project as it maintains birth and death records. It was, however, not clear if the state's endeavour will conflict with a similar central government plan that was announced by Deputy Prime Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani in Bhubaneswa last month. The I-cards mooted by the state will bear the name, age, address, educational qualification, and caste of a bona fide resident. The card could be used to avail government benefits. The Planning Commission has suggested a household survey, apart from referring to the census figures, to draw up a list of bona fide residents. West Bengal shares a 4,000km border with Bangladesh. Nearly 3,500 Indian villagers reside in the no man's land or have their farmlands there. The process of erecting a wire fence along the border has kicked up a row with many villagers complaining of problems in accessing their homes, schools and farms. The villages also allege harassment at the hands of border guards. Most of these disputed villages are in Nadia, Murshidabad, Malda, and Cooch Behar districts. From aiindex at mnet.fr Wed Oct 23 05:29:53 2002 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 00:59:53 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Redress Alienation in Gujarat Now (Farah Naqvi) Message-ID: The Times of India WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2002 EDITORIAL LEADER ARTICLE http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?artid=25993353 Compromised Citizenship Redress Alienation in Gujarat Now FARAH NAQVI Now that the debris in Gujarat has temporarily settled (or has it?), and cameras turned away from scenes of violence (at the moment they're trained on the triumphant glow of Indian democracy in Kashmir), let us finally count the dead. In terms of lives lost, we know estimates range from 2,000 to 3,000. But what about the living dead? The scores of Gujarati Muslims who exist in the twilight zone of silence, painfully adjusting themselves to life in no-man's land for they are no longer treated as equal citizens of India. What rights of citizenship the burnt and looted Gujarati Muslim had have finally been stripped. When my house is razed, children killed and women raped, I naturally head to the police station. I seek justice through the legal system. I may have little faith in the system to deliver, but I do it still. Because that is my right. That is the law. The idea of legal recourse and entitlement of citizenship is powerful enough to override the reality of tedious legal processes, and low conviction rates. In troubled times we invoke our citizenship rights; we get solace from it. But in Gujarat the natural entitlement of citizenship is over. In its place has arrived alienation, a word used often in decades past to describe the mood in Kashmir. Kashmiri Muslims were alienated from the Indian nation, we were told. We needed to bring them back. So today, as we bask in the democratic revival in Kashmir, let us worry for Gujarat. For, in Gujarat, alienation has taken root. It's been coming for a while. Not just in Gujarat, but elsewhere too. The 140 million Muslims of India, no less than 12 per cent of the population, have never had more than 5 per cent of representation in state assemblies or Parliament. In the services (IAS, IPS and IFS) Muslims range from under 3 per cent to 3.5 per cent. In the private sector, the number of Muslims in executive posts ranges from zero to perhaps 5 per cent. More than half the urban Muslim population lives below the poverty line. The facts are endless, the intent clear, the sum total spells alienation. And now, there's Gujarat. I've been back to Gujarat several times in these past seven months as part of a women's fact-finding team, as an activist, as a concerned citizen. In district after district, Muslims are living lives of humiliation. It's called samjhauta, compromise; allowed back into their towns and villages on condition that they will not file police complaints, not name those who committed violence against them. Step out of line and you will be hounded out. A father in Anand district looks at me, eyes pools of deadened pain, and describes the rape of his daughter. He saw them but there is no police case. No names. No justice. I have to live here, he says. But he no longer has any citizenship rights. In another village in Dahod district, a group of women huddle together in the glow of a solitary kerosene lamp, looking suspiciously at the bindi on my forehead, and say nothing happened here. A fellow activist encourages them, "You can tell her, she's Muslim?". They look at me with new eyes, and slowly words start tumbling out. How they were raped, how they ran -- it is an avalanche, there are so many, I lose count. They know the rapists. But they are not filing any cases. Like many others in Gujarat, this too is a compromise village. I am pained that they trust me not because I am human, but because I have a Muslim name. That too is alienation. In the few villages where Muslims have dared to seek legal redress, their economic survival stands threatened -- their businesses boycotted, their services shunned. Still they hang in there teetering between survival of the flesh and survival of the spirit. That's alienation. Meanwhile the sangh parivar thunders on about minority appeasement. Appeasement. How did we allow it to become such a dirty word? I looked it up in my dictionary. Among other things, it also means propitiation to admit a fault and, by trying to make amends, to allay hostile feelings. Do it, for the sake of India. Make amends to the Muslims of Gujarat before their alienation turns into another bleeding Kashmir-like wound. Take away the Haj subsidy if need be, but give them back their citizenship. But then that's the last thing that elements of the sangh parivar want. They want open wounds. So Narendra Modi is allowed to ride atop a gaurav rath. Hurl invectives at miyan Musharraf, keep alive the Pakistani threat. It should surprise no one that people like Bal Thackeray are against troop withdrawal from the border. The enemy must be kept alive inside and outside. For the Gujarati Muslim, it will mean a life of terror and the tag of a terrorist. Small mercy that when push comes to shove, he will not be allowed to really die. Because there is truly nothing more useless than a dead enemy. So what if it also means killing the idea of India. (The author is a freelance writer and activist) From rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com Wed Oct 23 10:18:59 2002 From: rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 21:48:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Article from yesterday's Khaleej Times, Dubai (begging, street vendors etc) Message-ID: <20021023044900.12998.qmail@web41103.mail.yahoo.com> POLICE TO KEEP STRICT VIGIL ON BEGGARS DURING RAMADAN DUBAI: Police officials will keep a strict vigil on beggars, whose numbers are expected to increase during the holy month of Ramadan. "With Ramadan round the corner, the number of beggars will be on the rise and we are making preparations to curb violations of rules which prohibit begging," Brigadier Sharafudeen Hussein, Assisant Commander of Dubai Police for Criminal Investigation Affairs, said. According to him continuous raids, particularly on roaming vendors, beggars and infiltrators will help reduce the crime rate that has averaged between 4 and 5 per cent during the last nine months. During the period, the total number of violators was 14,686, including 983 labour cases varying between absconding and illegal residence. The violators comprised 305 Pakistanis, 344 Indians, 295 Bangladeshis and 39 of other nationalities. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ From yazadjal at vsnl.net Wed Oct 23 12:48:35 2002 From: yazadjal at vsnl.net (yazadjal at vsnl.net) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 00:18:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Hot Coffee! by Brad Edmonds Message-ID: <932462067.1035357515234.JavaMail.root@localhost> *Please note, the sender's email address has not been verified. You have received the following link from yazadjal at vsnl.net ******************** If you are having trouble with any of the links in this message, or if the URL's are not appearing as links, please follow the instructions at the bottom of this email. 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URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021023/96ca5f74/attachment.html From bea at nungu.com Wed Oct 23 20:47:19 2002 From: bea at nungu.com (:bea::) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 08:17:19 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] transnational tele-talk In-Reply-To: <20021023044328.29634.44948.Mailman@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: any comments? ::::::::::::::::::::::: imo = indian male operator anmc = american [nebraska] male client [imo] Hello, can I speak to Kurstel Kursetel [anmc] That¹s nowhere near close to my name but I guess that¹s close enough, I guess. What¹s up [imo] How¹re you doing today? [anmc]Fucking shitty .... [imo] Additionally we can offer you a two month subscription to any three of your favourite magazines. You can choose from a list that includes the best-selling magazines. We have er eight 500 magazines. [anmc] I can just about guarantee that they don¹t have the magazines I want. You got anything with dirt bikes or four wheelersŠ [imo] Yes,uh, we have on four wheelers. [anmc] Do you, really. Not four, not urh four wheeler off-road cuz that¹s a, that¹s a truck magazine. [imo] Uh, truck magazine, we got uh, I got Car and Driver, Automobile, Four Wheeler, Hot Road, Hot Road BikeŠwhat that do. do you like something on jeep? Total jeep experience. Monster Trend, Motorcycling Cruiser. [anmc] No, I like uh Four Wheel, 8GV action, 8GV sport, I like motorcross actionŠI like dirt rider and I like motor cross action [imo] Alright. Let me search for youŠI got some MX Racer, [anmc] Arrrhhhh, that¹s pretty cool. [imo] Alright. And your next two options would be? Do you like something on uh sports truck, sports truck? [anmc] No, not really. [imo] How about car racing, stop car racing? [anmc] No. do you have er oh man [imo] Would you like some thing on sport [anmc] No no im not not really a sports manŠ you should see my garage you should see what im into I¹ve got three bikes, two four wheelers, two four wheelers, [imo] Oh? [anmc] Two dirt bikes and I used to have three three wheelers and a couple other dirt bikes as well but I sold them so [imo] Right so how about sending you something on four wheelers [anmc] Sure [imo] AlrightAnd your third option would be. Sir do you use a dirt bike, do you take part in races [anmc] Um hum [imo] Alright alright ok we¹ll send you four wheelers Š..and your third option would be ? [anmc] Uurrr Give me some more options [imo] How do you like hot road bike Thats alright [imo] Ok please let me check it out for you.. do you want kit car [anmc] Yeah that sounds like a cool one [imo] Yeah [anmc] I read that one once before its pretty wild [imo] Alright alright the three options are mxracer fourwheeler and kit car right? [anmc] Sure [imo] Alright :::::::::::::::::::::::: imo = indian male operator uafc = unspecified american female client [imo] in general how often would be more likely to shop at a store offering some kind of rewards programm. Please use a scale from 1-5 where one means not all likely and five means extremely likely [uafc] 5 [imo] if the programm included multiple stores as opposed to only one store woud you be more likely to participate less likely to participate or wont it it make a difference to you. [uafc] Probably more likely [imo] Which type of rewards would you be most interested in, instant rewards such as discount coupons that can give rise towards each purchase or rewards tha accumulate over time and can be redeemed for prizes and merhcandise. [uafc] Um over time [imo] Ok now just a few quick questions for statistical purposes only. Do you have access to the internet at home at work or at both [uafc] Yes at home and work [imo] That¹s both at home and at work [uafc] Yes [imo] On an avergae how frequently would you say you use the internet to make purchases more than once a week, once everyone or two weeks, once a month, once every two or three months, two to three times a year, once a year , or never [uafc] Mmm bout two of three times a year [imo] Bout two of three times [uafc] Yes [imo] Per year [uafc] Per year [imo] Ok im going to read you a few statement about your shopping habits for each statement please tell to what you extent you agree or disagree. Please use a scale from 1-5 where one means you strongly disagree and five means you strongly agree. I almost always go to the same store to do my grocery shopping [uafc] I agree, strongly agree [imo] When It comes errr, strongly agree. [uafc] Yes [imo] Ok when it comes to specific products like coffee orange juice or icecream once I find a brand I like I tend to stick with it even if there is something else on sale [uafc] Yes [imo] Would that be a five [uafc] Five yes [imo] Ok. I make an effort even when a connection is less convenient to book air travel with an airline that has a frequent flyer program that I belong to. [uafc] Five [imo] Five that would be strongly agree [uafc] Mmm [imo] Ok the following categories contain your age. Please stop me when I reach the correct range. Between 18 ­ 24, 25 to 29 [uafc] Stop stop stop stop 18 ­ 24 [imo] What was the highest level of education you completed, less than high school graduated high school some college, graduated college, graduated proffessional school . [uafc] Im still in college [imo] So I can take that graduated high school or should I take that as some college? [uafc] Some college. [imo] What is your employment status, employed full tim,e employed part time , or not currrently employed outside the home. [uafc] Part time [imo]Employed part time....And the last questionŠplease stop me when I reach the range of your family¹s total annual income. Less than 35,000, 35,00 to less than 50,000 dollars, 50,000 to less than 75,000 dollars, [uafc] Stop there. [imo] Stop there? 50,000 to 75,000 dollars? [uafc] Yes. [imo] And finally, may I please have your name in case my supervisor wishes to verify that I have conducted this interview with you today? [uafc] You what? [imo] Um. Can I please have your name in case my supervisor wishes to verify that I have conducted this interview with you today? [uafc] jane doe. [imo] jane doe? [uafc] Yes. [imo] That¹ll be jane doe. [uafc] Yes. [imo] Hang on, pleaseŠWe¹ve reached the end of the survey. Thank you very much for your time and coorperation. You have a great day, ma¹am. From safar2100 at hotmail.com Thu Oct 24 20:49:28 2002 From: safar2100 at hotmail.com (safar2100 at hotmail.com) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 08:19:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] The Impossible War by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. Message-ID: <930841364.1035472768754.JavaMail.root@localhost> *Please note, the sender's email address has not been verified. You have received the following link from safar2100 at hotmail.com ******************** If you are having trouble with any of the links in this message, or if the URL's are not appearing as links, please follow the instructions at the bottom of this email. Title: The Impossible War by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. Copy and paste the following into your Web browser to access the sent link: http://www.emailthis.clickability.com/et/emailThis?clickMap=viewThis&etMailToID=904194157&pt=Y Copy and paste the following into your Web browser to SAVE THIS link: http://www.savethis.clickability.com/st/saveThisPopupApp?clickMap=saveFromET&partnerID=3009&etMailToID=904194157&pt=Y Copy and paste the following into your Web browser to forward this link: http://www.emailthis.clickability.com/et/emailThis?clickMap=forward&etMailToID=904194157&partnerID=3009&pt=Y ******************** Email pages from any Web site you visit - add the EMAIL THIS button to your browser, copy and paste the following into your Web browser: http://www.emailthis.clickability.com/et/emailThis?clickMap=browserButtons&pt=Y" ********************* Instructions: ----------------------------------------- If your e-mail program doesn't recognize Web addresses: 1. With your mouse, highlight the Web Address above. Be sure to highlight the entire Web address, even if it spans more than one line in your email. 2. Select Copy from the Edit menu at the top of your screen. 3. Launch your Web browser. 4. Paste the address into your Web browser by selecting Paste from the Edit menu. 5. Click Go or press Enter or Return on your keyboard. ******************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021024/588898f1/attachment.html From aiindex at mnet.fr Fri Oct 25 06:00:56 2002 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 01:30:56 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Google Excludes Controversial Sites Message-ID: [Google continues to list the umpteen sites of the Hindu Right; Indian search engines of course dont seem to have any policy on hate speech and wont even think of excluding the nickerwalas.... The below news item might interest some on the sarai list. xxx Harsh] o o o The New York Times October 24, 2002   Google Excludes Controversial Sites Declan McCullagh, Staff Writer, News.com Google, the world's most popular search engine, has quietly deleted more than 100 controversial sites from some search result listings. Absent from Google's French and German listings are Web sites that are anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi or related to white supremacy, according to a new report from Harvard University's Berkman Center. Also banned is Jesus-is-lord.com, a fundamentalist Christian site that is adamantly opposed to abortion. Google confirmed on Wednesday that the sites had been removed from listings available at Google.fr and Google.de. The removed sites continue to appear in listings on the main Google.com site. The Harvard report, prepared by law student Ben Edelman and assistant professor Jonathan Zittrain, and scheduled to be released Thursday, is the result of automated testing of Google's massive 2.5 billion-page index and a comparison of the results returned by different foreign-language versions. The duo found 113 excluded sites, most with racial overtones. Advertisement "To avoid legal liability, we remove sites from Google.de search results pages that may conflict with German law," said Google spokesman Nate Tyler. He indicated that each site that was delisted came after a specific complaint from a foreign government. German law considers the publication of Holocaust denials and similar material as an incitement of racial and ethnic hatred, and therefore illegal. In the past, Germany has ordered Internet providers to block access to U.S. Web sites that post revisionist literature. France has similar laws that allowed a students' antiracism group to successfully sue Yahoo in a Paris court for allowing Third Reich memorabilia and Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" to be sold on the company's auction sites. In November 2001, a U.S. judge ruled that the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech protects Yahoo from liability. Google's battles The Harvard report comes as Google is becoming increasingly embroiled in international political disputes over copyright and censorship. China blocked access to Google last month. Google was criticized in March for bowing to a demand from the Church of Scientology to delete critical sites from its index. In a response that won praise, Google replied by pledging to report future legal threats to the ChillingEffects.org site run by law school clinics. As Google has become the way more and more people find information on the Internet, it has also become an increasingly visible target for copyright complaints about cached information and allegedly infringing links. ChillingEffect.org's Google section lists 16 requests or legal threats the company has received in the past three months. One Google competitor and critic even suggested that the wildly popular search engine be transformed into a government-controlled "public utility." Edelman, who created the program that tested URLs against Google's index, said he was investigating a tip about Google's German-language version. "One concern that I've had for some time vis-a-vis filtering is that filtering is almost always secretive," Edelman said. "In the (library filtering) case, that meant you can't look at the list of blocked sites. In the Chinese government case, you can't see what sites are being blocked." Edelman, who is a first-year law student, testified as an expert witness for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in a court challenge to a law requiring libraries to install filtering software if they accept federal funds. He is also a plaintiff in a second lawsuit filed in June to eviscerate key portions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Google's response Google refused to reply to a list of questions that CNET News.com sent via e-mail, including which sites have been delisted, how many sites have been delisted, what standards are used, and what other Google-operated sites have less-than-complete listings. In an e-mail response, Google's Tyler said: "As a matter of company policy we do not provide specific details about why or when we removed any one particular site from our index. We occasionally receive notices from partners, users, government agencies and the like about sites in our index. We carefully consider any credible complaint on a case-by-case basis and take necessary action when needed. This is not pre-emptive--we only react to requests that come to us...to avoid legal liability, we remove sites from Google search results pages that may conflict with local laws." Tyler said an internal team involving lawyers, management and engineers makes the final decision on what to remove. "At Google we take these types of decisions very seriously," he said. "The objective is to limit legal exposure while continuing to deliver high quality search results that enable our users to find the information they need quickly and easily." Tyler pointed to Google's terms of service agreement, which says Google will "consider on a case-by-case basis requests" to remove links from its index. A moving target Because Google has to keep track of a constantly moving target--new sites arguably illegal under French or German law appear every day--the search engine is encountering the same problems of overinclusiveness that traditional filtering software has experienced. According to the Harvard report, some sites that Google does not list include 1488.com, a "Chinese legal consultation network," and 14words.com, a discount Web-hosting service and some conservative, anti-abortion religious sites. Those sites do not appear to violate either German or French laws. Banned from Google.de and Google.fr listings is Stormfront.org, one of the Internet's most popular "white pride" sites. Stormfront features discussion areas, a library of white nationalist articles and essays by David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader. "We've been dealing with this for quite a few years," said Don Black, who runs the site. "The German police agencies seem obsessed with Stormfront even though we're not focused on any German language material." Black, who learned a few months ago that Google.de delisted Stormfront, says he doesn't hold it against the Mountain View, Calif.-based company. "Google is trying to conform to their outrageous laws," Black said. "So there's really nothing we can do about it. It's really a French and German issue rather than a Google issue." The First Amendment Because Google is a company and not a government agency, it has the right in general to delete listings from its service or alter the way they appear. (On Tuesday, however, CNET News.com reported that an Oklahoma advertising company has sued Google over its position in search results.) "Google may not only have the legal right to (delete listings), they may have the legal obligation to do it," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's technology and liberty program, and a co-founder of the Global Internet Liberty Campaign. "Over the long term, this will become a significant issue on the Net," Steinhardt said. "There's a wide variety of laws around the world prohibiting different forms of speech. You can imagine what the Chinese government prohibits versus what the French government prohibits versus what the U.S. government prohibits." Edelman, of Harvard's Berkman Center, suggests that Google find a way to alert users that information is missing from their search results. "If Google is prohibited from linking to Stormfront, they could include a listing but no link," Edelman said. "And if they can't even include a listing for Stormfront, they could at least report the fact that they've hidden results from the user. The core idea here is that there's no need to be secretive." From geert at xs4all.nl Thu Oct 24 03:29:21 2002 From: geert at xs4all.nl (geert lovink) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 07:59:21 +1000 Subject: [Reader-list] World Social Forum India, Hyderabad, January 2-7, 2003 Message-ID: <036501c27ae6$bcaebc30$2caf9bca@geert> (from the attac newsletter) World Social Forum India By WSF India Secretariat We take great pleasure in inviting you and your organisations to participate in the Asian Social Forum that is being held in Hyderabad from 2nd - 7th January, 2003. As you might be aware, the Asian Social Forum is a follow up of the two successful World Social Forum events organised in Porto Alegre and the decision to have regional and thematic events. The Asian Social Forum (ASF), being organised by WSF India, will be held in the city of Hyderabad, in the Southern Indian State of Andhra Pradesh between January 2nd to 7th, 2003. It is an open forum: the only criteria is that the participants be opposed to imperialist globalisation as well as religious sectarian violence, and have a commitment to democratic values, plurality and peace. We hope that the ASF will provide an inspiring space where movements/ organizations/ groups/individuals / will come in from all over India and Asia to carry the message of the World Social Forum. We expect about 7000 delegates to participate in the ASF, out of which about 1000 would be from outside India. Organisations both in India and Asia and also the rest of the world, are invited to participate by organising conferences, seminars and workshops broadly falling under the themes of the ASF. Main Themes of the ASF are the following: * Peace and Security * Debt, Development and Trade * Nation State, Democracy and Exclusions * Ecology, Culture and Knowledge * Social Infrastructure, Planning and Cooperation * Alternatives and Peoples Movements. The events that are envisaged over a period of 6 days, from 2nd to 7th January are: * 2 public/ plenary sessions, i.e. opening session on 2nd afternoon/evening and closing session on 7th morning. * 2 conferences daily (total 6-8) * 25 parallel seminars daily (total 50-100) * Up to 50 workshops daily (total 100-200) * Testimonials, and open "spaces" for mass movements * A Youth Camp * Cultural Events * Film Festival The Opening and Closing plenary session will be open to the public and will be organized on 2nd (afternoon-evening) and 7th (morning) respectively. We hope that you and your organisation will participate in the Asian Social Forum event. More details of the event including organising seminars and workshops, registration details, etc., cab be found in the website www.wsfindia.org. Please write to us for any further details that you may require. Those who would like to be kept informed about the Asian Social Forum event can do so by going to the website and registering for the Asia Social Forum newsletter or giving a mail to wsfindia at vsnl.net Please circulate this mail to other organisations or individuals that may be interested in the Asian Social Forum event in Hyderabad. Out apologies for such a late invitation. Thanking you The tentative decision of the International Committee of the WSF to hold the WSF in India in 2004 was discussed. The meeting decided to hold an India WSF conference in December 2002 which could also be organised as an Asia regional event or an Afro-Asian event after consulting Asian and international organisations - of which a meeting should be held in India within a month. After this it was hoped that the decision about the WSF 2004 would be taken and finalized by the International Committee. The India / Asia meeting would also be a dress rehearsal for the world event. A draft statement on the WSF process was presented by Meena Menon and one on the organizational structure by Prabir Purkayastha. These were discussed and passed with changes. The drafts are to be accordingly changed and circulated to all the participants. The main points that emerged in the discussion on the process and organizational structure were as follows: a) The question of participation of political parties in the process is still under discussion in the world forum, so for the moment there will be no representatives of such entities on any bodies of World Social Forum India. b) The event should have the character of an open event, a space, - a mood of sharing experience and of celebrating and dreaming together, while keeping the political focus on struggle against globalisation (imperialism) and the neo-liberal agenda of the world elite. The event should have an Indian character and ethos, financed largely with resources raised within the country. c) The WSF India awareness-building process is as important as the December 2002 event, if not more so, and the stress should be on the building of mass awareness at district, state and zonal levels through a wide range of activities including (but not only) conferences to bring movements and civil organizations together on this open space of the WSF. d) Although it will take time for the process to become truly representative involving all the movements and civil organizations in the country we should continue with the formation of a comprehensive Working Committee and keep expanding its scope as we go on, including more people as the local state level processes go forward. e) All the major networks and organizations, which have agreed and will agree to participate in the process, should see to it that their organizations at state and district level are informed of the decision. f) Youth is an important segment and special attention should be paid to this, as also children. g) The Working Committee should mainly be composed of people who represent organizations and national networks and they should bring their organizations into the process. At the same time, it should be kept in mind that the process should be a mosaic of 'small and big' and should be truly democratic and representative in time. In this, it was agreed that three fourths of the committee shall be from organizations with regional/national networks from which individuals who have the authority and the time should be invited to join the committee; one fourth should be from smaller organisations from various fields and individuals from academic, creative and other fields, ideally those who have an outreach capacity and can give time to the WSF process. Gender balance should be maintained by including a substantial number of women. h) There should not be a strict limitation on the numbers in the India Working Committee. At present we will take on only about 20-25 and will leave the rest for later inclusion. i) The meetings of the Working Committee will be completely transparent, and anyone can attend the meetings. However, the decision-making powers will be restricted to the members of the Committee. The following list was drawn up, of networks and organizations and some individuals which / who are agreeable to take the responsibility of participating in the leadership of the WSF India process, as per the Bhopal Document : All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) - All India Federation of Trade Union (AIFTU) - All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) - All India Asian Kisan Sangharsh Samittee (AIAKSS) - All India Central Council for Trade Unions (AICCTU) - All India Peoples Science Network (AIPSN) - All India Progressive Women's Association (AIPSW) - All India Students Association (AISA) - All India University Teachers Network - Alliance for a Responsible and Plural United World (Asia Pacific) - Asian Youth Network - Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti - Centre for Indian Trade Union (CITU) - Federation of Medical Rrepresentatives of India (FMRI) - Focus on the Global South India Program - India People's Campaign against WTO - Inquilabi Youth Forum - Jan Swasthya Abhyan - National Alliance for Peoples' Movement (NAPM) - National Campaign Committee for People's Right to Information - National Campaign Committee for Rural Workers - National Campaign for Tribal Self Rule - National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights - National Centre for Labour - National Dalit Forum - National Dalit Women's Federation - Network for Mines, Minerals and People - Rashtriya Yuva Sanghatana - Sarva Seva Sangh - South India Forum for Peace and Justice - Vasudeva Kutumbakkam The interim secretariat will contact all the above organisations and ask them to confirm their participation in the WSF India Process. Based on the above, a preliminary WSF India Working Committee was constituted consisting of representatives of the following all-India networks and organizations and some individuals. The names are as given below: Amarjeet Kaur - P. K. Murthy - Amit Sengupta - Prabir Purkayastha - Aruna Roy/Neelabh Mishra - Ruth Manorama - Brinda Karat/ Subhashini Ali - Sanjay M.G. - Chakrapani Ghanta - Siddhartha - Charles Wesley Meesa - Srilata Swaminathan - David Selvaraj - Subhash Lomte - Dinesh Abrol / Sridip Bhattacharya - Usha Pandit / Sawai Singh - Jai Sen - Vasavi / Janu - Martin Makwan / Paul Divakar - Vijay Pratap - Meena Menon - Vinod Raina/ T Sunderaman - N. P. Samy - W. Varadarajan A list of people who could be taken in the WSF India Advisory Committee was read and it was decided that the newly constituted India Working Committee would finalise the list based on suggestions of more names submitted in writing from the other participants in the National Consultation. A WSF India International Subcommittee was constituted to look into the possibilities of an Asian regional event, to get in touch with organisations outside the country, and to handle the international affairs of WSF India. The members of this committee are as follows: Ajit Jha,, Jai Sen, Minar Pimple, Siddhartha, Srilatha Swaminathan. In a discussion on the possible venues for the India/regional event, in December 2002, it was noted that the only place, which was making a concrete offer was Hyderabad. It was decided to check out the following as possible venues besides Hyderabad: Kolkata, Bhopal, Pune, Mumbai. The decision should be taken by the Working Committee within a month. Contact for this article. WSF-India Secretariat 204 Elite House 36, Community Centre Zamrudpur, G.K.-I New Delhi-110048 Tel : 011-6221870 Email : wsfindia at vsnl.net Url : www.wsfindia.org From kmblehm at softhome.net Thu Oct 24 16:37:39 2002 From: kmblehm at softhome.net (kmblehm) Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 16:37:39 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] Have a new Allhallowmas Message-ID: <200210241107.QAA0000010081@delhi1.mtnl.net.in> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021024/b21de552/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: audio/x-wav Size: 124108 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021024/b21de552/attachment.wav -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/octet-stream Size: 8386 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021024/b21de552/attachment.obj From reyhanchaudhuri at eth.net Sat Oct 26 00:52:04 2002 From: reyhanchaudhuri at eth.net (Dr. Reyhan Chaudhuri) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 2002 00:52:04 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re:Harsh Kapoor /Redress Alienation in Gujarat Now (Farah Naqvi) References: Message-ID: <002801c27c5b$cdd435a0$f79a09ca@P> IMPLOSION Gujarat burnt but were refugees really retrieved ? Can State Presiders & prime poets be believed As salvage offers and camp closures are indefinitely spurned. Rather than raise a stink One can only think , of one's own skin and ofcourse the kin. Not to forget above all the darling children. Forget the future , world, peace and harmony. Fobbing the mob could be the best alimony. A well wisher seriously suggested: Don't wear the name tag on way to work, keep it in the bag to say the least. The driver maybe chauffeur tested and your route may well be upper crusted But this is India my dear friend you never know who turns beast instead The mob have no faces you know they leave no trace as they go The number which the individual replaces The sane timbre unrest displaces. Is swift and unrelenting Even at the judicial hustings. All this may sound repetitive So very spitty & sordid As anyway the bullish, you see lord it And fiends fiercely fjord it Prayers are namby pamby Literacy is exclusive and comely The arts are easily distorted Talk and therapy could be contorted Even Music can be candied So that leaves us just With heightened feelings Deadened , distanced dealings? When some serious spirited action and judicial phenomenal traction Could make unmistakable reparation; Must we mask and shade the shame? Dismiss the ravage & rape; Encumber grievances, enflame the blame. Must we always incinerate To mute the implosion? Yours worriedly, R.Chaudhuri ----- Original Message ----- From: "Harsh Kapoor" To: Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 5:29 AM Subject: [Reader-list] Redress Alienation in Gujarat Now (Farah Naqvi) > The Times of India > WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2002 > EDITORIAL > LEADER ARTICLE > http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?artid=25993353 > > Compromised Citizenship > Redress Alienation in Gujarat Now > > FARAH NAQVI > > Now that the debris in Gujarat has temporarily settled (or has it?), > and cameras turned away from scenes of violence (at the moment > they're trained on the triumphant glow of Indian democracy in > Kashmir), let us finally count the dead. In terms of lives lost, we > know estimates range from 2,000 to 3,000. But what about the living > dead? The scores of Gujarati Muslims who exist in the twilight zone > of silence, painfully adjusting themselves to life in no-man's land > for they are no longer treated as equal citizens of India. > What rights of citizenship the burnt and looted Gujarati Muslim had > have finally been stripped. When my house is razed, children killed > and women raped, I naturally head to the police station. I seek > justice through the legal system. I may have little faith in the > system to deliver, but I do it still. Because that is my right. That > is the law. The idea of legal recourse and entitlement of citizenship > is powerful enough to override the reality of tedious legal > processes, and low conviction rates. > In troubled times we invoke our citizenship rights; we get solace > from it. But in Gujarat the natural entitlement of citizenship is > over. In its place has arrived alienation, a word used often in > decades past to describe the mood in Kashmir. Kashmiri Muslims were > alienated from the Indian nation, we were told. We needed to bring > them back. > So today, as we bask in the democratic revival in Kashmir, let us > worry for Gujarat. For, in Gujarat, alienation has taken root. It's > been coming for a while. Not just in Gujarat, but elsewhere too. The > 140 million Muslims of India, no less than 12 per cent of the > population, have never had more than 5 per cent of representation in > state assemblies or Parliament. > In the services (IAS, IPS and IFS) Muslims range from under 3 per > cent to 3.5 per cent. In the private sector, the number of Muslims in > executive posts ranges from zero to perhaps 5 per cent. More than > half the urban Muslim population lives below the poverty line. > The facts are endless, the intent clear, the sum total spells > alienation. And now, there's Gujarat. I've been back to Gujarat > several times in these past seven months as part of a women's > fact-finding team, as an activist, as a concerned citizen. In > district after district, Muslims are living lives of humiliation. > It's called samjhauta, compromise; allowed back into their towns and > villages on condition that they will not file police complaints, not > name those who committed violence against them. Step out of line and > you will be hounded out. > A father in Anand district looks at me, eyes pools of deadened pain, > and describes the rape of his daughter. He saw them but there is no > police case. No names. No justice. I have to live here, he says. But > he no longer has any citizenship rights. > In another village in Dahod district, a group of women huddle > together in the glow of a solitary kerosene lamp, looking > suspiciously at the bindi on my forehead, and say nothing happened > here. A fellow activist encourages them, "You can tell her, she's > Muslim?". They look at me with new eyes, and slowly words start > tumbling out. How they were raped, how they ran -- it is an > avalanche, there are so many, I lose count. They know the rapists. > But they are not filing any cases. Like many others in Gujarat, this > too is a compromise village. > I am pained that they trust me not because I am human, but because I > have a Muslim name. That too is alienation. In the few villages where > Muslims have dared to seek legal redress, their economic survival > stands threatened -- their businesses boycotted, their services > shunned. Still they hang in there teetering between survival of the > flesh and survival of the spirit. That's alienation. > Meanwhile the sangh parivar thunders on about minority appeasement. > Appeasement. How did we allow it to become such a dirty word? I > looked it up in my dictionary. Among other things, it also means > propitiation to admit a fault and, by trying to make amends, to allay > hostile feelings. Do it, for the sake of India. Make amends to the > Muslims of Gujarat before their alienation turns into another > bleeding Kashmir-like wound. > Take away the Haj subsidy if need be, but give them back their > citizenship. But then that's the last thing that elements of the > sangh parivar want. They want open wounds. So Narendra Modi is > allowed to ride atop a gaurav rath. Hurl invectives at miyan > Musharraf, keep alive the Pakistani threat. It should surprise no one > that people like Bal Thackeray are against troop withdrawal from the > border. The enemy must be kept alive inside and outside. > For the Gujarati Muslim, it will mean a life of terror and the tag of > a terrorist. Small mercy that when push comes to shove, he will not > be allowed to really die. Because there is truly nothing more useless > than a dead enemy. So what if it also means killing the idea of India. > (The author is a freelance writer and activist) > _________________________________________ 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 pnanpin at yahoo.co.in Sat Oct 26 03:49:21 2002 From: pnanpin at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 23:19:21 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Riotous Sentimentalism Message-ID: <20021025221921.54701.qmail@web8205.mail.in.yahoo.com> Dear All, Sentimentalism is an ethic, a posture, a mode of representation, a narrative style, a gargoylic closure that emerged in the foment leading to the French Revolution. (I am regurgitating, with tears forming in my eyes, my inability to possess or even read Peter Brooks' classic text on this. I place a bucket under each eye.) Every human being is equal. Why? Because they cry. This is a re-statement of: Every human being is equal because they eat, piss, and crap. [Sentimentalism's relation to Menippean satire is extremely interesting. In Menippean satire, everyone is equal because everyone gorges, and pisses and craps by the litre and the tonne. In medieval, and even early modern Europe, till the time the peasantry possesses the ability to pamphleteer, Menippean satire is the mode in which the excesses of the rich are represented. With the supersession of mercantilism into primitive accumulation of capital, came a new regime of representation that excluded such expressivities. In an enlightened universe and emergent burgher culture, it was difficult to tell such enteric truths. Refinement was everything. In a time of the transformation of the peasantry into labour, refinement relegated Menippean satire, and peasant celebration, to the sphere of obscenity. Fathers had banned Rabelais; sons were told to read the later Dryden, or Racine; grandsons, Shaftesbury's moral philosophy. Of course, you could read "well-written" satire. It was witty and intellectual; it never crossed boundaries, Voltaire notwithstanding. The appropriation of Menippean satire is then filled in in the form of the emergence of sentimentalism. Repression, or the excess of it, finds a new outlet. There is a change here, in how "excess" is defined. There is an attempt to shift from a fantasy of control to a fantasy of agency. The latter fantasy, too, is appropriated. And how. It is turned into a regime of absolute victimisation, an invitation to recognise the absolute overtaking of the subject by external forces not under control. This eminently suited the 19th century European bourgeosie, which drew its strengths from a belief in permanent victimisation. It suited, even more, the ever-in-flux petty bourgeosie, which based its lifestyle on an ethic of humiliation] From rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com Sat Oct 26 16:03:41 2002 From: rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 2002 03:33:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Salonika, end C19 Message-ID: <20021026103341.99079.qmail@web41113.mail.yahoo.com> The century was drawing to a close. Stealthily the West was creeping in, trying to lure the East with her wonders. Almost inaudible as yet was her whisper. She dangled before our dazzled eyes the witchery of her science and the miracle of her inventions. We caught a glimpse of her brilliance, and timidly listened to the song of the siren. Like country folk at a banquet we felt humble and awkward in our ways. But vaguely we sensed the coldness of her glitter and the price of her wooing. With uneasiness we gathered tighter the folds of our homespun mantles around our shoulders, enjoying their softness and warmth, and finding them good. - Leon Sciaky, Farewell to Salonika, 1946 __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ From supreet at sarai.net Mon Oct 28 04:30:20 2002 From: supreet at sarai.net (Supreet) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 00:00:20 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Microsoft tablet PC Message-ID: <20021027230020.GA21642@mail.sarai.net> Slated to be launched in near future with help of hardware vendors. Many have tried out concept of tablet PC including Apple with thier product called Newton. Lets see what happens to this one. http://research.microsoft.com/features/tablet.asp third party hardwrae support could be a problem Supreet From yazadjal at vsnl.net Mon Oct 28 12:02:34 2002 From: yazadjal at vsnl.net (Yazad Jal) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 12:02:34 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The War of the "We" against the "Me" Message-ID: <00f501c27e4d$dc6fef20$993fc7cb@vsnl.net.in> The War of the "We" against the "Me" By P. J. O'Rourke O'Rourke, best-selling author and Cato Mencken Research, Fellow, addresses the guests at Cato's 25th Anniversary dinner. Ed told me to be upbeat tonight. It's our 25th anniversary; everything is going great. We're a successful think tank. We've got a big building. We've got a lot of generous donors. We get quoted in the newspapers-just today in the Washington Post's Style section. And when we get quoted, newspapers hardly ever refer to us anymore as the nutty Ayn Rand disciples who want dope and machineguns legalized. So I'm supposed to be upbeat tonight, but I say, no. Upbeat is for sissy, do-gooder organizations, like Brookings and the UN and the Democratic Party. Cato is not a do-gooder organization. We're libertarians. We're not here to do good; we're here to do anything we damn well please-and take the consequences. Because we are real advocates of freedom, and freedom has consequences. Freedom, as we real advocates of it know, is mostly about responsibility. And I speak to you as a man who freely contracted to pay a very large mortgage, who freely got married, freely fathered kids, and, of my own free will, bought an SUV that has to go to the gas station every 11 miles. There are times when it seems that freedom is all consequences. I say the hell with upbeat because I'm not upbeat about the cause that Cato represents. Upbeat is for people who want to feel good about their cause-the reformers, the progressives, the revolutionaries, the idealists, the utopians, the collectivists, and the rest of the altruistic scum of the earth. Now, why do those people want to feel good? They want to feel good in order to convince themselves that they are good people. They want to be good people in order to be better than other people. And they want to be better than other people in order to push the rest of us around. That's all that it's about. Our cause is not a good cause. Our cause is a grim cause. We are the front-line soldiers in the endless war of the "we" against the "me." You and I did not become libertarians because we're altruists. In fact, there is a certain selfishness to libertarianism. ("Enlightened self-interest" is the euphemism that we use.) My house, my car, my family may be a lot of responsibility, but I would rather take that responsibility than have any of you dating my wife or backing my car into phone poles or leaving your dirty socks on my bedroom floor. (Although when it comes to the kids, if any of you want to baby-sit for free, I'm willing to share.) But it's common sense, really, more than common selfishness, that drives the libertarian philosophy. We hold the individual to be self-evident. We believe in the primacy of the individual, the sanctity of the individual, the freedom and responsibility of the individual because we are individuals. We are not ants or bees. We do not reason or love or live or die collectively. I may say, like President Clinton, that I feel your pain. But, like President Clinton, I'm lying. Though I will admit, on the subject of feeling the pain of others, that the Clinton administration was collectively a pain in the butt. Anyway, when Elizabeth Hurley has a torrid love affair, I don't get the pleasure. So why should I get the bill for child support? And that's a good question, given our welfare system that lets all the less famous and less beautiful Elizabeth Hurleys put the cost of their children on my income tax tab. There is such a thing as mass jubilation -among young idiots at N'Sync performances. There is such a thing as mass death-Hiroshima and Auschwitz. But atomic bombs, genocide, and boy band concerts are not things that bring joy to the heart of a libertarian. Whenever a libertarian hears the word "masses," he knows that those masses are in for something rotten-mass hysteria, mass movements, mass murder, mass starvation. Notice how, when collectivists are speaking, mass poverty is always paired with individual wealth. Draw your own conclusions. There is only one happy phrase that makes reference to the masses, and that is mass exodus, when everybody is on his own two feet, trying to get the hell away from everybody else. I say that logic leads to libertarianism. But also, in libertarianism there is, frankly, an element of despair, because we know that people aren't good. Some of the religious among us believe in the doctrine of original sin. The rest of us watch Maury Povich. We know that people are sneaky, people are greedy, people are cruel. Yet we, as libertarians, want to turn people loose to do whatever they want. We want that because we also know that no matter what bad things individuals do, they are better than the things that get done to individuals by the collective will. And I don't even mean the really gross manifestations of the collective will such as totalitarianism or public television. I mean, imagine a rich farmer going door to door in your suburb, trying to get huge subsidies from you, out of your grocery money. Imagine a steel tycoon down at the docks in Long Beach trying to impose a one-man tariff on cheap foreign steel. Imagine someone trying to inflate his own currency with a Xerox machine at Kinko's. Imagine Enron trying to cheat the whole nation without the help of an impenetrable tax code, obscurantist accounting principles, and the dark powers of the Securities and Exchange Commission. It couldn't be done. Libertarians don't expect miracles from individuals. We just expect individuals to be individuals, with the limited scope for evil that individuals enjoy. Real evil is coercive, and an individual does not have the power of coercion that a government has. Real good is voluntary, and no government, however democratic, is fully voluntary- as Florida voters discovered in November 2000. Only individuals have free will; systems do not. Voluntary good is done by individuals, for the benefit of individuals. Some of that voluntary good is going to be tasteless and dumb and shortsighted, of little value to mankind as a whole. But the ugliest strip mall is better than the most beautiful gulag. This gives libertarians hope. But I'm not sure that it's wise for us to be hopeful. The individual has powerful enemies. Over the course of history those enemies have, in most times and in most places, defeated the individual utterly. Libertarians have a lot of things to fight. Libertarians must fight the herd instinct. This is a powerful instinct: witness the lemming. (Although we should thank the lemming for the wonderful weapon of simile that it gives libertarians when it jumps off cliffs-something, incidentally, that lemmings always do in masses.) Libertarians must fight not only instinct but ideas. And two of the most ingrained ideas in the human mind are the idea of collective entitlement and the idea of zero sum outcomes. Collective entitlement is the notion that I am owed something, not because of what I made or did but because I belong to a category. I am owed something because I'm a member of the proletariat who deserves the fruits of capital, a member of the female sex who deserves affirmative action, an African American who deserves slavery reparations, an American Indian who deserves the whole darn country, or, in my case, a middle-aged white guy who deserves some peace and quiet when he comes home from work (and some sports on TV). Notice how the idea of collective entitlement is much more popular than the idea of collective forfeiture. Very, very rarely does somebody volunteer to go to jail because the other members of his ethnic group have been running the protection rackets in Brooklyn for decades. And then there are zero-sum outcomes- the notion that whatever it is you've got, you've got it because you took it from me. Like all bad ideas, this has some basis in reality. For millions of years humans were dependent for their livelihood on land, and there's only so much of it-unless you're Dutch and you've drained your own. (And I think we should note that the Netherlands went from being a swamp on the outskirts of Belgium to being a very wealthy nation.) It's easy enough to see where zero-sum thinking comes from, but the era that it came from is over. Everybody in America who didn't arrive via the Bering Straits ice bridge stole his land from somebody else. And speaking for myself, they can have it back if they promise to mow it. The heck with all land. I would rather be up in the air in my Gulfstream jet, playing the market with wireless technology. Libertarianism comes from a different place-a place that most people don't understand and other people don't believe in. Libertarianism comes from the place that is in between taking and being given. And hardly anybody wants to go to that place. It's full of work and worry. Lord Acton said that the true friends of liberty are always few. They may all be here in this room. We're here because nobody loves us. And yet, although I say that we shouldn't be hopeful, that isn't really how I feel. I do feel hope. I do think there is a future for the free individual, whether he wants it or not. And the reason that I say so is because of something that's right outside this ballroom -America. Hardly anyone wanted to come to America. Even the original inhabitants were just following a mammoth farther than they meant to. The rest of us were dragged here as slaves and bondservants. We were exiled here as heretics and criminals. We were chased here by poverty and oppression. And we came here because no place else would take us. We're a bunch of losers and bums, the off-scourings of the planet. And now we are the richest and most powerful nation in the world. Why? Is it because we're collectively good? No. It's because we're individually free. Freedom is tough. We're tough. Freedom is difficult. We're difficult. Freedom is a heavy load to carry. We've got baggage. And one more thing-freedom is messy. So I think we should make a mess. To end on a fully upbeat note, I suggest that we all get drunk. Cato Policy Report, July/August 2002. Pgs 18-19. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021028/50d0ccf5/attachment.html From jeebesh at sarai.net Mon Oct 28 14:51:09 2002 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 14:51:09 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Can You Trust Your Computer? Message-ID: <02102814510902.00909@pammi.sarai.kit> http://slash.autonomedia.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/26/2315242&mode=nested -------------- Can You Trust Your Computer? By Richard Stallman Who should your computer take its orders from? Most people think their computers should obey them, not obey someone else. With a plan they call "trusted computing," large media corporations (including the movie companies and record companies), together with computer companies such as Microsoft and Intel, are planning to make your computer obey them instead of you. Proprietary programs have included malicious features before, but this plan would make it universal. Proprietary software means, fundamentally, that you don't control what it does; you can't study the source code, or change it. It's not surprising that clever businessmen find ways to use their control to put you at a disadvantage. Microsoft has done this several times: one version of Windows was designed to report to Microsoft all the software on your hard disk; a recent "security" upgrade in Windows Media Player required users to agree to new restrictions. But Microsoft is not alone: the KaZaa music-sharing software is designed so that KaZaa's business partner can rent out the use of your computer to their clients. These malicious features are often secret, but even once you know about them it is hard to remove them, since you don't have the source code. In the past, these were isolated incidents. "Trusted computing" would make it pervasive. "Treacherous computing" is a more appropriate name, because the plan is designed to make sure your computer will systematically disobey you. In fact, it is designed to stop your computer from functioning as a general-purpose computer. Every operation may require explicit permission. The technical idea underlying treacherous computing is that the computer includes a digital encryption and signature device, and the keys are kept secret from you. (Microsoft's version of this is called "palladium.") Proprietary programs will use this device to control which other programs you can run, which documents or data you can access, and what programs you can pass them to. These programs will continually download new authorization rules through the Internet, and impose those rules automatically on your work. If you don't allow your computer to obtain the new rules periodically from the Internet, some capabilities will automatically cease to function. Of course, Hollywood and the record companies plan to use treacherous computing for "DRM" (Digital Restrictions Management), so that downloaded videos and music can be played only on one specified computer. Sharing will be entirely impossible, at least using the authorized files that you would get from those companies. You, the public, ought to have both the freedom and the ability to share these things. (I expect that someone will find a way to produce unencrypted versions, and to upload and share them, so DRM will not entirely succeed, but that is no excuse for the system.) Making sharing impossible is bad enough, but it gets worse. There are plans to use the same facility for email and documents -- resulting in email that disappears in two weeks, or documents that can only be read on the computers in one company. Imagine if you get an email from your boss telling you to do something that you think is risky; a month later, when it backfires, you can't use the email to show that the decision was not yours. "Getting it in writing" doesn't protect you when the order is written in disappearing ink. Imagine if you get an email from your boss stating a policy that is illegal or morally outrageous, such as to shred your company's audit documents, or to allow a dangerous threat to your country to move forward unchecked. Today you can send this to a reporter and expose the activity. With treacherous computing, the reporter won't be able to read the document; her computer will refuse to obey her. Treacherous computing becomes a paradise for corruption. Word processors such as Microsoft Word could use treacherous computing when they save your documents, to make sure no competing word processors can read them. Today we must figure out the secrets of Word format by laborious experiments in order to make free word processors read Word documents. If Word encrypts documents using treacherous computing when saving them, the free software community won't have a chance of developing software to read them -- and if we could, such programs might even be forbidden by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Programs that use treacherous computing will continually download new authorization rules through the Internet, and impose those rules automatically on your work. If Microsoft, or the U.S. government, does not like what you said in a document you wrote, they could post new instructions telling all computers to refuse to let anyone read that document. Each computer would obey when it downloads the new instructions. Your writing would be subject to 1984-style retroactive erasure. You might be unable to read it yourself. You might think you can find out what nasty things a treacherous computing application does, study how painful they are, and decide whether to accept them. It would be short-sighted and foolish to accept, but the point is that the deal you think you are making won't stand still. Once you come depend on using the program, you are hooked and they know it; then they can change the deal. Some applications will automatically download upgrades that will do something different -- and they won't give you a choice about whether to upgrade. Today you can avoid being restricted by proprietary software by not using it. If you run GNU/Linux or another free operating system, and if you avoid installing proprietary applications on it, then you are in charge of what your computer does. If a free program has a malicious feature, other developers in the community will take it out, and you can use the corrected version. You can also run free application programs and tools on non-free operating systems; this falls short of fully giving you freedom, but many users do it. Treacherous computing puts the existence of free operating systems and free applications at risk, because you may not be able to run them at all. Some versions of treacherous computing would require the operating system to be specifically authorized by a particular company. Free operating systems could not be installed. Some versions of treacherous computing would require every program to be specifically authorized by the operating system developer. You could not run free applications on such a system. If you did figure out how, and told someone, that could be a crime. There are proposals already for U.S. laws that would require all computers to support treacherous computing, and to prohibit connecting old computers to the Internet. The CBDTPA (we call it the Consume But Don't Try Programming Act) is one of them. But even if they don't legally force you to switch to treacherous computing, the pressure to accept it may be enormous. Today people often use Word format for communication, although this causes several sorts of problems (see gnu). If only a treacherous computing machine can read the latest Word documents, many people will switch to it, if they view the situation only in terms of individual action (take it or leave it). To oppose treacherous computing, we must join together and confront the situation as a collective choice. For further information about treacherous computing, see tcpa faq. To block treacherous computing will require large numbers of citizens to organize. We need your help! The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge (Public Knowledge) are campaigning against treacherous computing, and so is the FSF-sponsored Digital Speech Project (Digital Speech). Please visit these Web sites so you can sign up to support their work. You can also help by writing to the public affairs offices of Intel, IBM, HP/Compaq, or anyone you have bought a computer from, explaining that you don't want to be pressured to buy "trusted" computing systems so you don't want them to produce any. This can bring consumer power to bear. If you do this on your own, please send copies of your letters to the organizations above. Postscripts: 1. The GNU Project distributes the GNU Privacy Guard, a program that implements public-key encryption and digital signatures, which you can use to send secure and private email. It is useful to explore how GPG differs from treacherous computing, and see what makes one helpful and the other so dangerous. When someone uses GPG to send you an encrypted document, and you use GPG to decode it, the result is an unencrypted document that you can read, forward, copy, and even re-encrypt to send it securely to someone else. A treacherous computing application would let you read the words on the screen, but would not let you produce an unencrypted document that you could use in other ways. GPG, a free software package, makes security features available to the users; they use it. Treacherous computing is designed to impose restrictions on the users; it uses them. 2. Microsoft presents Palladium as a security measure, and claims that it will protect against viruses, but this claim is evidently false. A presentation by Microsoft Research in October 2002 stated that one of the specifications of Palladium is that existing operating systems and applications will continue to run; therefore, viruses will continue to be able to do all the things that they can do today. When Microsoft speaks of "security" in connection with Palladium, they do not mean what we normally mean by that word: protecting your machine from things you do not want. They mean protecting your copies of data on your machine from access by you in ways others do not want. A slide in the presentation listed several types of secrets Palladium could be used to keep, including "third party secrets" and "user secrets" -- but it put "user secrets" in quotation marks, recognizing that this is not what Palladium is really designed for. The presentation made frequent use of other terms that we frequently associate with the context of security, such as "attack," "malicious code," "spoofing," as well as "trusted." None of them means what it normally means. "Attack" doesn't mean someone trying to hurt you, it means you trying to copy music. "Malicious code" means code installed by you to do what someone else doesn't want your machine to do. "Spoofing" doesn't mean someone fooling you, it means you fooling Palladium. And so on. 3. A previous statement by the Palladium developers stated the basic premise that whoever developed or collected information should have total control of how you use it. This would represent a revolutionary overturn of past ideas of ethics and of the legal system, and create an unprecedented system of control. The specific problems of these systems are no accident; they result from the basic goal. It is the goal we must reject. Copyright ©2002 Richard Stallman (Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.) From yazadjal at vsnl.net Mon Oct 28 15:35:40 2002 From: yazadjal at vsnl.net (Yazad Jal) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 15:35:40 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Climate Change: A Contrarian View Message-ID: <004f01c27e69$df8fbc00$d202c5cb@vsnl.net.in> CCS Position Paper on the Delhi Climate Change Meet Climate Change: A Contrarian View A provocative evaluation of the UN's CoP 8 meet in Delhi. Several similar critiques from varied points of view are available on the CCS website www.ccsindia.org. The site also has a large number of downloadable documents and links to other sites very relevant to the issues. We hope you will be able to use this information in your task of providing full and balanced understanding of these critical policy matters to your audience. As the international travel and conference agency, known as the UN, brings 4000 delegates from 187 countries to Delhi for the CoP-8 meeting on climate change, a lot of hot air will be generated. But not a single CO2 molecule will be exhaled discussing the science and policy of climate change. The agenda makes it clear that the purpose is to find ways for developing countries to adapt to the effects of the climate change. Did I say find ways? A Times of India headline reveals the real intention: It's all about money! Yes, fund whatever projects that can bring money to the developing countries. The climate change is just another excuse to collect. ransom, sin fines, guilt money, development aid, alms, take your pick. And that's not all-we are supposed to feel morally superior to the givers. The Circular Science of Climate Change The collection game will go on, but let's ask about the science of climate change. Temperatures are lower today than in the Middle Ages. Between the mid-1940s and mid-1970s, global temperatures actually fell. Scientists at the time warned of the coming ice age. History is full of cycles of warming and cooling and we cannot as of now explain why these cycles occur. Any theory or model that claims to explain the rise in temperatures since mid-1970s should also be able to explain the previous cooling and then warming before mid-1940s. No such theory has been offered. How could we trust a model that explains only a miniscule part (post-1970s) of the whole phenomenon of global temperature cycles? The ice age cycle repeats at about 10,000 years. It is difficult to predict the exact timing of the next one. Why is no one interested in building models to forecast the next ice age, which given the history seems more certain than the alleged vapour age? Isn't it likely that 100 years hence the worry may just be about global cooling? (Swaminathan Aiyar, August 2002) Temperatures recorded via satellites and weather balloons, more accurate than those measured on the surface, show no discernible warming trend in the past two decades. Extrapolations of the satellite data suggest at most a slight warming by the year 2100. The evident conflict with the current climate change models surprisingly doesn't raise much concern. In the Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjorn Lomborg provides persuasive scientific arguments challenging the orthodoxy. (See some of his most telling tables & figures here.) One of his green critics even admits: He also did a fairly convincing job of revealing statistical liberties taken by some environmental organisations and authors, probably enough to keep them on their toes in future endeavors (Brian Czech brianczech at juno.com). Skepticism about global warming is not limited to professors of statistics and the carbon industry. Both The 1996 Leipzig Declaration and the 1998 Oregon Petition (signed by over 17,000 scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees) are subscribed to by well-recognised experts, including members of the National Academy of Sciences and scientist-participants in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (See http://www.sepp.org for the Oregon Petition.) It has become a habit to link any harmful changes in the climate to global warming. No amount of evidence seems to restrain this knee-jerk reaction. The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society provides the example of El Niño of 1997 and 1998 in the US. It was accused of devastating tourism, increasing allergies, melting the ski-slopes and causing 22 deaths by dumping snow in Ohio. The article in the Bulletin estimated both costs and benefits of the 1997-98 Niño. The damage was estimated at $4 billion. The benefits amounted to some $19 billion! El Niño has positive effects?! The higher winter temperatures saved an estimated 850 lives and reduced heating costs and spring floods. Moreover, the historical connection between past Niños and fewer Atlantic hurricanes also held up. The US avoided huge loses since no big Atlantic hurricanes occurred in 1998. These benefits however were not reported as widely as the losses. James Hansen (The Global Warming Debate), a pessimist climatologist, shows that the growth rate of greenhouse gases in the period 1988-1998 has been flat, a period in which the world has experienced probably the largest decadal increase in material production. Besides, carbon dioxide is not only pollution; it is the food of plants. Its higher concentrations would increase plant growth. We cannot accurately estimate these benefits, just as we cannot accurately estimate the costs. But does this justify the focus only on the costs? The Irrational Policy Prescriptions Let's for the sake of argument take the pessimists at their models. Would their solution, the Kyoto Protocol, save us from their predicted catastrophe? Tom Wigley, one of the main authors of IPCC reports, shows that strict implementation of Kyoto would diminish the expected temperature increase of 2.1°C in 2100 to an increase of 1.9°C instead. To put it another way, the temperature increase that the planet would have experienced in 2094 would be postponed to 2100! What's the cost of lengthening the planet's life by six years? The cost of Kyoto, for the US alone, will be higher than the cost of providing universal access to clean drinking water and sanitation. That would save two million lives every year, and prevent half a billion people from becoming seriously ill. And that is the best case. If we include the cost of corruption, waste, and inefficiency inherent in any government program, not to mention the cost of coordinating all the world's governments like the UN summits, the total cost could approach $1 trillion. For comparison, the total global-aid budget today is about $50 billion a year. (Economist, August, 2001 ) The advocacy of sustainable development is to put limit on economic growth. But better environment is like any other good and the wealthier the people, the more they would be able to purchase it. The people of the third world have urgent need for potable water, sanitation, and clean indoor air (instead of suffering from the smoke of fuel wood and dung cakes). The green imperialists forget their immediate real needs. Let's ask then what damages the planet would suffer by the projected global warming. What's the cost of dumping Kyoto? There are as many answers as the number of fundraisers done by Greenpeace in a typical month. The cost is that anything and everything can happen if the green gods are not offered the sacrifice. The water level of the oceans would rise and land would be submerged. On the other hand, ice would melt and more usable land would become available. Climatic changes would decimate some flora, but increased CO2 concentrations would raise growth. There are trade-off on all counts. Any rational assessment would have to focus on costs as well as benefits. Just as in the case of El Niño discussed earlier. These however are unnecessary details for the crusaders trying to save us from ourselves. They demand massive sacrifice without much inkling of the benefits. Moreover, the fundamental premise of the idea-that economic growth, if left unconstrained and unmanaged by the state, threatens unnecessary harm to the environment and may prove ephemeral-is dubious. First, if economic growth were to be slowed or stopped-and sustainable development is essentially concerned with putting boundaries around economic growth-it would be impossible to improve environmental conditions around the world. Second, the bias toward central planning on the part of those endorsing the concept of sustainable development will serve only to make environmental protection more expensive; hence, society would be able to "purchase" less of it. Dustbin of Doomsday Predictions Dr Ehrlich predicted in his best selling 1968 book The Population Bomb that "the battle to feed humanity is over. In the course of the 1970s the world will experience starvation of tragic proportions-hundreds of millions of people will starve to death." That did not happen. Instead agricultural production in the developing world has increased by 52% per person since 1961. Since 1800 food prices have decreased by more than 90%, and in 2000 prices were lower than ever before. This is just one example of doomsday predictions that have never materialised. (See Surviving The Apocalypse for the many other.) If there is one country or rather a civilisation that can demonstrate human capacity of survival against all odds, resilience, and resourcefulness to solve problems, it is India. If the pessimists can take only that lesson home, India would have served well her role as the host. Contact: Parth J Shah at 98111-45667; parth at ccsindia.org or forparth at hotmail.com References Science: Climate Change: Challenging The Conventional Wisdom by Julian Morris A Climate of Uncertainty In Thegreenhouse Century by Robert C. Balling Energy for Sustainable Devlopment by Robert L.Bradley Jr Climate Science and Policy: Making the Connection by ESEF Global Warming And Other Eco-Myths by Ronald Bailey The True State Of The Planet by Ronald Bailey The State of the World's Forests 2001 Review of The 2001 U.S. Climate Action Report National Academy of Sciences Raises More Climate Questions New Study Distorts Health Benefits of Greenhouse Gas Reduction By Joel Schwartz Newest IPCC Report on Global Warming Fails to Deliver Sound Policymaking Models By Kenneth Green Policy: Incentive-based Approaches for Mitigating Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Issues and Prospects for India by Shreekant Gupta The Political Economy of Climate Change Science by Roger Bate Bootleggers, Baptists & Global Warmiing by Bruce Yandle Malaria & Climate Change by Richard Tren, Africa Fighting Malaria The Precautionary Principle Sustainable Development Renewable Energy Free Market Environmentalism : An Interview with Terry Anderson PERC Executive Director Recent News and Publications on Climate Change from Reason Public Policy Institute PERC Points Global Warming is good for you The Human Costs of Global Warming Policy by Fran Smith The Consequences of Climate Change Reducing Global Warming Through Forestry and Agriculture Ethanol Mandate: Forcing Outdated Technology that May Not Even Work By Joel Schwartz Farming for the Future:Agriculture's Next Generation by J. BISHOP GREWELL Additional Sources: Long Hot Year Climate Change Science Report & Reprint Series of Massachusetts Inst. of Technology Correcting Myths About Global Warming : Books, Sites & Articles -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021028/19d8f637/attachment.html From areflagan at artpanorama.com Tue Oct 29 09:43:16 2002 From: areflagan at artpanorama.com (Are Flagan) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 23:13:16 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Software In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I am posting to preliminary introduce a discussion around software that will be held here on the Sarai reader-list for publication in the Sarai Reader 03. Over the course of the first three weeks in November, the intent is to assemble a wide range of responses that broadly examine how the shaping of software relates to the shaping of society. The initial goals, laid out here merely as a possible progression of the thread, are to examine what cultural and social biases are featured and perpetuated by the dominant software packages and solutions; what critiques are offered to these hegemonies by alternative, free, and open source software; and what the most pressing concerns are with regards to the choice of open source over proprietary software in matters of public life and government. I'll post a brief intro with some very pointed starting questions (actually derived from a series of photographs of "work") by Monday next week, and we'll see what unfolds from there. Once it's wrapped for the deadline, I'll compile and proof the contributions before the Sarai editors and designers make everyone look real good. With specific reference to the proposed latter stages: I have followed various debates on the official faith of Linux in India, and some of you may be interested in (re)visiting what slashdotters, for example, have recently had to say. (Slashdot is a technology website with the descriptive subheading "news for nerds.") A brief list of related links is compiled below; the slashdot sites also point to the articles that prompted the /. I certainly look forward to an interesting exchange. -af + + + + + Linux finding a new role http://www.dawn.com/events/infotech/it23.htm Indian Govt. goes for free software http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/08/2318246 Why human rights requires free software http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/10/11/platform.html (The Slashdot follow up to the above) http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/12/0033224 Indian Govt. chooses Linux for academia http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/14/2213222 Open IT: Govt. to rewrite source code in Linux http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?artid=24598339 Pakistani Govt. may choose Linux instead of Windows http://paknews.com/top.php?id=1&date1=2002-09-06 + + + + + India officially launches Simputer http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/27/0118252 From yazadjal at vsnl.net Tue Oct 29 13:19:26 2002 From: yazadjal at vsnl.net (Yazad Jal) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 13:19:26 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fraud as "research" Message-ID: <002a01c27f1f$f32fb920$ee02c5cb@vsnl.net.in> http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/bellesiles.html Bellesiles: the Larger Context by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. Reading new left-liberal books is like listening to an oldies station on the radio. You remember the theme, you can predict the next chorus, it recalls times and events in your life, and the main point is nostalgia. And there are only a few themes at work, repeated ad nauseum: the crisis of capitalism is about to arrive, some minority group is being oppressed, big government can be made to work with the following reform plan, justice equals redistribution. No matter which discipline you focus on, whether economics, history, or philosophy, the theme is the same. There are very few new arguments, very little new research, and it is all deadly dull. The books get published because the market of tax-funded university libraries and classrooms is dependable, and publishers and their review committees don't like taking too many risks. That is why Michael Bellesiles's book Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture seemed so notable. The thesis, now completely debunked and the author's having resigned in disgrace from Emory University, was that gun ownership was not widespread before Lincoln's war. Individual gun ownership is really a modern obsession; indeed it is an invention. He attempted to show this by original research into probate records and diaries. The thesis seemed counterintuitive, but what scholars call the apparatus was there: immense footnotes and citations suggesting massive research. What really mattered was the subtext. It implied that the gun control advocates had history of their side, that personal ownership of firearms is no more necessary now than in frontier times, that conservative scholars were all wet, that the state should monopolize the use of force. That alone would have been enough for the book to garner praise, including the prestigious Bancroft Award and highly enthusiastic reviews from leading critics. And yet there is a more important reason that goes beyond the thesis and the argument. It is a sociological point. In a sea of mundane left-liberal books written by aging academics who haven't made a new argument in thirty years, the Bellesiles book stood out as unique. Michael Bellesiles was a young professor, not an aging socialist. His research and research methods were original. The scholarship was daring and enticing. Here in one package was something new in the genre, at long last! The very existence of the book seemed to indicate that left-liberalism still had some scholarly life in it, that it could survive another generation and perhaps even gain some intellectually respectable converts! This aspect of the book, more than its thesis or argument, had an immense impact. It lifted the spirits of a dying generation of intellectuals. Perhaps their religion can last after all! Perhaps it has a future! Maybe their lives haven't been a total waste! It was these sentiments, which did so much to lift this book to immense fame, that also caused a generation of academics to fly into panic when its thesis came into question. Everyone knows the upshot of the second guessing. Once the original sources were checked out, it turned out that at all crucial junctures, the book was a hoax. His research, it would appear, didn't check out. His quotations of first-hand accounts were altered. He trimmed and cut the evidence to match his thesis. Then, to make matters worse, his explanations seemed increasingly implausible. Finally a review committee was established that concluded in questioning the author's "scholarly integrity." But just as the significance of his book went far beyond its academic claims, so too does the significance of his disgrace. It turns out that the first new thing in left-liberal academics in decades was nothing more than fraud. Imagine yourself as a left-liberal professor whose hopes were so lifted by the existence of this treatise. Imagine how you might feel now that Bellesiles is out of a job? Who was responsible for unearthing the truth? Not the prestigious review committee. They only certified what had been discovered by people like Clayton Cramer and Joseph Stromberg, and others from gun-rights organizations. These were not exactly establishment sources, and they were going up against all leading literary reviews and even the National Endowment of the Humanities, which had thrown its weight behind the Emory historian. This was a case of David and Goliath. But the disgrace of Bellesiles takes us back to square one. Instead of being a model and ideal of left-liberal scholarship in a new generation, it is now the most famous modern case of lying research, bad eggs at prestigious institutions, and the shoddiness of the academic class generally. The political paradigm that has limitless faith in the power of government, and no confidence in the ability of individuals to manage their own affairs, has been robbed of its biggest break in many years. People ask if there is any reason for libertarians to be confident. If you understand the sociology of ideas, it is easy to see that the statist project is running out of intellectual steam. It survives mainly due to the momentum it gathered during and after World War II. But it has no new source of strength other than its domination of existing structures of power, and without intellectual life and vibrancy, it is profoundly vulnerable. Saying that statism has lost intellectual energy is not to claim assurance of the final victory of its opposite, of course. But we must not rule out the possibility. After all, as Mises says, "The outstanding fact about history is that it is a succession of events that nobody anticipated before they occurred." October 29, 2002 Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail] is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and editor of LewRockwell.com. Copyright © 2002 by LewRockwell.com Lew Rockwell Archives Back to LewRockwell.com Home Page -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021029/9026e2b3/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 5725 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021029/9026e2b3/attachment.gif -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 314 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021029/9026e2b3/attachment-0001.gif -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 4248 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021029/9026e2b3/attachment-0001.jpe -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 2328 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021029/9026e2b3/attachment-0009.gif From menso at r4k.net Tue Oct 29 22:31:45 2002 From: menso at r4k.net (Menso Heus) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 18:01:45 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Googlism Message-ID: <20021029170145.GO85992@r4k.net> The website http://www.googlism.com/ searches google for a certain word and then returns results of what that word is. The results are sometimes hilarious, sometimes make no sense at all, and sometimes right on the spot. I think the concept is quite cool, play around with it, enter some words. Below are the results for Sarai. sarai is unhappy sarai is down again sarai is not abe's sister sarai is not abe's sister phar sarai is interested in media cultures that lie in the shadow of technological and social elites sarai is a space where there are lots of things going on at any given moment sarai is down; next message sarai is in the process of developing local links with projects in delhi and india and international links with partners in south asia and elsewhere sarai is a programme of an academic research institution sarai is powerless to express her anger at abram's proposal that she pretend to he his unwed sister sarai is cut off from the favorite sons sarai is a kind of service centre sarai is een sarai is now between 75 and 76 years old sarai is a programme of the centre for the study of developing societies sarai is spirited sarai is open from may to october sarai is located at the south of ludhiana – khanna road at doraha sarai is located in village shambu sarai is down sarai is a very beautiful woman sarai is scanty and there is more written material on the mosques and graves in the area sarai is perfect sarai is made possible with the support of the dutch ministry of foreign affairs sarai is only the meeting place where some of this is beginning to happen sarai is open from june through september sarai is unable to conceive sarai is willing to take risks to save her loved ones and that "because of her sarai is happy to invite you to a talk on " copyright vs community in the age of computer networks" by sarai is taken to the pharaoh sarai is a piercer in toronto working at tat sarai is located in the shahdol district sarai is mysteriously absent; she absents herself from god because she tried to circumvent god's will sarai is happy to sarai is an offshoot of the language and the new media project at sarai sarai is doing sarai is harmonically enriched with yard lodges sarai is given the name "sarah" sarai is half sarai is a very honorable young woman sarai is committed to free software and is an equal opportunity employer sarai is ethnically very diverse sarai is his sister sarai is meant to become a major player in the shaping of the urban culture and political imagination of the city of delhi/new delhi in the future sarai is a unique yurt camp situated a few minute's drive from leh sarai is having problems sarai is proving to be a very valuable teaching tool and is used in introductory courses on south asia as well as in pre sarai is being petty sarai is an online and offline space for research sarai is the first future dam bred here on our farm sarai is just that sarai is a story that teaches people to trust in god rather than their own efforts sarai is taken to pharaoh sarai is a sarai is one that can be useful to all of us sarai is feeling the pressure to get pregnant sarai is miraculously pregnant sarai is taken by pharaoh sarai is eleven years old and gets home schooling sarai is the wife of abram sarai is sarai is his younger brother sarai is eating frogs again but this time sarai is the first of a long line of barren women who were desperate for children sarai is wife sarai is taken into pharaoh's house sarai is available for purchase through amazon sarai is a more romantic derivation sarai is married sarai is his sister and giving her to a potentially threatening king sarai is a background figure sarai is an illustration of how those dimensions inter sarai is the only wife of abram sarai is still not even pregnant sarai is his wife sarai is the head of the snake clan sarai is the important and major railway station sarai is his half sister sarai is absent sarai is the new mail server to replace turtle sarai is afsarwala tomb and masjid sarai is taken to pharaoh's palace; abram escapes death because they present themselves as sarai is a delhi sarai is 75 years old with no heirs of their sarai is barren -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image - Stephen Hawking -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From rafael at csi.com Wed Oct 30 01:35:14 2002 From: rafael at csi.com (Rafael Lozano-Hemmer) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 15:05:14 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] CFP: new deadline-nueva fecha @ vidalife.org Message-ID: x x x Deadline Extended x x x "Life 5.0" Art and A-life competition Searching for robots, viruses, avatars, algorithms, virtual environments Sponsored by the Telefonica Foundation, Madrid, Spain Twenty thousand Euros will be awarded New deadline: November 8, 2002 Information and application form http://www.vidalife.org x x x Plazo Extendido x x x Concurso de arte y vida artificial "Vida 5.0" Buscamos robots, viruses, avatares, algoritmos o entornos virtuales Patrocinado por la Fundación Telefónica, Madrid, España Veinte mil Euros en premios Nueva fecha límite: 8 de noviembre de 2002 Bases e información http://www.vidalife.org From joy at sarai.net Wed Oct 30 17:34:17 2002 From: joy at sarai.net (Joy Chatterjee) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 17:34:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Hearsay of the Sun Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20021030173044.00aa0348@mail.sarai.net> http://chnm.gmu.edu/aq/photos/index.htm Hearsay of the Sun Photography, Identity, and the Law of Evidence in Nineteenth-Century American Courts Thomas Thurston Introduction This essay considers the legal reception of photography as a type of evidence in the appellate cases, legal treatises, and legal journals of the last half of the nineteenth century. Confronted less with a new form of technology than with a new form of representation, one that challenged received notions of original and hearsay evidence, photographers and the Anglo-American legal press speculated as to the evidentiary rank of the new photographic art during an era in which the nature of identity itself was changing. Photography's initial reception underscored the contradiction between its acceptance as testimonial aid- a reproduction of the real- and as commodity- a production of the photographic artist. Its apparent reflective plagiarism of nature especially recommended its use as evidence. However, as photographic technology advanced and the recognition of the manipulation involved in the production of the photographic work increased, skepticism as to its evidentiary value grew stronger. The legal profession's increasing reliance on expert testimony also tarnished the photograph's reputation for incontrovertibility, for as its use became more common, photographic experts began to face each other across the courtroom. In the racially polarized 1890s, the correlation between social identity and physical appearance became problematic. The legal enforcement of socially constructed identities could not depend on the veracity of mere appearance or its photographic representation. And while the belief that interior truths could be divined from external appearances was in dispute, newer photographic applications were entering evidentiary jurisprudence. X-ray photographs, artifacts representing that which could not be verified upon physical examination, seemed to entirely divorce inner truths from external characteristics, instead finding those truths hidden away by the body itself. The primary documents used in this hypertextual essay represent a relatively contained selection of materials concerning the body of legal reasoning on the subject of photography and evidence during the period under consideration. Anglo American case law and the treatise tradition, with its emphasis on precedent and commentary, is a literary form well suited for hypertext. It is my hope that this hypertextual experiment may help to establish standards in incorporating primary texts into critical essays, foster collaboration among scholars from different disciplines, and perhaps lead to the development of more ambitious legal-historical hypertexts. Contents The Law and Science of Evidence The Lineaments of Guilt The Signs of the Things Taken Telling of the Hidden Mysteries Sources Footnotes From supreet at sarai.net Thu Oct 31 02:25:06 2002 From: supreet at sarai.net (Supreet) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 21:55:06 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] hindi support in linux Message-ID: <20021030205506.GA23810@mail.sarai.net> Linux now has support for unicode indic support. For now the list includes devanagri (marathi and hindi) bengali gujrati and gurumukhi . ---------- any application based on pango 1 and gtk 2 which majorly includes almost all gnome applications can support hindi support. to switch keyboard setxkbmap -layout dev -option grp:ctrl_shift_toggle in case of devanagri keyboard interface is part of Xfree86 4.2.0. or it can be download from www.indlinux.org� ------------- to use this facility switch to any distro which has gtk2 support. debian support URL: deb http://people.debian.org/~kov/debian woody gnome2 for gentoo URL: http://www.gentoo.org/~spider/ for redhat URL: http://www.ximian.com/products/redcarpet/download.html minimum requirement is RedHat 7.2 or higher RedHat 8.0 standard ships with both pango gtk2 and Xfree86 4.2.0 so it works in RedHAt 8.0 out of the box Mozilla also has support for language pack for hindi check mozilla site for it. www.mozilla.org From sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com Wed Oct 30 20:55:55 2002 From: sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?q?Sagnik=20Chakravartty?=) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 15:25:55 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [Reader-list] Crusade of a Woman against corruption Message-ID: <20021030152555.68203.qmail@web20309.mail.yahoo.com> The following story appeared in www.tripurainfo.com -- Do have a look ------------------------------ Postal Service: The Lady fights corruption alone By Our Correspondent Agartala, October 30: A lady officer of the central government in a bid to root out corruption and to bring some semblance of work culture which was long absent in the office, is fighting it out alone despite heavy odds and threat on her person. Director of Postal Service, Tripura, Trishaljit Sethi, is not only facing slogan shouting trade-unionists during her stay in the office but also opposition from the ruling party, CPM , as she took ´stern´ actions against some of the postal service employees for corruption who turned out to be hardcore unionists. The postal service in Tripura has long been known as a hub of corruption and trade union politics. Several other past DPS had also tried their best to root out corruption but on the face of strong opposition left their task unfinished. But the situation turned different after Sethi, a former Army Postal Service officer, took over charge in December 2000. At first stroke she transferred some employees who were posted in the same office for the last 25 years and were in neck deep corruption. Came along the order to up-to-date Recurring Deposits in the postal department, which were not done for years together. The employees who are residents of the state itself were also drawing Special Duty Allowances, which ranged between Rs 800 to Rs 1200 or so, every month, for the last 20 years violating the Supreme Court Order. In July this year Sethi stopped this practice too. All these orders were not at all welcome and resentment was brewing among the employees. The CITU affiliated National Federation of Postal Employees kept on exerting pressure on the director to withdraw her orders. However, which triggered wide agitation was charge-sheet against one employee Kanti Debbarma under Rule 14 of CCS (CCA) for his involvement in alleged huge financial irregularities in small savings on July 30 last. Debbarma was to retire within months. On August 5 both the CITU affiliated NFPE and INTUC affiliated Federation of National Postal Organization met Sethi to request her to withdraw the chargesheet. But the deputation turned ugly as a section of NFPE employees physically manhandled the lady officer. As the employees turned violent, Shillong Circle office withdrew the charge-sheet to save the situation in Agartala office at that moment. The incident was, in fact, a virtual repetition of an incident in eighties when another lady DPS TK Ariyavir, presently DDG of the Postal Service, faced the similar violent employees in the same office. Sethi went on a long leave and the Shillong office once again reissued the chargesheet against Debbarma since it had to be withdrawn ´under duress´. The assault not only angered the higher ups in Shillong and New Delhi but also the INTUC affiliated FNPO withdrew from the agitation immediately. "The DPS had to chargesheet against Debbarma under Rule 14 as the higher ups in Shillong wanted it. It was a fraud of high degree and had she taken a lenient view it would have amounted her connivance", said an officer with the Postal service. "Moreover, she tried to convince the employees that since she had filed the chargesheet, only her senior authority could withdraw it", he added. During her leave, however, both Shillong and Delhi did not shut the files and apart from reissuing the chargesheet against Debbarma, also transferred four employees who allegedly took active part in the assault. While Haru Dasgupta and Janardan Debnath were sent to Shillong, two women trade unionists Aniva Datta and Ajita Datta were transferred to Dharmanagar in North Tripura. They moved the CAT but were defeated. One Extra Departmental Employee was also put on ´off duty" for his misbehaviour with the departmental chief. She joined the service on October 21 with police protection. But as the NFPE, the stronger union body, vowed not to cooperate and kept on shouting slogans in front of her office, the functioning in her office came to virtual standstill. Now the ruling party has landed in the field and CPM MP Khagen Das has written a letter to Union Minister of Communications Pramode Mahajan seeking his intervention. CITU state unit secretary Manik Dey also threatened joint movement of the trade union bodies of the CPM. But there are many who supported the lady in her fight against corruption in the department. ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com From areflagan at artpanorama.com Wed Oct 30 23:37:26 2002 From: areflagan at artpanorama.com (Are Flagan) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 13:07:26 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Hearsay of the Sun In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20021030173044.00aa0348@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: For decades, especially during the 50s and 60s, Kodak prepared and published (with law enforcement consultation) handy manuals for US police photographers that provided strict guidelines for the preparation of photographic evidence. Although they pass as technical instructions, for the aesthetic of objectivity, there are also frequent forays into perception and psychology (speaking of the jury's reception). Perhaps justice is indeed blind... -af From eastman at bentonrea.com Sat Oct 26 03:41:52 2002 From: eastman at bentonrea.com (Dick Eastman) Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 15:11:52 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] Chaiyah asked me to forward this analysis of Pentagon attack by Gerard Holmgren Message-ID: <003301c27c73$b24a6b20$0b3107d8@user> Gerard Holmgren establishes the following facts in corroboration of the small-plane attack on the Pentagon. The coverup version is an impossible tale from start to finish, as Holmgren demonstrates. The discussion and evidence (below) are extensive. Here are Gerard's key conclusions: ----------------- It is physically impossible for all of the plane to have entered the crash site, and this is backed by solid mathematical proof. There is no evidence outside the building of wreckage to account for the part of the plane which cannot have entered the crash site. There is no evidence of identifiable wreckage inside the crash site. Cremation of the plane was unprecedented in aviation history and physically impossible. Even could such cremation have been possible, it is impossible in the context of the modest damage to the wall. The hole in the back of the third ring cannot be explained by any means other than a missile. Fake wreckage has been designed and planted with the express purpose of impersonating the American Airlines colour scheme. Eyewitness evidence is inconclusive and fabricated eyewitness reports have been presented to try to shore up the official story. Claims that DNA testing identified 63 of the 64 people on board, are mutually exclusive with claims that the plane was cremated, and with the official line on the WTC victims and the Bali bomb victims. =========================== Physical and mathematical analysis of Pentagon crash by Gerard Holmgren investigation77 at hotmail.com It is not in dispute that something hit the Pentagon wall and damaged it. Neither is it in dispute that AA 77 is missing. But was AA 77 involved in the Pentagon incident? This article presents an analysis of the physical aspects of the incident, and concludes with a brief examination of the issue of eyewitnesses. PHYSICAL AND MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS OF PENTAGON CRASH. by Gerard Holmgren investigation77 at hotmail.com Copyright: Gerard Holmgren. October 23 2002.This work may be freely copied and distributed without permission as long as it is not for commercial purposes. Please include the author's name, the web adress where you found it, and the copyright notice. WHERE IS THE WRECKAGE OF AA 77? INSIDE THE BUILDING? OUTSIDE THE BUILDING? CREMATED? OR NEVER THERE? It is alleged that on Sept 11, 2001 a hijacked Boeing 757, American Airlines Flight 77, hit the Pentagon. It is not in dispute that something hit the Pentagon wall and damaged it. Neither is it in dispute that AA 77 is missing. But was AA 77 involved in the Pentagon incident? This article presents an analysis of the physical aspects of the incident, and concludes with a brief examination of the issue of eyewitnesses. The Sept 11 crashes are unique and unprecedented events in the history of both the press and aviation. In many cases, light plane crashes involving 2 to 3 people have triggered investigations which continued for years. Considering that the explosion and cremation of planes had never before happened, the lack of reporting and/or official investigation is doubly puzzling. The issue of whether a crash results from sabotage or accident should be irrelevant to the alarming question of why four planes allegedly cremated themselves as a result of low to medium impact crashes. One of the purposes of accident reconstruction in plane crashes is to determine what failed and therefore what is subject to improvement. Normally, the press releases the findings as news in the public interest. Professional analytical information has not been released on the September 11 crashes. If it exists (for insurance purposes, for instance), it has not been released. Why have authorities and the press treated the Sept 11 crashes differently? Who is doing the professional analysis and why does the public not have access to it? PART 1. PLANE SPECIFICATIONS Sourced from http://a188.g.akamaitech.net/f/188/920/15m/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- srv/nation/graphics/attack_757200.htm and http://www.boeing.com/commercial/757family/pf/pf_200tech.html Wingspan 124 ft 10 in (hereafter rounded to 125 ft) Length 155 ft 3 in (rounded to 155 ft) Tail height (with landing gear extended ) 44 ft 6 in Fuselage Width 12 ft 4 in (rounded to 12 ft ) Max fuel capacity 11,489 gallons Max range 4449 miles Max take off weight 255,000 lb. The following specifications were not directly available from any source I could find, but I calculated them based on the above figures, after measuring diagrams and photos. Exact accuracy cannot be guaranteed, but they are close and are sufficient for this analysis. Tail height (without landing gear extended) 35 ft Fuselage height (without landing gear extended) 14 ft 6 in (7 ft 3 in above wings, 7 ft 3 in below wings) Length of each wing 56 ft 3 in Engine diameter. 9 ft. 6 in Engine length 11 ft 6 in Position of engine mounting on wing. Outer edge of engine 25 ft from where wing joins fuselage. Width of each tail fin 15 ft 6 in Total tail fin span 39 ft (fuselage is narrower at this point) An estimated 5 ft of engine is below fuselage level, making the total height of the aircraft without landing gear extended, 40 ft. You'll find the calculations throughout this article easier to critically analyze, if you write down the above figures before continuing. PART 2. ESTIMATIONS OF HOLE DIMENSIONS Based on this and other similar photos, http://www.pbase.com/image/536173 I have estimated the hole in the Pentagon wall to be about 65 ft wide, by comparing it with the height of the building which is 77 ft. http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pentagon/facts.html Depth of damage. This is more complex.The Pentagon consists of 5 rings of building, each separated by a space between. I couldn't find any source which directly stated figures for the depth of the rings and the spaces, and the perspective problems of photos make it more difficult to estimate than the width. On the basis of aerial photos, ( see the links below ) I have estimated the depth of the ring itself to be about 32 ft, and the open space behind it, about the same. The outer ring collapsed , leaving a total depth of about 65 ft that the plane could potentially have fitted into, considering that the second ring of the building was intact. http://www.defenselink.mil/photos/Sep2001/010914-F-8006R-002.jpg http://www.asile.org/citoyens/numero13/pentagone/erreurs_en.htm It should be noted that the original hole was much smaller. The 65 ft wide hole developed when a section of the wall collapsed later. Look at the following photos, taken soon after the crash, before that section of wall collapsed. The thick smoke and the water jets from the firefighters make it difficult to get a clear view, but we can determine that the hole wasn't anywhere near even 40 ft wide. Probably less than 20. In most of the photos, it's difficult to find any hole at all. http://66.129.143.7/june2aa.htm http://www.asile.org/citoyens/numero13/pentagone/erreurs_en.htm (see the two photos in question 7 ) http://www.ifrance.fr/silentbutdeadly/ (click on the trajectory section and scroll to the photo with the caption "Hole center"and the subsequent photos) Calculations based on the 65 ft wide and deep (including open space between the rings) hole which developed later, are unreasonably generous to the 757 argument. Nevertheless, I will continue to conduct the analysis on that basis. I am going to attempt to prove that it was physically possible for a Boeing 757 to crash into that section of wall, in a manner consistent with the photographic evidence. If I manage to prove that it was physically possible, that doesn't prove that it happened - it simply keeps the argument alive. If it proves to be impossible, even by expanding the assumed hole to orders of magnitude greater than what it really was, then it didn't happen and the argument is concluded. PART 3. ENTRY IMPACT CALCULATIONS AT 90 DEGREE FUSELAGE ANGLE By what means could a plane with a wingspan of 125 ft and a length of 155 ft fly into a building, leaving a hole 65 ft by 65 ft, leaving no significant wreckage outside? Is it possible to calculate a wing angle at which the plane might have fitted through? If not, where is the wreckage that did not enter the building? The plane cannot have impacted with the wings in a near parallel to the ground position and have had the wings enter the building. If it impacted in this manner, the wings must have broken off before they had a chance to hit the building. 125 ft of wing cannot pass through a wall without leaving a 125 ft hole. In order to suggest that the entire plane passed through the 65 ft hole, we must calculate the angle at which the wings would have to have been tilted. This can be easily done with some graph paper. Draw a baseline, representing 65 ft - the width of the hole. Draw vertical lines at each end, representing 77 ft - the height of the building. Draw a line representing 125 ft - the wingspan, starting it from the bottom left corner, towards the top right corner, at the angle necessary for the wingspan line not to intersect the right hand vertical line. You'll see that it is possible for the plane to pass through the 65 ft wide hole, but not for all of the wingspan to pass within the impact area. A significant portion of one wing has passed above the building, avoiding any impact. This section of wing measures about 25 ft - almost 1/2 a wing. The minimum possible amount of the plane which can have avoided the impact area is a figure something greater than this because the analysis has been biased by a number of factors, beyond credibility in favour of fitting the plane through. 1) assuming the original impact area to be 65 ft wide, when we know that it was significantly smaller. 2) assuming the lower wing tip to be at ground level, which it may not have been. 3) assuming the angle of the fuselage to the wall to be 90 degrees, meaning that the plane travelled straight through, not widening the impact area beyond it's own effective horizontal width. For example, if the fuselage struck at a 45 degree angle, with the same degree of wing tilt, it would create an impact hole 97.5 ft wide.You can plot this on graph paper too. If you draw two parallel lines straight up the page, crossing a line drawn horizontally, the width of line they pass across is equal to the distance between the parallel lines. If you draw the lines at a 45 degree angle to the horizontal line, they intersect with an area 1.5 times the distance between them. So as soon as any angle is postulated for the approach of the fuselage, then the wings need to be tilted harder in order to fit into the 65 ft hole, increasing the amount of wing that passed above the impact area. If we postulate the wings to be tilted at a ridiculous angle like 80 degrees, not only does this increase the area of wing that's passed above the impact zone, but also causes the fuselage to be almost at the top of the building, meaning that one of the 15 ft tail fins, now pointing almost straight up, starts to protrude above the impact zone. It doesn't matter how the angle of approach or wing tilt is juggled. It's impossible to fit anything remotely approaching the entire plane into the impact zone. Therefore, this substantial portion of the plane did not hit the building and cannot have been pulverized amid the rubble, and must be accounted for in some other way. To give an idea of how much the unaccounted for section of wing increases if we lessen the degree of bias, here is a different set of assumptions. Original width of hole 40 ft. Lower wing tip 10 ft above the ground. The amount of the wing which would now pass above the impact point would be about 47 ft. And the entire upper tail fin would no longer fit in sideways, because the bottom of the heavily tilted fuselage would be hard up against the right edge of the hole.The wing angle could be tilted more heavily to fit in the tail fin, but this further increases the length of wing passing above the impact zone. This is still assuming a fuselage angle of 90 degrees, and a hole larger than what it really was. So we have to stretch the variables beyond credibility in favour of the 757 theory just to reduce the unaccounted for piece of wing to 25 ft. Since this large portion of wing would not have had any serious impact upon it, there is no reason for it to have been pulverized into nothing, unless there was an explosion powerful enough to cremate the wings right to the extremities. If this did not occur, then this section of wing would have suffered no impact other than that of falling to the ground or on to a roof after it broke off. It's conceivable that it could have broken up into a few smaller pieces, but not to have been pulverized beyond evidence of it ever existing. So there should be evidence of a large piece of wing, or several pieces, large enough to be clearly identifiable, outside the crash site, or possibly sitting on top of the rubble. Most likely, it (they) would have finished up somewhere inside the courtyard or on a roof. The chance of it finishing up on top of the rubble would be small, the chance of being buried under the rubble, negligible, and the chance of being under the rubble and smashed into pieces too small to identify, effectively zero. No evidence exists of any such wreckage, and there is no reason why it should not have been found and presented if it existed. We must therefore conclude that if the 757 theory is to be kept alive, one has to postulate an explosion significant enough to cremate an entire length of wing beyond evidence that it ever existed. Because the only available energy source for such an explosion is the fuel, and an explosion must generate force equally in all directions, this forces us to the conclusion that most of the plane must have been similarly cremated by the explosion.There is also the problem of the tail. Being the last part of the plane to enter the building, the wall should already have been smashed down by the time it entered. So the tail should have suffered less impact than the forward part of the plane, increasing the likelihood of large identifiable pieces being found. That no evidence remains of it also forces us to postulate a massive explosion capable of cremating it. Before examining this question further, I will now do the same style of analysis on the scenario of the plane hitting the wall with the wings approximately parallel to the ground. If this happened, it is clear that the wings never contacted the wall. They certainly did not pass through. The hole is 60 ft too narrow, leaving 30 ft of each wing that cannot have passed through. And there is no evidence of any damage to the sides of the hole that would indicate contact of this type. If the wings did hit the wall, they can't have simply bounced off, without leaving any damage to the wall, while simultaneously cremating themselves from the force of the impact. Especially if the fuselage was apparently able to plough significantly into the building, before being cremated. Not only is the fuselage penetration indicative of the test of strength between the wall and the plane, but the wall would have been weakened by being split open by the fuselage, making it easier for the wings and tail as they followed. So in the event of the wings being parallel, since no wreckage exists to support their existence, we must also postulate an explosion significant enough to cremate the wings to their extremities, in order to account for the two missing 30 ft sections. Regardless of at what angle the wings may have been tilted, it is impossible for all of the wreckage to have been impacted, buried and crushed beyond identification within the rubble of the 65 ft by 65 ft area of wall damage. A significant section of at least one wing, something more than 25 ft long, never entered the impact zone, and cannot have been cremated by impact alone, and yet appears to have vanished. The lack of any other wreckage also indicates cremation. And since explosions generate force equally in all directions, one can't postulate an explosion powerful enough to cremate the extremities of the plane - tail, nose and wing tips without postulating that the entire plane was cremated. Therefore, it is either drop the 757 theory or postulate an explosion powerful enough to cremate the wreckage to the point that no evidence remains of it's existence. Before examining in detail the explosion question, lets look at the depth of the hole. 65 ft. The length of the alleged plane was 155 ft. Nothing identifiable remains of any part of the plane. If we were not to postulate an explosion we would have to suggest that the fuselage was compacted to 40% of it's original length - at least, just to explain the lack of damage to the second ring. That's assuming the entire depth of the first ring to have been burst through in the initial impact, and part of the compacted plane to have protruded out into the space between the two rings. But if such compacted wreckage came to rest there, it would be highly visible, and without a subsequent explosion, there is no way to explain where the compacted fuselage went. So the entire length of the plane needs to be compacted into the space of the first ring - about 30 ft - quite impossible. One would have to suggest that the fuselage compacted to about 20 % of it's length against the unyielding wall, and then suddenly burst through, coming to rest inside as a 30 ft lump amongst the rubble. Or alternatively, that it was still being compacted even after it burst through, meaning that as the rear of the plane entered, the rubble and the compacted remains of the front of the plane, were still providing significant resistance, like a person trying to hold a door shut against a stronger opponent, and being gradually pushed back. This can't happen. The wall either holds or it doesn't. The plane either penetrates or compacts. It doesn't do both simultaneously. It's possible that there could have been a certain amount of compaction before penetration, but at some point the wall had to give way, and once it did, there would be no more compaction. If it's going to give way, it will be early in the process. And yet, postulating a 50 % compaction of 90 % of the plane, before it suddenly burst through - which is quite impossible - would still leave a final fuselage length of 85 ft to be accounted for - also impossible. And this still leaves unsolved the problem of what happened to it afterwards. There's a severe problem not only with the width of the impact area, but also the depth. Neither the fuselage nor the wings can fit into the allotted space. Postulating an angled entry slightly reduces the amount of compaction required, but not by the orders of magnitude necessary to fundamentally solve the problem. For example, if one was to redo the last calculation on the basis of a 45 degree entry, it would be reduced to a 42% compaction of 90 % of the plane before bursting through, leaving an 85 foot length of wreckage, which lying at a 45 degree angle, would leave about 37 ft of fuselage extending beyond the first ring, almost reaching the second. And there would now be either a wider entry hole, or a greater section of wing which missed the impact zone. .Although debris of some kind exists, there is nothing of enough substance to provide any evidence of what kind of plane it was, and the volume is insufficient to account for anything remotely approaching the dimensions under discussion. This is further proof that in order to keep the 757 theory alive, we must postulate an explosion which cremated the plane. PART 4. EXPLOSION ANALYSIS AT 90 DEGREE FUSELAGE ANGLE The only available energy source for such an explosion is the fuel load, which means that the explosion must have been centred in the fuselage. An explosion generates force equally in all directions. It had to have cremated both ends of the plane, which means that the minimum force which can be postulated is one sufficient to destroy a tail or nose from 77 ft away. That 's what was required if the explosion occurred in the exact centre of the plane. Shifting it away from the centre means that less force is needed at one end, but more at another. Since the force must be generated equally in all directions, the smallest force we can postulate is one emanating from the centre, if we assume the force needed for cremation to be equal at both ends. Because any discrepancy in relation to that question is not calculable, I will assume that to be the case. If it is incorrect, it won't effect the integrity of the following analysis, because it reveals fundamental problems with the scenario as a whole, which can't be solved by shifting the problem from one part of the plane to another. An equal force must have been generated forward of the centre point, behind it, above it, and below it. (At least potentially so, if not blocked by the ground ) So we must draw a 3D circle around the centre of the plane, and know that every point on the edge of that circle was impacted by a force sufficient to cremate the tail of a plane, and that all points closer to the centre were subject to an even greater force. If the plane blew up as it was entering the building, there are two basic scenarios. 1) The centre of the explosion was inside the building. For example, the plane entered with the wings sharply titled, and exploded after the wings had entered (and passed above ) the impact area. 2) The explosion occurred outside the building, because it happened earlier in the process than in scenario 1). The previous analysis of the depth problem tells us that scenario 1) is impossible. If the plane was half way into the building (77 ft of penetration), then even allowing for 12 ft of compacting, the nose would have been hard up against the second ring when the explosion took place. There's no sign of such damage to the second ring. Nevertheless, I'll explore the full implications of the "inside the building" scenario, just to make sure that nothing is left out. Assuming half the plane to be inside the building, and the explosion to be just inside the hole, at this time the tail is still about 77 ft to the front of the wall. It's exposure to the blast is partly shielded by the fact that the explosion is actually inside the collapsing section of the building. The same goes for the nose which is, allowing for compaction, about 60 ft forward of the blast centre, outside the collapsing ring. And yet both were cremated. So we have to increase the alleged power of the blast to account for the shielding of the front and rear extremities. We can 't quantify the shielding, and must note that because the wall had been smashed down by this time, the shielding may have been small, but we can say that the force of the explosion was something greater than what was needed to cremate the nose and tail, had the plane been in the open. What would have received the greatest impact from this blast? The centre of the fuselage, and the first ring of the building. The explosion was right inside it. So the building was subject to a force significantly greater than that of the cremated nose and tail. What was the effect on the building of this massive blast ? Nothing, apparently. It had already been split open and weakened by the impact of the plane entering it. It appears to have suffered no extra damage as a result of the explosion. The wall face was negligibly damaged beyond a width of 65 ft - less, when we take into account that the original hole was smaller. Neither was the inside area of the wall, behind the face, significantly damaged width-wise beyond this point. Neither did the force of the explosion have any effect further into the building. The second ring, right next to the cremated nose, closer than the cremated tail, suffered no damage. If the explosion was centred in the middle of the 65 ft hole, just inside the building, then allowing for the width of the fuselage, it means that the wall suffered negligible sideways damage only 26 ft from the edges of the fuselage which was cremated. Speculation that the wall was of an extraordinarily strong construction, apart from suggesting an impossible strength, makes no contribution to explaining these anomalies. If it was so tough, then how did the plane slice it's way into it to begin with? We'd have to believe that in the test of strength between the plane and the wall, that the plane penetrated the solid wall, but was then completely obliterated by an explosion which had no effect on the now damaged and weakened building. This isn't possible. There's a further problem. A number of alleged witnesses claim that small pieces of the plane were scattered over a wide area. One (Mike Walter, who's report I reviewed in a previous article linked later in this article) said he saw debris up on the overpass. Penny Elgas (report reviewed later in this article, said a piece of the plane landed in her car. A number of photos ( examined later) purport to show small fragments of the plane, flung out considerable distances from the scene. But curiously, none of these alleged witnesses or any of the photos describe showers of rubble from the building. Why aren't there stone pieces scattered all over the place, if the building was the centrepoint of the explosion? But this is an aside from the main proof. The scenario of the explosion inside the building is impossible on two counts. 1) That an explosion of sufficient power to cremate a 100 ton aircraft, some of it at distances of 77 ft away, could have no impact on an already partly demolished stone building, which was at the centre of the blast. 2)That not enough length of plane could have entered the building, unless one is to suggest that the explosion occurred right at the front of the plane, which then forces one to increase it's alleged power by orders of magnitude to cremate the rear, more than 140 ft away, compounding the problems of reason 1. So it's impossible for the explosion to have occurred inside the building. In order to keep the 757 theory alive, we must postulate that the explosion took place outside the building. Then we have the same problem in reverse. Suppose the centre point of the explosion was the centre of the plane. If it took place when the wings were close to the wall, then the wall was still subject to the maximum force. A greater force than that applied to the tail. And the nose is now the part that's shielded, inside the wall. If the 125ft wingspan was parallel and right next to the wall and was cremated, then there should be 125 ft of severe damage along the wall, and an extensive area of gradually declining damage beyond this point. If we tilt the wings at 45 degrees, to reduce the effective horizontal width and effective height of the wingspan to about 90 ft, meaning that no part of the wing was further than 90 ft from the blast, we must still postulate an area of massively destructive force at least 90 ft wide along the wall face, with gradually declining severity of damage further to the sides. There can't have been a sudden cut off point for damage to the wall. It would have been pulverized to nothing at the centre point, gradually reducing in severity, to cosmetic damage such as broken windows, blackening and superficial face damage at a point significantly beyond the wingspan width. Since the wall shows negligible damage beyond 65 ft, the damaged area isn't wide enough to accommodate speculation of the nearby wings being blasted into nothing. Even if the plane went in at the crazy angle of a 90 degree wing tilt, the wing extremities covering a total span of 125 ft, above and below the explosion still have to be cremated, meaning that an equal span of force has to be generated sideways along the wallface. And yet somehow the building escapes with negligible damage beyond a total span of 65 ft. So this didn't happen either. The last hope is to suggest that the explosion took place almost at the instant of impact, before the plane had significantly penetrated the wall. This places the centre of the blast the maximum possible distance from the wall - about 77 ft. It makes no difference to try to compound this by suggesting that the blast was also further towards the back of the plane, because then we have to increase it's power, to account for the cremated nose. The wall, at the point where the nose struck, still has to be receiving a force equal to that necessary to destroy the nose. If we draw the 77 ft circle around the middle of the plane, the extremities of the 65 ft hole are only about 8 ft beyond the circle, meaning that this width of wall should still have been subject to massive force, and that we should still be seeing very significant damage beyond this width. At 50 ft either side of the centre of the nose, creating a wallface length of 100 ft, the wall is only about 16 ft from the circle. So although the scenario is not as ridiculous as the previous scenarios, it's still impossible to reconcile the narrow area of significant damage to the wall with the enormous forces being inflicted on the nearby plane. When one considers that only 16 ft away, the blast is powerful enough to cremate a plane tail or nose, the impact on the 100 ft section of wall should be dramatic. And this scenario creates another problem. It requires the postulation that there was no significant penetration of the plane into the wall. In this case, then virtually all of the damage we see to the wall, was caused by the explosion, not the impact. In this case, it's very difficult to create a plausible scenario for the shape and size of the damage. The force would have been at it's greatest in the centre where the nose was obliterated. It would have been gradually less as you look to the sides. So the original damage should have been V shaped, with the centre point of the V, in the middle of the 65 ft hole, and the wide shallow area at the outside wall. No such evidence exists. What we see is a neat rectangular hole. The obvious counter argument is that the original shape of the hole has been masked by the later collapse of one wedge of the wall, and that the early photos are too obscured by smoke and water to tell us exactly how far and in what shape the original damage extended. Quite so, but this admits that most of the damage wasn't even caused by the explosion directly, but simply by the secondary collapse, meaning that the original area of direct damage was tiny. For example, the points on the wall 20 ft each side of the centre, creating a total span of 40 ft, were only 5 ft further away than the tail, which was allegedly cremated. So this area should have been ferociously demolished in the original damage. Early photos show this wasn't the case, and only 15 ft further to each side - points which are only about 9 ft further from the blast than the tail, all we see are broken windows. Some are still intact. This photo demonstrates the absurdity of this scenario http://www.pbase.com/image/536173 The windows you can see just outside the damage area are only about 10 ft further away from the blast centre than the nose or tail would have been. Trying to solve this problem is futile.The fundamental problem is that the modest damage to the wall is not only irreconcilable with the impact of a such a large plane, but also irreconcilable with the explosive forces needed to destroy one. So any scenario of the plane hitting the building at a 90 degree fuselage angle is impossible. The wreckage is not inside the building, is not outside, and the force of a blast powerful enough to cremate the missing wreckage was impossible in the context of the wall damage. PART 5 ENTRY CALCULATIONS - FUSELAGE AT 45 DEGREES The above calculations and analysis were based on the assumption that the fuselage struck the wall at a 90 degree angle. This wasn't because I necessarily believe that whatever hit the wall did so at this angle. It was because it a) favoured the 757 theory to the maximum, by keeping the entry point as narrow as possible, and b) kept the maths simple as an introductory reference point to the problem.The calculations change for every different angle assumed. It's impractical to do a separate analysis for every possible angle, but neither is it necessary. It is sufficient to take a snapshot half way through the range of possibilities. By assuming a fuselage angle of 45 degrees, we gain an insight into the trend of how the problem changes by angling the fuselage. First, the parallel plane scenario. Plotted on graph paper, this shows that at the point that the fuselage strikes the wall, the inner wing tip is only about 18 ft from the wall. If the fuselage continued to drive into the wall at this angle, the wingtip would strike the wall about 65 ft from the near edge of the hole made by the fuselage. If the wing was to slice into the wall, we should see a continuos rip in the wall extending about 65 ft until it joined up with the fuselage hole. Meanwhile, as the fuselage was driving deeper and wider, it would create it's own hole moving further away at 45 degrees. If the wall collapsed along the fuselage impact area, then we'd see one long hole made by the fuselage. If it punched through cleanly, we'd see a 45 degree tunnel, and a separate hole starting 65 ft away from the southern edge, (assuming the plane to have been coming from the south west.) From broadcaster at syhlleti.org Sat Oct 26 23:38:32 2002 From: broadcaster at syhlleti.org (broadcaster at syhlleti.org) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 2002 23:38:32 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] Important Message (See this poem) - In-Reply-To: <20021026044304.1746.51351.Mailman@mail.sarai.net> References: <20021026044304.1746.51351.Mailman@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <1069.203.200.121.44.1035655712.squirrel@smtp.spectrum.in> Today's Topics: > > 1. Re:Harsh Kapoor /Redress Alienation in Gujarat Now (Farah Naqvi) > (Dr. Reyhan Chaudhuri) 2. Riotous Sentimentalism > (=?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?=) > > --__--__-- > > Message: 1 > From: "Dr. Reyhan Chaudhuri" > > IMPLOSION > Gujarat burnt > but were refugees really retrieved ? > Can State Presiders & prime poets be believed > As salvage offers and camp closures > are indefinitely spurned. > > Rather than raise a stink > One can only think , > of one's own skin and ofcourse the kin. > Not to forget above all the darling children. > Forget the future , world, peace and harmony. > Fobbing the mob could be the best alimony. > > A well wisher seriously suggested: > Don't wear the name tag on way to work, > keep it in the bag to say the least. > The driver maybe chauffeur tested > and your route may well be upper crusted > But this is India my dear friend > you never know who turns beast instead > > The mob have no faces you know > they leave no trace as they go > The number which the individual replaces > The sane timbre unrest displaces. > Is swift and unrelenting > Even at the judicial hustings. > > All this may sound repetitive > So very spitty & sordid > As anyway the bullish, > you see lord it > And fiends fiercely fjord it > > Prayers are namby pamby > Literacy is exclusive and comely > The arts are easily distorted > Talk and therapy could be contorted > Even Music can be candied > > So that leaves us just > With heightened feelings > Deadened , distanced dealings? > When some serious spirited action > and judicial phenomenal traction > Could make unmistakable reparation; > > > Must we mask and shade > the shame? > Dismiss the ravage & rape; > Encumber grievances, > enflame the blame. > Must we always incinerate > To mute the implosion? > > Yours worriedly, > R.Chaudhuri > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Harsh Kapoor" > To: > Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 5:29 AM > Subject: [Reader-list] Redress Alienation in Gujarat Now (Farah Naqvi) > > >> The Times of India >> WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2002 >> EDITORIAL >> LEADER ARTICLE >> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/articleshow?artid=25993353 >> >> Compromised Citizenship >> Redress Alienation in Gujarat Now >> >> FARAH NAQVI >> >> Now that the debris in Gujarat has temporarily settled (or has it?), >> and cameras turned away from scenes of violence (at the moment >> they're trained on the triumphant glow of Indian democracy in >> Kashmir), let us finally count the dead. In terms of lives lost, we >> know estimates range from 2,000 to 3,000. But what about the living >> dead? The scores of Gujarati Muslims who exist in the twilight zone of >> silence, painfully adjusting themselves to life in no-man's land for >> they are no longer treated as equal citizens of India. >> What rights of citizenship the burnt and looted Gujarati Muslim had >> have finally been stripped. When my house is razed, children killed >> and women raped, I naturally head to the police station. I seek >> justice through the legal system. I may have little faith in the >> system to deliver, but I do it still. Because that is my right. That >> is the law. The idea of legal recourse and entitlement of citizenship >> is powerful enough to override the reality of tedious legal >> processes, and low conviction rates. >> In troubled times we invoke our citizenship rights; we get solace from >> it. But in Gujarat the natural entitlement of citizenship is over. In >> its place has arrived alienation, a word used often in >> decades past to describe the mood in Kashmir. Kashmiri Muslims were >> alienated from the Indian nation, we were told. We needed to bring >> them back. >> So today, as we bask in the democratic revival in Kashmir, let us >> worry for Gujarat. For, in Gujarat, alienation has taken root. It's >> been coming for a while. Not just in Gujarat, but elsewhere too. The >> 140 million Muslims of India, no less than 12 per cent of the >> population, have never had more than 5 per cent of representation in >> state assemblies or Parliament. >> In the services (IAS, IPS and IFS) Muslims range from under 3 per cent >> to 3.5 per cent. In the private sector, the number of Muslims in >> executive posts ranges from zero to perhaps 5 per cent. More than half >> the urban Muslim population lives below the poverty line. >> The facts are endless, the intent clear, the sum total spells >> alienation. And now, there's Gujarat. I've been back to Gujarat >> several times in these past seven months as part of a women's >> fact-finding team, as an activist, as a concerned citizen. In >> district after district, Muslims are living lives of humiliation. It's >> called samjhauta, compromise; allowed back into their towns and >> villages on condition that they will not file police complaints, not >> name those who committed violence against them. Step out of line and >> you will be hounded out. >> A father in Anand district looks at me, eyes pools of deadened pain, >> and describes the rape of his daughter. He saw them but there is no >> police case. No names. No justice. I have to live here, he says. But >> he no longer has any citizenship rights. >> In another village in Dahod district, a group of women huddle >> together in the glow of a solitary kerosene lamp, looking >> suspiciously at the bindi on my forehead, and say nothing happened >> here. A fellow activist encourages them, "You can tell her, she's >> Muslim?". They look at me with new eyes, and slowly words start >> tumbling out. How they were raped, how they ran -- it is an >> avalanche, there are so many, I lose count. They know the rapists. But >> they are not filing any cases. Like many others in Gujarat, this too >> is a compromise village. >> I am pained that they trust me not because I am human, but because I >> have a Muslim name. That too is alienation. In the few villages where >> Muslims have dared to seek legal redress, their economic survival >> stands threatened -- their businesses boycotted, their services >> shunned. Still they hang in there teetering between survival of the >> flesh and survival of the spirit. That's alienation. >> Meanwhile the sangh parivar thunders on about minority appeasement. >> Appeasement. How did we allow it to become such a dirty word? I >> looked it up in my dictionary. Among other things, it also means >> propitiation to admit a fault and, by trying to make amends, to allay >> hostile feelings. Do it, for the sake of India. Make amends to the >> Muslims of Gujarat before their alienation turns into another >> bleeding Kashmir-like wound. >> Take away the Haj subsidy if need be, but give them back their >> citizenship. But then that's the last thing that elements of the sangh >> parivar want. They want open wounds. So Narendra Modi is >> allowed to ride atop a gaurav rath. Hurl invectives at miyan >> Musharraf, keep alive the Pakistani threat. It should surprise no one >> that people like Bal Thackeray are against troop withdrawal from the >> border. The enemy must be kept alive inside and outside. >> For the Gujarati Muslim, it will mean a life of terror and the tag of >> a terrorist. Small mercy that when push comes to shove, he will not be >> allowed to really die. Because there is truly nothing more useless >> than a dead enemy. So what if it also means killing the idea of India. >> (The author is a freelance writer and activist) >> _________________________________________ 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: >> > > > > --__--__-- > > Message: 2 > Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 23:19:21 +0100 (BST) > From: =?iso-8859-1?q?pratap=20pandey?= > To: reader-list at sarai.net > Subject: [Reader-list] Riotous Sentimentalism > > --0-2113309266-1035584361=:50517 > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit > > > Dear All, > > Sentimentalism is an ethic, a posture, a mode of representation, a > narrative style, a gargoylic closure that emerged in the foment leading > to the French Revolution. (I am regurgitating, with tears forming in my > eyes, my inability to possess or even read Peter Brooks' classic text > on this. I place a bucket under each eye.) > > Every human being is equal. Why? Because they cry. > > This is a re-statement of: Every human being is equal because they eat, > piss, and crap. > > [Sentimentalism's relation to Menippean satire is extremely > interesting. In Menippean satire, everyone is equal because everyone > gorges, and pisses and craps by the litre and the tonne. In medieval, > and even early modern Europe, till the time the peasantry possesses the > ability to pamphleteer, Menippean satire is the mode in which the > excesses of the rich are represented. With the supersession of > mercantilism into primitive accumulation of capital, came a new regime > of representation that excluded such expressivities. In an enlightened > universe and emergent burgher culture, it was difficult to tell such > enteric truths. Refinement was everything. > > In a time of the transformation of the peasantry into labour, > refinement relegated Menippean satire, and peasant celebration, to the > sphere of obscenity. Fathers had banned Rabelais; sons were told to > read the later Dryden, or Racine; grandsons, Shaftesbury's moral > philosophy. Of course, you could read "well-written" satire. It was > witty and intellectual; it never crossed boundaries, Voltaire > notwithstanding. > > The appropriation of Menippean satire is then filled in in the form of > the emergence of sentimentalism. Repression, or the excess of it, finds > a new outlet. > > There is a change here, in how "excess" is defined. There is an attempt > to shift from a fantasy of control to a fantasy of agency. > > The latter fantasy, too, is appropriated. > > And how. It is turned into a regime of absolute victimisation, an > invitation to recognise the absolute overtaking of the subject by > external forces not under control. This eminently suited the 19th > century European bourgeosie, which drew its strengths from a belief in > permanent victimisation. It suited, even more, the ever-in-flux petty > bourgeosie, which based its lifestyle on an ethic of humiliation] > > From the French Revolution to commentary on Gujarat is really jumping > the gun (what does this idiom mean?). Yet I cannot but help see a > disjunction, and one continuity. > > The disjunction lies in the manner in which appropriated, distorted, > unrevolutionary sentimentalism (it has travelled wherever there exists > a middle class; should we thank Charles Dickens for it?) is today > unleashed as sublimatory vehicle to Global Aeducated Indian invested > indifference to, and deliberate disinterest in, the fascisisation (ugh! > what a noun!) of the Indian polity. (Khaa! what a sentence!) The > forwarded Farah Naqvi article turns me into Nirupa Roy: everytime she > comes into the scene, buckets fill up with tears. Naqvi wants to touch > my sensitivities. In the process, she enjoins me to bring in 2 buckets, > one under each eye. Precisely because of its sensitivities, her article > is a perfect example of how to assuage false (comfortable) anxieties. > > [I can quote ad infinitum over here. If you want, readers, I'll do it] > > The continuity lies in always finding the Self as victim, and so > implicilty and explicitly not bothering about the shape, size, visage, > predilections, of the perpetrator. > > Please, please, please, please, please, please. Can I be informed about > the perpetrators? Ms Naqvi, others, tell us the truth about Gujarat? > > To talk incessantly, in sentimentalist fashion, about the victims of > the Gujarat unfolding-massacre, is to silkily aeducatedly masturbate. > > Who pissed on Muslims in gujarat? Who crapped on them, wilfully and > with full and guaranteed freedom? Who's gorged, and are still gorging, > on them? When will I read an ethnography of the Perpetrator, > beautifully written? > > Tell me. Please, please, please, tell me. I am already angst- and > guilt-ridden. Don't flog me. I don't need you to throw victim-shit on > me. I am doing that all the time myself. Throw perpetrator-crap at me. > I will revel in it. Investigate the criminals. Tell me about them. I > need to know about them. > > To hell with sentimentalist coverage and commentary on Gujarat. Get > real. > > Miley sewer meraa tumhara > > to sewer baney humaraa > > yours, > > pp > > Post your ad on Yahoo! India Autos.Check out the used Maruti, Fiat and > Ford models on sale now. --0-2113309266-1035584361=:50517 > Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit > >

Dear All,

>

Sentimentalism is an ethic, a posture, a mode of representation, a > narrative style, a gargoylic closure that emerged in the > foment leading to the French Revolution. (I am regurgitating, with > tears forming in my eyes, my inability to possess or even read > Peter Brooks' classic text on this. I place a bucket under > each eye.)

Every human being is equal. Why? Because > they cry.

>

This is a re-statement of: Every human being is equal because they > eat, piss, and crap. 

[Sentimentalism's relation to > Menippean satire is extremely interesting. In Menippean satire, > everyone is equal because everyone gorges, and pisses and craps by the > litre and the tonne. In medieval, and even early modern > Europe, till the time the peasantry possesses the ability to > pamphleteer, Menippean satire is the mode in which the excesses of the > rich are represented. With the supersession of mercantilism into > primitive accumulation of capital, came a new regime of representation > that excluded such expressivities. In an enlightened universe and > emergent burgher culture, it was difficult to tell such enteric truths. > Refinement was everything.

In a time of the transformation of > the peasantry into labour, refinement relegated Menippean satire, > and peasant celebration, to the sphere of obscenity. Fathers > had banned Rabelais; sons were told to read the later Dryden, or > Racine; grandsons, Shaftesbury's moral philosophy. Of course, you > could read "well-written" satire. It was witty and intellectual; it > never crossed boundaries, Voltaire notwithstanding.

The > appropriation of Menippean satire is then filled in in the form of the > emergence of sentimentalism. Repression, or the excess of > it, finds a new outlet.

There is a change here, in how > "excess" is defined. There is an attempt to shift from a > fantasy of control to a fantasy of agency.

The latter fantasy, > too, is appropriated.

>

And how. It is turned into a regime of absolute victimisation, an > invitation to recognise the absolute overtaking of the subject by > external forces not under control. This eminently suited the 19th > century European bourgeosie, which drew its strengths from a belief in > permanent victimisation. It suited, even more, the ever-in-flux petty > bourgeosie, which based its lifestyle on an ethic of > humiliation] 

From the French Revolution to commentary on > Gujarat is really jumping the gun (what does this idiom mean?). Yet I > cannot but help see a disjunction, and one continuity.

The > disjunction lies in the manner in which appropriated, distorted, > unrevolutionary sentimentalism (it has travelled wherever there > exists a middle class; should we thank Charles Dickens for it?) is > today unleashed as sublimatory vehicle to Global Aeducated Indian > invested indifference to, and deliberate disinterest in, the > fascisisation (ugh! what a noun!) of the Indian polity. (Khaa! what a > sentence!) The forwarded Farah Naqvi article turns me into Nirupa Roy: > everytime she comes into the scene, buckets fill up with tears. > Naqvi wants to touch my sensitivities. In the process, she enjoins me > to bring in 2 buckets, one under each eye. Precisely because > of its sensitivities, her article is a perfect example of how to > assuage false (comfortable) anxieties. 

[I can quote ad > infinitum over here. If you want, readers, I'll do it]

The > continuity lies in always finding the Self as victim, and so implicilty > and explicitly not bothering about the shape, size, visage, > predilections, of the perpetrator. 

Please, please, please, > please, please, please. Can I be informed about the perpetrators? > Ms Naqvi, others, tell us the truth about Gujarat?

To talk > incessantly, in sentimentalist fashion, about the victims of the > Gujarat unfolding-massacre, is to silkily aeducatedly masturbate.

>

Who pissed on Muslims in gujarat? Who crapped on them, wilfully > and with full and guaranteed freedom? Who's gorged, and are > still gorging, on them? When will I read an ethnography of the > Perpetrator, beautifully written?

Tell me. Please, please, > please, tell me. I am already angst- and guilt-ridden. Don't flog me. I > don't need you to throw victim-shit on me. I am doing that all the time > myself. Throw perpetrator-crap at me. I will revel in it. Investigate > the criminals. Tell me about them. I need to know about them.

To > hell with sentimentalist coverage and commentary on Gujarat. Get > real.

Miley sewer meraa tumhara

>

to sewer baney humaraa

>

yours,

>

pp      

src="http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/icon/auto.gif" height=17 > width=28> Post your ad on Yahoo! India Autos. > Check out the used href="http://in.classifieds.yahoo.com/display/autos? ct_hft=ct_hft=search/list&leve > l=0:Car&mtype=86308693:Maruti" target="_blank">Maruti, href="http://in.classifieds.yahoo.com/display/autos? ct_hft=ct_hft=search/list&lev > el=0:Car&mtype=86308611:Fiat" target="_blank">Fiat and href="http://in.classifieds.yahoo.com/display/autos? ct_hft=ct_hft=search/list&leve > l=0:Car&mtype=86308612:Ford" target="_blank">Ford models on sale > now. --0-2113309266-1035584361=:50517-- > > > --__--__-- > > _________________________________________ 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 chaiyah at hotmail.com Sun Oct 27 01:50:35 2002 From: chaiyah at hotmail.com (m emily cragg) Date: Sat, 26 Oct 2002 20:20:35 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] GWB,SR IS AN ILLUMINATI. WHAT ARE THEIR PUBLISHED GOALS? Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021026/25b50f19/attachment.html From poetrylist_editor at yahoo.com Sun Oct 27 12:41:50 2002 From: poetrylist_editor at yahoo.com (Zachie) Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2002 02:11:50 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Writers wanted, readers needed Message-ID: <200210271310.g9RDADDO017382@mail.sarai.net> Students, teachers, readers, and writers alike, gather your paper, uncap your pens, and dust off your reading glasses because Poetrylist is back and bigger than ever. If you're a talented ambitious writer looking for a way to share your art or simply someone who loves poetry in general read on because Poetrylist will fit your needs. Poetrylist is an online newsletter that tackles many aspects of the art. Writers are able submit works and read and rate others. Readers are able to enjoy the art form that they love so much. Email Zach back for more info. Please mention ID# 121 ___________________________________________________________________________ Spam Watch: If you feel this email has come to you by error or is spam please contact Bobby Whetzel with the ID# containted in the email. poetrylist at aol.com Thank you Bobby Whetzel Chief Editor of Poetrylist online newsletter From chaiyah at hotmail.com Wed Oct 30 18:49:55 2002 From: chaiyah at hotmail.com (m emily cragg) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 13:19:55 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Again, as usual, corporate interests are intervening against ANYTHING FREE Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021030/fe08180b/attachment.html From chaiyah at hotmail.com Thu Oct 31 02:03:07 2002 From: chaiyah at hotmail.com (m emily cragg) Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 20:33:07 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: Rudy Giuliani College Tour Tonight Ocotober 30, 2002 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021030/5044a3cb/attachment.html From rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com Thu Oct 31 14:12:33 2002 From: rana_dasgupta at yahoo.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 00:42:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] The residue In-Reply-To: <02103014060204.00813@pammi.sarai.kit> Message-ID: <20021031084233.71017.qmail@web41113.mail.yahoo.com> I have had a number of discussions with Jeebesh and Monica recently about what Jeebesh calls the 'residue' of capitalism; the build-up within the 'guts' of the system of a kind of undigestible excess that cannot be absorbed and must eventually be expelled in dramatic, possibly violent, ways. The most obvious example of what he is talking about is the enormous migration of people (50 million people, or 1/8 the population) out of Europe at the end of C19/beginning of C20, a process which took much of the underclass out of circulation and removed many of the social and economic pressures threatening the system as a whole. Hobsbawm uses this fact to account in part for the differing histories of Britain/France and Italy/Germany: the first two were able to alter their domestic social pressures significantly by moving people around a global empire; the second two did not have that recourse, and authoritarian governments were an obvious alternative solution. I think this idea of the 'residue' needs more thought, and am pasting below my summaries of two articles from a recent edition of Biblio, one by Deepak Nayyer and one by Benedict Anderson, in order to provoke discussion. I think it's worthwhile to think this through further because it has an obvious bearing on phenomena such as the 2 million people, mostly men, who are removed from society to jail in the US, or the growing popularity around the world of anti-immigration as a core political platform. Benedict Anderson's article talks about the reasons why states have become so much more fanatical about their borders, esp since 1945. Nayyar's article looks at the immobility of labour in this latter phase of globalisation compared to its great mobility in 1870-1914. Together they are to me very suggestive about the build-up of 'residue' in modern states and the measures that these states are taking to try and control this. We have seen several states trying the Britain/France approach, albeit in smaller ways: Malaysia suddenly expelling all illegal foreign workers (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/asia-pacific/2163440.stm), though there were some 300,000 of them who were very integrated into the economy. And we have many states taking more authoritarian positions with regard to dissent, refugees, immigration, labour unrest etc. R Deepak Nayyar: Globalisation once more Globalisation is not new: 1870-1914 was another phase of intense integration of world economy. What can we learn from historical parallel? Striking parallels in the conditions which brought about both phases. -- In C19 there were almost no restrictions on movement of goods, capital and labour across national boundaries. Since 1950s there has been progressive dismantling of barriers to international economic transactions once again. -- Advent of new efficient and predictable modes of international travel and communication (steamship, railway and telegraph in C19). -- Foundations for new kinds of internationally-integrated production (as opposed to craft economy). In C19-early C20: assembly lines developed by Ford and management techniques developed by Taylor. -- Dominant political power (Britain) with currency that guaranteed international exchange (pound sterling). US and dollar of course have now taken this role. But fundamental differences also. These lie in sphere of movements of people across borders. C19 - no restrictions. Passports seldom needed and immigrants granted citizenship with ease. 1870-1914 - 50 million people left Europe of whom 2/3 went to USA, remaining 1/3 to Canada, Australia, NZ, South Africa, Argentina and Brazil. This figure is 1/8 total population of Europe in 1900. Some countries gave up 20% of their population. Movement around empire also enormous. Following abolition of slavery in British Empire, 50 million people left India and China to work as labourers on mines, plantations and construction in LatinAmerica, the Caribean, Southern Africa, Southeast Asia etc. The destinations were mostly British, French, Dutch and German colonies that combined European capital with Asian labour for profit. In latter phase of globalisation, since early 1970s, labour flows have been reduced to trickle by immigration laws. The present phase of globalisation has found substittues for labour mobility in the form of trade flows and and investment flows. Idealogues like Jeffrey Sachs see C19 globalisation as the catalyst for global development and period of 1914-1970 as wasted decades. Current globalisation is unlocking future of world again - particularly for developing and formerly communist world. "It needs to be emphasised that this normative and prescriptive view of globalisation is driven in part by ideology and in part by hope. It is certainly not borne out by history. For those who recall the development experience of the late 19th century, it should be obvious that the process of globalisation will not reproduce or replicate United States everywhere just as it did not reproduce or replicate Britain everywhere a century earlier." C19 - most of gains accrued to imperial centres that exported capital and imported commodities. Some other countries like USA and Canada also gained. Income gap between richest and poorest countries *within Europe* was 3:1 in 1820 and 11:1 in 1913. Experience for poorer countries still of course worse. In some of the most open economies of the world - India, China and Indonesia - there was industrial and economic regression during this period. These countries had some of the lowest tarrifs in the world and were the largest recipients of foreign investment. The reality of this later phase of globalisation has been similar. 1970s-90s world economy diverged, not converged. Poverty is much greater problem than during the 'managed' period of capitalism - 1940s to 70s. Why? -- Trade liberalisation made labour market more difficult for unskilled labour. Labour has lost share of capital nearly everywhere. Tax reforms and mobility of capital compared to labour emphasised this. --Financial markets demand near-zero inflation. Fiscal policy is geared towards this at the expense of economic growth and employment. -- Excess supply of labour depressing wages. -- Consolidation of market power in hands of global firms. --Competition between states for investment leading to 'race to the bottom'. Late 1990s top 20% of world owned 86% of wealth; bottom 20% 1%. Wealth ratio was 32:1 in 1970s and 74:1 in 1997. Many countries have been entirely left out of the global market with no access to capital, markets etc while facing stiff competition from abroad. In addition to these bare facts, the high visibility of the lifestyles of those who have enjoyed the fruits of this process creates additional stress for those who have not. Some seek to achieve a similar life through crime and violence. Some seek refuge in ethnic identities, cultural chauvinism or religious fundamentalism. Globalisation erodes social stability and thus provokes social tensions within countries in same way as in late C19. "The fundamental objective should be to ensure decent living conditions for people - ordinary people - as the welfare of humankind is the essence of development. The quest for a more equitable distribution of income, wealth and power between countries will have to be an integral part of any attempt to move from a world economy to a world community." Benedict Anderson: Long Live the Nation Useful point of departure for considering relationship between nation-state and cosmopolitanism is the comparison of scale of violence between nation-states and within nation-states over past 57 years (nuclear age). Worst wars in Korea and Vietnam. But war deaths dwarfed by 'unnatural' deaths within states. China, India, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Yugoslavia. Striking difference with first half of century. Why? -- Nuclear weapons ruled out major wars between great powers after 1945 and one of the traditional aims of military conflict - territorial gain. Proxy wars instead. -- Development of cartel in world arms market. 97% of all nations became incapable of self-armament in 19th century European manner. these nations can only go to war with each other if armed by gifts, loans etc from cartel. With collapse of USSR cartel has grown smaller - basically US. (US has since 1945 participated in far more wars than any other country and killed more foreigners.) At the same time, this cartelisation means that all governments have military power dwarfing what their citizens have access to. Impotence on international scale for most states is paralleled with internal monopoly. -- Hegemony of the 'national idea' and its enshrinement in UN. Last big rearrangement of territories took place in 1940s and is unlikely to be repeated. Occupations have been rare. India in Goa was successful but Indonesia in East Timor was eventually not, nor Iraq in Kuwait. Israel is unlikely to be ultimately successful in Palestine. When boundaries change these days they do through internal fracture - USSR, Yugoslavia, Ethiopia - and perhaps China and India in the future. One can imagine an independent Kashmir in the UN one day, but not the absorption of Bangladesh into India; an independent Tibet but not the disappearance of Mongolia or Korea into China. The world order stands by the idea of the state and it is unlikely that the nations in the UN will disappear, though new ones will definitely appear. This is significant shift. The period of transnational dynasties was one where territories were moved around easily. Domestic and imperial possessions were joined and separated by dynastic marriages, commercial deals etc. But the loss of possibilities for adding territory has drastically accentuated the pain of losing it. Secession is recognised as irreversible. "The national territory, modernly understood, was fundamentally opposed to the imperial domain; it belonged permanently to a People. Its liquidation or annexation was a genocidal catastrophe; and its expansion was always theoretically limited." Anderson goes on to make various arguments about the need, within this unchallengeable framework of nation-states, for 'healthy' nations, for which he has various prescriptions. He dismisses arguments that the nation state itself is no longer a viable institution and says that the only way to avoid the principle kind of violence in the world - intrastate violence - is to create open states that provide good opportunities to their citizens. This is OK as far as it goes. But it's the foregoing insights that are useful about this essay. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ From areflagan at artpanorama.com Thu Oct 31 22:59:33 2002 From: areflagan at artpanorama.com (Are Flagan) Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2002 12:29:33 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] The residue In-Reply-To: <20021031084233.71017.qmail@web41113.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: In the wealth of nations, published in 1776 along with the declaration of independence (but on another continent, of course), adam smith sketched out the parameters of market capitalism, but he struggled with the mechanisms that set the value of goods. What actually determines how much something is worth? The answer essentially revolved around the cost of labor, but this immediately raised another question about profits. How could such a system grow through a surplus? Smith's solution was the recognition that accounts for the residual effect; those with the means of production had to pay their workers less than their labors were worth and keep or invest the difference to accumulate capital. The very founding principle of market capitalism is hence uneven development and all the figures quoted in the articles are what we succinctly call the widening gap between rich and poor. It happens on a local scale, between people, and on a global scale, between countries, and at an accelerated rate. For the system to maintain and increase its profitable margin, capital must be able to migrate to places and conditions where the return is greatest -- this is third world labor. When populations of workers start to move (countering the move of corporations coming to them, like the recent move of Quark, the software company, to India), to increase their own worth by securing higher returns on their toils, the profits decrease and the the balance of development shifts away from accumulation toward mere maintenance. It is easy to see why and how borders play an increasingly important role in keeping the flow of capital directional, while the cheapest labor remains unable to escape the exploitative conditions of its plundered country. I think what you say about incarcerations internally is absolutely correct. But consider also camps like Woomera in Australia, Sangatte in France, Yarl's Wood (spelling ?) in England, even X-Ray on a US base in Cuba. These are interment camps in legal limbo, some even run by corporations (like Group 4/Wackenhut) not governments, intended to stop these migrations and simultaneously make dispossessed people disappear, without identities, national and otherwise since they are now considered entirely without status, rights and arguably worth. I believe this is the clearest current example of the residue effect you talk about. And it is certainly a topic that desperately needs visibility. -af From pop at 0gmt0.org Mon Oct 28 22:21:03 2002 From: pop at 0gmt0.org (pop ***) Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 09:51:03 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] Call for Proposal / Convocatoria Message-ID: <200210282250.g9SMoXDO001153@mail.sarai.net> GTM is a trandisciplinary collective that is building a site for colaboratives and participatives networks. Our aim will be to be an interface between the calls for proposals and the participants in them, for that purpose, we will work generating discourse structures and uploading the works to the web. Also we have a special interest in conecting people from diferent languages for exchanging visions. That’s why in the begining we will be a bilingual site (spanish – english), hoping to expand it to others languages. www.0GMT0.orgis working for a research program of city and media for a contribution to “Shappin Technologies”, an annual publication produced jointly with Sarai/SCDS (Dehli) y Waag Society (Amsterdam) Us, as non-profit organization, call for a proposal of a critical and reflexible answer about networks and transmission. This must be escribed as a story of your personals experiences of networks. The stories are going to be selected and hypertextuality reelaborated by www.0GMT0.org and printed on the annual publication of Sarai/SCDC (Delhi) and Waag Society (�sterdam). Deadline: November 20 Info and answers: gmt at 0gmt0.org _______________________________________________________ GTM es un colectivo transdisciplinario que est�onstruyendo un sitio para realizar trabajos participativos y colaborativos en red. Nuestro forma de operar ser�er la interface entre las convocatorias y los participantes a ellas, por lo tanto, nosotros trabajaremos generando estructuras de discursos y subiendo los trabajos recibidos a la red. Adem�tenemos un especial inter�en conectar a personas de distintas lenguas para intercambiar visiones, por lo que en un principio seremos un sitio biling�pa�– ingl�, esperando expandirnos a otros idiomas. www.0GMT0.org est�rabajando para un programa de investigaci�obre la ciudad y los medios para contribuir a “Moldeando Tecnolog�”, una publicaci�nual producida conjuntamente con Sarai/SCDC (Delhi) y Waag Society (�sterdam). Nosotros, como organizaci�in fines de lucro, llamamos a participar con una respuesta reflexiva y cr�ca acerca de las redes de trabajo y la transmisi� Esta respuesta debe estar escrita como una historia de tus experiencias personales en las redes de trabajo aportando tu visi� tu contexto en este intercambio. Las historias ser�seleccionadas y reelaboradas hipertextualmente por www.0GMT0.org y impresas en la publicaci�nual de Sarai/SCDC (Delhi) y Waag Society (�sterdam). Fecha l�te de entrega: 20 de Noviembre Info y respuestas: gmt at 0gmt0.org