From manjupannu at rediffmail.com Tue Apr 1 13:21:59 2003 From: manjupannu at rediffmail.com (manju singh bhati) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2003 13:21:59 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] posting march Message-ID: “An Innocent Society” For the last couple of weeks, I have been talking to some senior Gynecologists and their co workers such as Dr. Renu Gutpa, Sanjivani Hospital; Dr. Pinki Singh and Dr. Sunita (Kasturba Gandhi Hospital); Dr. Jyoti(LNJP Hospital); Dr. Madhu Batra (Priyadharshini Nursing Home).ALL of them are unanimous about careless and insensitive attitude of our society towards pregnancy ou tof the wedlock. About 40% of the admitted patients in the Gynecology department consists of unmarried pregnant women. Most of them masquerade as married women. 90% of them prefer going to other cities than they live in. For example, residents of Delhi prefer togo to Ghaziabad, Meerut or a small anonymous Nursing home in nearby Haryana. There are many examples of unmarried pregnant women coming all the way to Delhi from west Bengal, Orissa, MP and U.P. or vice versa. Dr. Pinki told me that a IXth Standard girl pregnant for 9 months had come to Kasturba Gandhi Hospital with her parents during labour pain. Even after being confirmed as pregnant by ultrasound her parents denied the fact. They insisted on telling the lie that it is some kind of flesh growth inside the stomach. They were repeating again and again that our girl is not a loose character (Hamari Beti Aisi Nahi Hai). More surprising is that even after the birth of the baby, they did not accept it. “The doctors are forcing us to accept someone elses child” they repeated ad infinitum. Dr. Renu Gutpa is handling a case of a Bengali unmarried Pregnant woman. This well brought up college going girl was dumped by her lover.But she is determined to give birth to the baby. “This is the first case in my 18 years career, when an unmarried woman is not opting for abortion “says Dr.Renu Gupta”. Despite the fact that she is bold enough to become a single mother ,she is unable to deal with the ugly face of society and had to came all the way from Calcutta to Delhi to stay here and has chosen an alien place Sanjivani Nursing Home in Sahibabad for delivery. These visibly secret nursing homes that mushroom in the narrow congested streets of small towns and suburbs reveal some dark truths of our civic society. These nursing homes are a respite for a large number of the pregnant population in India.And more so for unmarried women. As usual bulk of these women is from the lower strata of society. They live in hutments or Jhuggi Jhopdies. Large portion of them are between 13 to 16 years of age and are often raped by their own relatives such as father, brother, cousin, uncle etc. These rapes often take place in the afternoons when the mothers of these minors are out for their jobs. A heavy percentage of these mothers are domestic workers, many small labourers. Every day they have to leave their vulnerable teenage girls to the whims of these vagabonds who hover around all day. Some of the unmarried lot are college girls or working women from middle class, who enjoy or experiment sex willingly. After getting impregnated , they take resort in these nursing homes. A few are school girls, who in their ignorance get pregnant. Approx 99% of unmarried pregnant girls go for early abortions and only 1% dare to give birth but even they prefer to give the baby to some orphanage. _______________________________________________________________________ Odomos - the only mosquito protection outside 4 walls - Click here to know more! http://r.rediff.com/r?http://clients.rediff.com/odomos/Odomos.htm&&odomos&&wn From ayish at vsnl.net Tue Apr 1 14:27:10 2003 From: ayish at vsnl.net (Ayisha Abraham) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2003 14:27:10 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Work in Progress-Sarai Fellowship Message-ID: Work In Progress: Some Notes on the project "Disintegrating Memories" I am busy editing what I call short sketches. Instead of inhabiting a sketch book they sit in a hard disk. They are executed as quickly drawn ideas or visual notes. After having collected a modest amount of footage (home movies,found footage etc), doing selective interviews with filmmakers and writing a little on the subject of amateur films, I am now editing small amounts of media. What I term a series of "sketches" literally. In many respects nothing more than film poems. Roughly, put together with very fine disappearing threads of thought, sometimes none at all. My attempt is to really work through the footage, observe it carefully and decide where to make interventions, if at all. That is proving to be the biggest dilemma. I seem to be going through a phase where intervening minimally seems more attractive. And yet there is the pleasure of editing and creating form. (And often over working , as I discover the potential of the editing soft ware-Final Cut Pro). What conceptually interests me, is the possibility of reframing or reshowing this personal collection of amateur film. Dug up like broken fragments of a bygone past, these films can evoke in the viewer an all too familiar past. Slowing down the speed of the film, creating fictive characters by juxtaposing them together, are some of the tools I am using for re-looking. But as I said, minimal intervention is what interests me and yet, I must define my role in the project. At present, I am working with a mere 10 minutes of media. 16mm footage shot on Mini Dv and now sitting in the hard disk of the computer. 10 minutes of an Upper class world in Mysore and abroad in the early 1940's. Family and Royal functions and sport, of travel abroad . The footage is delicate -it cannot be played without the blemishes of projecting, coming to the foreground. And yet, at a formal level there are textures to observe. Textures which are an integral part of disintegrating celluloid . The formal patterns take on different meaning. I use these textures, dwell on them. The circles of light and the crackling surfaces. 1. In one short segment, the hostess and the filmmaker for the most, is making sure her guests are comfortable. She has instructed someone to shoot the scene for her. From above. The feast is laid out, the guests in their fineries, elegantly socialize across tables, formally laid out. I notice a particularly articulate guest, charming and dapper. I cut him out. Slow down the footage to prolong the scene, repeat it over and over again as though the shot just continues, and the hostess and our gentleman seem to come together as a unit. The camera pans out of the boundaries of the walls to the vintage cars parked in a row. That it is the past is now clear, that it is a scene of privilege is evident. 2. In the next sketch, the children run out playing. They look directly at the camera, smiling self consciously and yet confidently, like they are used to the gaze of the lens. Their dance out into the open is slowed down. They move down hte frame of the shot. The camera then registers the upright adults who follow. The family is established. 3. In another sketch, a woman grabs her still box camera and shoots-she shoots directly at the 16mm movie camera being pointed at her. A woman recording a woman recording a woman. It is bright sunshine,and she has her dark glasses on. I slow this sequence down. She clicks once and again and again. In slow motion -it is 25% of the original speed- she seems to be obsessively clicking her camera. The important aspect in this series of short sketches is that they are all being derived from footage which did not survive the ravages of time. Most of this woman filmakers' footage disintegrated and yet, I tried hard to shoot small snippets, which were carefully fed into the projector. The fact that it is spoiled film is now an integral part of the digitally recorded version. Very little survived and so like an archaeologist I must rearrange the fragments and imagine a past. I must have more than ten short sketches by now and I will try to do as many as I can. I am also translating some of these sequences into artists books-stilling the moving image and printing/writing the text. The stills in a book, which can be held and viewed at leisure, is just another form for presenting the material. I am going to start compiling the short films together in some kind of personalized way. While I continue to do the more interventionist sketches. And then I'll gauge what seems most effective for the material in hand. I have still to begin interviewing a filmmaker here in Bangalore, who has a huge body of work. These interviews tend to focus on the technical and the filmmakers' relationship to technology. The domestication of the technology and technologizing of the domestic. The fragments of this project continue to build itself. I am still wondering about the final form. Any thoughts? Please note change of address and ID. Ayisha Abraham 302 Silverdale, #5 Hutchins Road, Cooke Town Bangalore 560 005, India Tel: ++91 (0)80 546-4058 e-mail: ayish at vsnl.net From slumbug at rediffmail.com Tue Apr 1 16:49:21 2003 From: slumbug at rediffmail.com (slumbug) Date: 1 Apr 2003 11:19:21 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Aljazeerah bugged Message-ID: <20030401111921.6223.qmail@webmail22.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030401/e05fea2f/attachment.pl From lonequest_2k at yahoo.com Tue Apr 1 17:14:22 2003 From: lonequest_2k at yahoo.com (Rahaab Allana) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2003 03:44:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Of Urban Localities and Bazaar Photography Message-ID: <20030401114422.86772.qmail@web40908.mail.yahoo.com> Having spent a considerable amount of time with an artist from Patel Nagar (previously employed by Mahatta Studios, New Delhi) who tints B/W photographs, the research has begun to incorporate not only the significance of bazaars as 'spaces of engagement', but also the relation they bear with people from various backgrounds and professions. I have conducted detailed interviews with Prof. Rajeev Lochan (Dir. NGMA) and Mr.Madan Mehta himself in order to ascertain how and why the market has been a conditioning factor in the development of their respective fields (New Media and Photography). Subsequently, I have been reading and applying some of the philosophical implications of 'phenomenology', in my research on bazaars...that is, looking at complexes from theoretical points of view as posited by post-structuralists such as Marleau Ponty, Lefebvre's, 'Production of Space' (1991). I am relating notions of architecture, social history and sociology to understand, on the one hand, how market complexes mark an infusion of city and village binaries. Secondly, why they are so successful and whether this has historical validation, even as early as the 18th Century. The aesthetic implications of the photos produced by the tinter are being pursued, again, with a leaning on art-history. Texts such as Martha Gutman's Through Indian Eyes as well as Bayly's essay in The Raj (Colonial Anthropology in the Laboratory of Mankind) are insightful. Looking forward to responses. Rahaab. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more http://platinum.yahoo.com From lonequest_2k at yahoo.com Tue Apr 1 17:16:38 2003 From: lonequest_2k at yahoo.com (Rahaab Allana) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2003 03:46:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] Of Urban Localities and Bazaar Photography Message-ID: <20030401114638.51162.qmail@web40905.mail.yahoo.com> Having spent a considerable amount of time with an artist from Patel Nagar (previously employed by Mahatta Studios, New Delhi) who tints B/W photographs, the research has begun to incorporate not only the significance of bazaars as 'spaces of engagement', but also the relation they bear with people from various backgrounds and professions. I have conducted detailed interviews with Prof. Rajeev Lochan (Dir. NGMA) and Mr.Madan Mehta himself in order to ascertain how and why the market has been a conditioning factor in the development of their respective fields (New Media and Photography). Subsequently, I have been reading and applying some of the philosophical implications of 'phenomenology', in my research on bazaars...that is, looking at complexes from theoretical points of view as posited by post-structuralists such as Marleau Ponty, Lefebvre's, 'Production of Space' (1991). I am relating notions of architecture, social history and sociology to understand, on the one hand, how market complexes mark an infusion of city and village binaries. Secondly, why they are so successful and whether this has historical validation, even as early as the 18th Century. The aesthetic implications of the photos produced by the tinter are being pursued, again, with a leaning on art-history. Texts such as Martha Gutman's Through Indian Eyes as well as Bayly's essay in The Raj (Colonial Anthropology in the Laboratory of Mankind) are insightful. Looking forward to responses. Rahaab. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more http://platinum.yahoo.com From naunidhi at hotmail.com Tue Apr 1 17:27:55 2003 From: naunidhi at hotmail.com (Naunidhi Kaur) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2003 17:27:55 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Mumbai as a post riot city Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030401/bca8d36e/attachment.html From ravis at sarai.net Tue Apr 1 18:36:06 2003 From: ravis at sarai.net (Ravi Sundaram) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2003 18:36:06 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] US military attacks non-embedded press Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20030401183512.02667ea0@pop3.norton.antivirus> Military accused of mistreating reporters Ciar Byrne Tuesday April 1, 2003 The Guardian The international press watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres has accused US and British coalition forces in Iraq of displaying "contempt" for journalists covering the conflict who are not embedded with troops. The criticism comes after a group of four "unilateral" or roving reporters revealed how they were arrested by US military police as they slept near an American unit 100 miles south of Baghdad and held overnight. They described their ordeal as "the worst 48 hours in our lives". "Many journalists have come under fire, others have been detained and questioned for several hours and some have been mistreated, beaten and humiliated by coalition forces," said the RSF secretary general, Robert Menard. The four journalists - Israeli Dan Scemama and Boaz Bismuth and Portugese Luis Castro and Victor Silva - entered Iraq in a jeep and followed a US convoy but were not officially attached to the troops. US military police seized the journalists outside their base and detained them even though they were carrying international press cards. The group claimed they were mistreated and denied contact with their families. It is thought that the fact the two Israelis held dual French nationality exacerbated the situation. "The US soldiers said we were terrorists and spies and treated us as such," said Scemama, who works for the broadcaster Israel Channel One. "They want all the journalists in Iraq to have one of their liaison officers with them to supervise the footage they are broadcasting. There is no doubt that this is why they treated us so cruelly," he added. He recounted how "five gorillas" jumped on one of his Portuguese colleagues, who is "small, thin and gentle", after he begged to be allowed to speak to his wife and children to tell them he was still alive. "They knocked him to the ground, kicked him, stepped on him, tied him up and threw him back into the camp. He came back half an hour later. He was crying like a child," Scemama told the Independent. "There was one captain who wanted us to lie on the ground with our faces in the sand and dust. 'Stick your head in the sand and don't look,' he shouted at us. I told him I was 55 years old. He replied, 'Do it, or I'll shoot you," Scemama added. RSF has also criticised coalition forces over the bombing of the ministry of information in Baghdad, which was the centre for the international media. The complex has been bombed twice - on March 29 and 30 - destroying the international media "tent village" on the roof. The watchdog said journalists had left the building just one hour before the missile strikes. Writing in the Mail on Sunday, the BBC's Andrew Gilligan said journalists will no longer go to the ministry of information so Iraqi officials instead visit the Hotel Palestine, where all foreign journalists are staying. In a lengthy account, Gilligan described how fraught reporting has become in the midst of the bombings and tight Iraqi controls on the movement of the press. "After dark, no one will go to the press centre, a likely target which has now been attacked. Udai's [Saddam Hussein's chief spin doctor] bid to throw a grand rooftop party there on the second night of bombing was swiftly shot down by the hacks" Gilligan said. "So the ministers come to the Palestine too. They shift their press conferences to another room at the last minute in case the Americans should try a lucky shot. "Then they lock us in. Not just to make sure we take down every syllable of overblown rhetoric, but as another safeguard against that inconvenient cruise missile strike - and to stop us seeing the way they leave." He described how the floor of the hotel "feels like Stalag Luft V with the Goons shaking down the hut for escape equipment as the plucky officers throw it from balcony to balcony". He added: "But on the roof, it's all a bit more serious. Several TV stations have set up cameras. The Iraqis throw them off. Literally. Eighteen storeys down. The crews themselves are beaten and kicked." According to RSF, many journalists in Kuwait have reported cases of non-embedded colleagues who have tried to cross the border into Iraq being questioned, threatened and sent back by the British or US military. US freelance journalist Phil Smucker, who works for the Daily Telegraph and the Christian Science Monitor of Boston, was forced to return to Kuwait by the US military on March 27, RSF reported. Smucker was accused of jeopardising the safety of a unit by being too specific in the information he gave in a CNN interview. From rajarambhadu at yahoo.co.in Tue Apr 1 18:53:55 2003 From: rajarambhadu at yahoo.co.in (rajaram bhadu) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2003 18:53:55 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Independent Fellowship-Posting 3 Message-ID: Study of cultural Transition in urban slums of Jaipur city : Posting – 3 Nagtalai is the second site of this study. This is inhabited along the Jaipur-Delhi national highway and now is a part of metropolitan city. The jhuggis are spread over in the U shaped valley and on the stairs of aravali hills beside the fourlane road. People believe that there was a talai (Pond) in the valley and snake-charmers used it to set their snakes free on the auspicious day of the nagpanchmi. So basti called as nagtalai. Earlier there had been more than 50 bhattas (lime kilns) and the labour engaged in this work settled down here. Simultaneously the mining work at nearby hills also began and the labour involved in the mining work also settled down here. At present Government banned the mining work. Bhattas also closed due to the lack of demand of chuna (lime). Only two bhattas are in working order. The families working at bhattas emigrated from Bihar who now live here. More than 300 families are residing here, in which umber of muslims is larger than hindus. The muslim population was not in majority before one decade. During these years, many muslim families shifted here from UP. They purchased jhuggis that belonged to hindus on high prices. Among hindus, mostly are kumhars (potters) and balais (SC), in other castes; meena, brahim and bania families are living here together. Earlier kumhars worked transporting lime and stones using their donkeys. After the declining in the bhatta-work, they began to send their younger generation to learn automobile work with mechanics. Now, most of the kumhar families have adopted this trade. Many muslim families are also engaged in the this trade. Some people from this basti are working in Government services. A large number of the people from nagtalai work at transport nagar and anajmandi. Anajmandi located opposite side of the basti after crossing the highway. Some people are engaged in different types of works in the city. Babulal sharma, who resided here since 1969, told us that communal riots of 90s affected the basti but any incident of violence was not occurred at that time. Whenever Rishigalab nagar affected seriously with the violence of the riots and several families suffered with the consequences of it. In nagtalai, on the initiative of the both communities, they controlled the communal tension in the basti. Since than there has been no communal incident took place in the basti. If any conflict seemed to arise people of both communities come forward and solved the matter with common understanding. Babulal quoted one case, which happened before some years, one cyclist came here to demonstrate his performance in the basti. He got police permission for it with the help of local people. A large number of audiences gathered at the place of the show. During the show, a muslim boy dared to tease a hindu girl. This action provoked the hindus and they began to beat the muslim boy. Some persons tried to stop this practice and suggested to hand over the case at thana police. Before the situation worsened, the family member of the muslim boy came there. They understood the matter reasonably and not favoured the boy. Ultimately the matter resolved peacefully. Most of muslim families are engaged in the gem-polishing work at their own residences, Hindu people also share this work. Habitation of this basti is ideal one in which the jhuggis of hindus and muslims stand adjoining to each other. They exchange the things. There are two hindu temples in the basti. Muslims also contribute donation in Jagaran and Janmastami puja celebrations organized at mandir. Likewise muslims distribute purchased sweets from market on the auspicious day of id, domestic sweets doesn't acceptable by hindus. Families of both communities, which have more intimate relationship, share food and participate specific occasions collectively. But caste is still the primary social unit in the basti. Though casteism do not in dominating position but its effect can see to some extent. Untouchability is not visible or outwardly. Families of different castes assemble together at the various occasions i.e. marriage feasts etc. on the basis of close relationships. Nobody objects on this type of case. If any person from dalit community wants to organize a feast for higher caste people, there is a condition that any higher caste family should arrange preparation of foot and then all higher castes people may attend this feast. Discrimination between muslims also exists. Local muslim community promulgated the aggressive image of immigrants UP muslims. But their behaviour not approved this conception. They are considered inferior by local muslims and called as muchhiwale (Fishermen). But all muslim attend namaz together in the same masque situated in adjoining colony. The Bodh Siksha Samiti (an NGO) has been running a Bodhshala for more than a decade in this basti. Bodhshala is providing alternative primary education for children. But admission of a certain number of children is a limitation of bodhshala. So rest of the children use to go another school running on the opposite side of the road, for upper primary and higher education children attend other school beyond the basti. Two girls have studied up to graduation, some bahus (housewives) are educated secondary and above level. New educated generation does not believes in discrimination on the basis of religion and caste. Several families of nagtalai have shifted in the city after selling their houses. They felt well-being status economically. Some people rented their houses or shops to another residents at the basti and shifted himself in the planned colonies of the city. Economic well being ness supported their social mobilization Citizen keep distance with basti communities and consider them inferior. One graduate girl of balai family engaged with a teacher of Jodhpur city. But after some time boys family have broken the engagement at the ground that it was not possible that bridegroom can reach at the door of the bride on horse-back. Actually the house of the girl is situated at the hill and the path is very narrow and zigzag. But another side, people who came here after migration from villages and other town/cities are replacing previous families. Radhesyam who came here from a village of chakshu block rented a jhuggi in the basti. His family is living in a part of jhuggi and in outer part he is running a shop. This shop is running continuously as before but now ownership have changed. There are many shops in the right side at the main road of the basti. Among these shops women are also working in bakery works. A group of people can be seen playing with cards in the varandas of some shops, which remain closed. TV sets are common asset in the basti. According to one shopkeeper Agarwal the readership of newspaper is 30 percent in this basti. There is also a video parlor where a group of children may be seen involved in the video-games. The use of liquor is very common in the people here. Paldi meena is an erstwhile state period village situated at Jaipur-Agra national highway no. 11 at a distance of two km. from the old rampart of Jaipur. The village has now become a part of Jaipur municipal corporation and the agricultural land lying behind the village has been converted into the residential scheme. The Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) has erected housing colonies for the families of low-income groups and families of below poverty line (BPL). Alongside these colonies, JDA resettled about half a dozen urban slums, which are shifted from the city under operation pink. This is my third research site where two slums-OTS and university slums-are relocated here under rehabilitation scheme of JDA. It is interesting to note that people still called here these habitations as OTS and university basti. Both are located between a common road, one side of this new colony, low income scheme stands and on the other side a big colony established for resettlement of some small unplanned colonies which were existed before around the airport and now shifted here due to the extension plan of airport premises. JDA allotted big size of plots for these families as the compassion. The plots have allotted to the slum's families are small in size i.e. 80 sqr. yds. and as loan 50 thousand per family also provided in advance to construct houses. Yet many families are living elsewhere and some of them intend to sell out there allotted plots. Scenario of old bastis here lies in memories alone while a difference between rehabilitated slums scheme and colony of shifted families from airport is obvious. Hence in the area various signboards of properties dealers appear for the purpose. There is a high spacious community hall for the slums rehabilitation colony but till now it isn't open for public use. A board is also stands here of kachhi basti punarvas vikas samiti whereon the names of its office – bearers are mentioned. 70% families of OTS and university slums have resettled here but out of these families people who already were in confirmed services or doing any regular business, even now are continuing there as usual. The rest have become jobless. If these people go to city while living here, will have to bear three times fare in conveyance and time too. Construction work in this area is the only scope in which both man and women of basti try to seek work. Families who shifted from OTS basti are mostly harizans while in OTS basti included dhobis (washermen) also some savarn castes are common in both bastis. Families coming from OTS were already familiar with each other. Now families of both bastis are intermingling. Kanchan (25) seems overjoyed while living and enjoying the facilities available here, she tells us, things here are allright and good, everything is pleasing, basic amenities like electricity and water are available, houses are open and spacious. Environment of the new colony is quite different from the slum. But only problem that every one facing is lack of work or job. Besides this medical facility and transportation also are big problems. To pick up a bus, one has to walk on foot for about more than one km. up to Paldi Meena. Children attend a private school here. The liquor also did not lag behind and has made its appearance as before. Kanchan valmiki studied up to VII standard and belonged to a village in Dausa district. She came in OTS basti near her sister before her marriage took place. None other any caste consider here as untouchable. She attends marriage and other ceremonies of other castes. Now I give a case from my first research site. Khemraj used to live in a village of Bikaner (western Rajasthan). He was a worker in an NGO where from the honorarium he was getting, was not enough for support to his family including 5 children. Frequently prevailing drought and famine conditions increased his troubles to face hardship. He came to Jaipur where he began to work in an NGO. Even after working round-the-clock what he got as salary was for less than the minimum wages of a labour. In spite of he had to send his wife to work in the house of secretary almost free of any remuneration. At last he left the service of NGO and shifted himself to live in the slum-Manoharpura. Khemraj belongs to jat caste (savarn), now he is living here in a house of bairwa (SC) as his tenant. He has no discrimination with this bairwa family. Now he has engaged a thhela (trolley) of vegetables in subjimandi of this basti. His wife also sells vegetable at the same place in front of the thhela of her husband. Children also seem playing and supporting around their parents. The eldest daughter is attending a cheep private school after school time, she give help her mother at the shop and in the kitchen. Khemraj was a member of the bhajan mandali in his village. Here he attends jagrans celebrated usually in shiv mandir of the basti. Here bairwas used to sing nirgun while khemraj recites sagun bhajans. Khemraj also hammered a nal (horse - shoe) in his thhela on the advice of a shanicher follower. In the basti a tantrik also applies incarnation. Both husband and wife here stand in a queue and are living to win over the mountain of miseries and misfortunes. Raja Ram Bhadu From jeebesh at sarai.net Tue Apr 1 19:23:13 2003 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2003 19:23:13 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] TV's different wars Message-ID: <200304011923.13409.jeebesh@sarai.net> Differing TV images feed Arab, US views By John Donnelly and Anne Barnard, Boston Globe, 3/26/2003 WASHINGTON -- The Arab world sees pictures of bloodied bodies of young children. They watch scenes crowded with corpses, including gruesome images of dead American soldiers. Americans see almost none of that. Their view of the war in Iraq, through television and print, is dominated by long-distance photos of bombs going off in Baghdad and intimate battlefield scenes conveyed by reporters who are traveling with US and British soldiers. The two contrasting visions of this war, one seen by Americans and the other seen in the Middle East, help to sharpen differences over the conflict, say analysts and diplomats. ''Friends from Syria are sending e-mails to me, asking what are the people in the US telling you about the images of civilian casualties,'' said Imad Moustapha, chief of public diplomacy at the Syrian Embassy in Washington. ''My answer to them is very simple and sad: `Sorry, no one is seeing those images here.' '' In the Middle East, one US diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, spoke of watching CNN and Fox News one minute and Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV the next, thinking he was watching different battles. ''The Arab world is seeing trips to the hospitals, grieving parents, while the American cable stations and networks are showing the troops in the field,'' said the diplomat. ''The trouble is, it is creating different memories of the war, and it will reinforce the anger here about what the US is doing.'' US media have shown pictures and written stories about civilian casualties, especially from Baghdad. Television stations and print publications have also shown still photographs and edited video footage of seven US prisoners of war. News executives have said that their ability to independently cover civilian casualties, especially in the southern city of Basra, has been limited because of the dangers of battle there. In contrast, Arab newspapers and television stations in Abu Dhabi, Lebanon, Dubai, Qatar, and elsewhere in the region have placed a heavy emphasis on civilian casualties, especially those involving children. One station showed the scalp of a child that reporters said had been blown off in a bombing. The segment showed the scalp from three different angles. In recent days, both television and newspapers have featured the image of a young girl being pulled from rubble by an older man in a kaffiyeh. It was impossible to know if the girl was dead or alive. She was wrapped in a purple shawl, and both her legs were partially cut off. Some US stations have approached Iraqi casualties with skepticism. In some segments of children in a hospital, reporters have added a caveat that there was no way to independently verify whether the victims had been hurt in air raids. In the most controversial broadcast, Al-Jazeera decided to air gruesome pictures taped by Iraqi television of dead American soldiers outside of Nasiriyah. American television stations declined to do so. During a televised briefing in Qatar, Army Lieutenant General John Abizaid, deputy commander of Combined Forces Command, chided a reporter for Al-Jazeera for the network's decision to air the video. ''The pictures were disgusting,'' Abizaid said, adding that he would not want other stations to show the video. A reporter from Xinghua News Agency of China asked whether such pictures would badly influence the morale of the US troops or the American people. Abizaid said he believed it would not hurt troop morale or damage ''the resolve of our people.'' ''We're a pretty tough people,'' he said. But some analysts said that if Americans viewed the pictures shown to the Arab world, their view of the battles would probably change. Edward S. Walker Jr., president of the Middle East Institute and a former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, said the difference in media coverage is ''one of the huge reasons there is such a disconnect between us and the Arabs.'' ''They have one view of the world, and we have another view,'' he said. ''We are going to treat this war differently than almost any other country will. We don't want to undermine the morale or support of the troops. It's not a time when people want to attack the president, so I believe it is natural that there is a certain amount of self-censorship going on.'' Jeffrey Schneider, a vice president at ABC News, said that some pictures of bodies, including those of American troops, won't be shown because they would violate the network's standards. ''We're confident we are giving our viewers a full and accurate and balanced understanding of this war and all that that entails,'' he said. Schneider contrasted Al-Jazeera's broadcast of the dead American soldiers with a report by Ted Koppel that showed dead Iraqi troops on a battlefield. The ABC cameraman took the pictures ''at a distance, so you couldn't identify their faces,'' he said. ''You told the story that people were killed on this particular battlefield without exploiting those images.'' Hafez al-Mirazi, Washington bureau chief for Al-Jazeera, said he was surprised by the reaction in the United States to the broadcast of the footage of the dead Americans and pointed out that his network had carried equally gruesome footage of dead Iraqis. ''The US media did not carry anything from us of those casualties,'' he said. ''The American TV carries us live when there is bombing in the skies of Baghdad, the shock and awe. But when it comes to the casualties from the Iraqi or the American side, they don't want to see it.'' Mirazi said those graphic images have disturbed people in the Arab world, but there hasn't been outrage of showing the pictures. ''If we didn't show them, that would not be realistic journalism,'' he said. ''In America, there is some kind of difference of perspective and environment. The American audience are more accustomed of video games, particularly after the Gulf War of 1991. ''In the Middle East and the Arab world, people are accustomed to seeing the corpses,'' he said. ''They see the victims of these conflicts.'' ------------------------------------------------------- From toby.miller at nyu.edu Tue Apr 1 21:09:44 2003 From: toby.miller at nyu.edu (Toby Miller) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2003 10:39:44 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Studying Up Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20030401103944.007b86e0@pop.nyu.edu> STUDYING UP by Toby Miller Like most folks on the cultural left who are concerned with such matters, I have long felt ambivalent about investigations into media effects. When I look at the data on the impact of product placement and advertising, where correlations between campaigns and purchases can be arrived at quite easily, I have little doubt that there is a link. But when claims are made about ties between violence on and off-screen, I am rather dubious about the seemingly endless cycle of public-policy panic, research funding, and academic sucking. We got the answer on this question quite a while ago: some people some of the time are encouraged, for brief moments, to replicate in their conduct what they have seen in dramatic form. In response to a referral from Bill Clinton after the Colombine school shootings, the Federal Trade Commission (2000) surveyed studies of 'exposure to violence in entertainment.' It concluded that consuming violent texts was only one 'factor contributing to youth aggression, anti-social attitudes and violence. Nevertheless, there is widespread agreement that it is a cause for concern.' The Commission noted that high levels of exposure to violent texts generated 'an exaggerated perception of the amount of violence in society' (2000: i-ii). Thank you, Aristotle of The Poetics--and thousands of over-employed behavioral scientists since the 1960s. Can we move on now? Perhaps not. Because I think there is room for a new effects study. It seems to me that a major research program is needed that looks at the viewing patterns since early childhood of US Congressional representatives, Defense Department officials, and state politicians and judges who preside over capital punishment. This might allow us to understand their bloodthirsty arrogance in world affairs and domestic executions--in short, their violent tendencies. The Bush Administration supports the death penalty, despite the welter of evidence that it fails to deter criminals and arguments against its Constitutionality (Sarat, 2001). It presides over the most violent developed capitalist society in world history. Its foreign policy is opposed to international law's attempt to provide norms of conduct that are democratically arrived at and enforced. It asserts that threats to US society exist where rigorous scrutiny by academic and policy experts doubt the fact. In short, this seems like a suitable case for inquiry. Put another way, and following Laura Nader's (1972) imprecation to her fellow-anthropologists that they "study up," let's investigate hegemony. Here are some threshold questions: · How many war films has Donald Rumsfeld seen? · Which movies espousing anti-Palestinian positions has Ari Fleischer been exposed to? · Does Paul Wolfowitz have a history of anti-social conduct after watching The Wild Bunch or playing Grand Theft Auto--Vice City? · Did Colin Powell attend any screenings of The Green Berets before, during, or after his work to conceal the My Lai massacre, or his other wartime service? · Does Dick Cheney have a special relationship to the Rambo films that can be correlated with his policy advice? Could he in any sense be said to 'cycle' with these texts? · When George W Bush sent a record number of people to be executed during his time as Governor of Texas, which TV programs and movies had he been watching and which Biblical texts had he been reading? Conversely, what was George Ryan watching before he became Governor of Illinois and during his tenure? · When George W Bush was arrested for driving while intoxicated, what had been his history of interaction with screen texts involving alcohol, and what has it been since? · When George W Bush's children were arrested for under-age drinking, what had been their record of parental supervision of film, television programs and advertisements involving alcohol? What has it been since? · When Jeb Bush's daughter was arrested for drug use and parole infractions, what had been her record of parental supervision of films, television programs, and advertisements concerning drug use? What has it been since? · When the Cabinet is shown graphics referring to 'collateral damage' from proposed military intervention, are members' heart-beats and other signs of excitation regularly measured? · When the Administration offers or witnesses military power-point presentations, have any studies been done of their genital responses to the material? · Which members of the Administration have been exposed to criminological studies of the costliness and ineffectiveness of capital punishment, and what have their responses been to this research? · Does the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the key means of establishing sanity and insanity cross-culturally (Katigbak, Church, & Akamine, 1996), need rewriting in the face of this Administration's attitudes and values? I hope that readers will pick up on this challenging agenda. Perhaps we can mount a collaborative project, complete with coder validity, N= information, regression analysis, avowedly non-random sampling, and electrodes planted on audiences. Cultural studies grows up. Enough arguments about whether the audience is a 'dope' (Garfinkel, 1992). This time we can approach that question with supreme confidence. WORKS CITED Federal Trade Commission. (2000). Marketing violent entertainment to children: A review of self-regulation and industry practices in the motion picture, music recording & electronic game industries. Washington, D. C.: Federal Trade Commission. Garfinkel, H. (1992). Studies in ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Katigbak M. S., Church A. T., & Akamine T. X. (1996). Cross-cultural generalizability of personality dimensions: Relating indigenous and imported dimensions in two cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70: 99-114. Nader, L. (1972). Up the anthropologist-perspectives gained from studying up. (Ed. Dell H. Hymes). Reinventing anthropology. New York: Pantheon Books. 284-311. Sarat, A. (2001). When the state kills: Capital punishment and the American condition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Toby Miller Professor of Cultural Studies and Cultural Policy Department of Cinema Studies New York University 721 Broadway Room 600 NY NY 10003 Fax: 212 9954061 http://homepages.nyu.edu/~tm3/ 'Miller writes like one of those stuffed shirts whom Emma would dispatch with a karate chop and a beautiful smirk. B-'. Entertainment Weekly, 1998 From aiindex at mnet.fr Wed Apr 2 07:13:29 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2003 02:43:29 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Embedded media present this war as 'fun' and almost bloodless Message-ID: Globe and Mail April 1, 2003 The bright side of war No wonder Americans are surprised; embedded media have presented this war as 'fun' and almost bloodless By John MacArthur Coming up the elevator of my office building last Thursday, a bicycle messenger spied me and (perhaps sensing a sympathetic ear) blurted out: "We're getting our asses kicked over there, and they're not telling us what's going on." I'm not much for man-in-the-street generalizations, but my excitable new acquaintance was clearly channelling something significant about the media coverage of Gulf War II — namely that expectations and reality have collided in a way not seen in this country since the fall of Saigon in 1975. Except for the brief moment of clarity brought on by the photograph of the U.S. Army Ranger corpse being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in 1993, Americans have pretty much forgotten that war is about death — the bloody kind. Or that the natives, whoever rules them, don't often take kindly to foreigners with guns. Which isn't to say that the U.S.-led forces are losing Gulf War II in a conventional military sense, or that the "embedded" reporters' coverage has been particularly good. But so many PR man-hours were devoted to promoting American military invincibility during the prewar sales campaign, that the ordinary citizen (and journalist) might be excused for thinking that "shock and awe" could, by itself, conquer another country. Certain things haven't changed about U.S. war correspondents since the last gulf war. Credulity and misplaced patriotism remain the rule; dispassionate reporting meant to inform rather than inspire remains the exception. If you compare the BBC or French channels and CNN, the French and British appear to be suitably sober, while the CNN reporters and anchors seemed thrilled to be along for the ride. On the first Saturday of the war, Walter Rodgers of CNN actually said he was having "great fun," in response to anchor Aaron Brown's unwarranted praise for Mr. Rodgers's "terrific ... reporting" (which included such extrasensory observations as "there were whole families standing up there waving white pieces of cloth that looked like pillow cases indicating they surrender. They had no hostile feelings"). Perhaps Mr. Rodgers's enthusiasm might have diminished had he recalled on camera that this same 7th Cavalry Regiment with whom he rode toward Baghdad had once been led by General George Custer. But with the sandstorm and paramilitary counterattacks came shock, if not awe. Even skeptics like myself expected to see at least some Iraqis welcoming GIs with grateful smiles; instead, we found a surprisingly hostile landscape (They're shooting at our guys? They don't love us? Even in Basra?). Most U.S. war reporting has been, by government design, remote from combat — reconstructions by spokesmen in the rear. The absence of hard news has led to endless feature stories about lonely soldiers far from home, supplies being loaded and unloaded, armoured vehicles and infantry moving from hither to yon, and, inevitably, videos of smart bombs precisely hitting their targets. Nevertheless, Ted Koppel's presentation of two Iraqi corpses on ABC-TV has already revealed more about the consequences of organized violence than we saw in all six weeks of the first gulf war, with its tightly controlled pool coverage. And a few reporters, like Newsday's Letta Tayler, have actually described combat and death the way it's supposed to be done: "'It was kind of nice to get it out of the way,' Marine Corporal Mark Hylen said of his first killing of an Iraqi. He paused for a minute, then appeared to dismiss whatever thought was emerging. 'Screw him,' he said. 'He died.'" American casualties are another matter. The Pentagon's hosting of 500 hacks has engendered enough goodwill or gratitude that self-censorship seems to be accomplishing the public relations mission that overt censorship did during Gulf War I. U.S. TV networks and newspapers, for the most part, obscured the gruesome Iraqi footage (via al-Jazeera) of U.S. soldiers killed in an ambush on March 23. The PoWs got more play, but the U.S. media continued to treat war reporting as a matter of taste rather than a constitutional responsibility to inform the citizenry. The highbrow newspapers have been similarly squeamish about exhibiting the gore of war. Last Thursday, March 27, morning newspapers everywhere carried front-page stories about the explosions (possibly caused by errant American bombs) in a working-class neighbourhood of Baghdad, which killed at least 17 civilians and wounded 45. The New York Times and Paris's Le Figaro both ran photographs of the devastation taken by Goran Tomasevic of Reuters. The Times selected a colour picture of an anguished young man, very much alive, in front of the burning wreckage of two cars; Le Figaro ran a different shot by Mr. Tomasevic — a black-and-white one of a hideously charred corpse, face partially visible, prostrate in front an anguished child. War reporting will tend to improve if the military situation stagnates or deteriorates, which is paradoxical good news for the American people. I think the most realistic war coverage is the best war coverage — not just because I'm against this war and would like people to be revolted by it — but because I think it's better for American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Realism and candor can save lives, because it puts political pressure on the civilian commanders to fight more intelligently, and at least to think about trying to minimize casualties. And candor is seeping out everywhere, such as the recent admission by Lieutenant-General William Wallace that "the enemy we're fighting is a bit different than the one we wargamed against." Gen. Wallace's remark emboldened the normally docile Pentagon press corps into challenging Donald Rumsfeld on military strategy (he responded as petulantly as any dictatorial CEO contradicted by a subordinate). When officers start complaining to journalists, it usually means they're covering their backsides by talking over their bosses' heads to the politicians and the people. We're not quite at the Vietnam-style five o'clock follies stage, but the nervousness of the military is starting to show. All the nicey-nice treatment of the "embeds" looks a little hollow after four "unilateral" journalists (two Israeli, two Portugese) were roughed up and expelled from Iraq by the U.S. Army because they posed a "security threat." During Vietnam, a so-called "credibility gap" developed when military claims diverged more and more widely from easily viewed reality on the ground. With dozens of reporters in Baghdad and hundreds more with American forces, the longer this goes on, the harder it will be to suppress the real story. John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper's Magazine, is author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War. From sadan at sarai.net Thu Apr 3 01:31:11 2003 From: sadan at sarai.net (sadan) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2003 15:01:11 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] readings on bazaar Message-ID: <200304021501.11544.sadan@sarai.net> Here i have found two(actually three) interesting readings on bazaar. Naresh you may found these readings useful ( Naresh is working on Weekly markets of Delhi). 1.Jennifer Alexander, "Trade, Traders and Trading in Rural Java", Sinagpur,1987. 2. S.P. Punalekar, "Wekly Markets in the Tribal Talukas of Surat Valsad Religion", Surat, 1957. These two rferences are in 3. Dipesh Chakrabarty, "Open Space/Public Space:Garbage, Modernity and India", South Asia, vol. xiv, no.1, 1991, pp:15-31. cheers sadan. From aiindex at mnet.fr Wed Apr 2 17:19:25 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2003 12:49:25 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates Message-ID: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,927849,00.html The Guardian April 2, 2003 Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates How many children, in how many classrooms, over how many centuries, have hang-glided through the past, transported on the wings of these words? And now the bombs are falling, incinerating and humiliating that ancient civilisation by Arundhati Roy On the steel torsos of their missiles, adolescent American soldiers scrawl colourful messages in childish handwriting: For Saddam, from the Fat Boy Posse. A building goes down. A marketplace. A home. A girl who loves a boy. A child who only ever wanted to play with his older brother's marbles. On March 21, the day after American and British troops began their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, an "embedded" CNN correspondent interviewed an American soldier. "I wanna get in there and get my nose dirty," Private AJ said. "I wanna take revenge for 9/11." To be fair to the correspondent, even though he was "embedded" he did sort of weakly suggest that so far there was no real evidence that linked the Iraqi government to the September 11 attacks. Private AJ stuck his teenage tongue out all the way down to the end of his chin. "Yeah, well that stuff's way over my head," he said. According to a New York Times/CBS News survey, 42 per cent of the American public believes that Saddam Hussein is directly responsible for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. And an ABC news poll says that 55 per cent of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein directly supports al-Qaida. What percentage of America's armed forces believe these fabrications is anybody's guess. It is unlikely that British and American troops fighting in Iraq are aware that their governments supported Saddam Hussein both politically and financially through his worst excesses. But why should poor AJ and his fellow soldiers be burdened with these details? It does not matter any more, does it? Hundreds of thousands of men, tanks, ships, choppers, bombs, ammunition, gas masks, high-protein food, whole aircrafts ferrying toilet paper, insect repellent, vitamins and bottled mineral water, are on the move. The phenomenal logistics of Operation Iraqi Freedom make it a universe unto itself. It doesn't need to justify its existence any more. It exists. It is. President George W Bush, commander in chief of the US army, navy, airforce and marines has issued clear instructions: "Iraq. Will. Be. Liberated." (Perhaps he means that even if Iraqi people's bodies are killed, their souls will be liberated.) American and British citizens owe it to the supreme commander to forsake thought and rally behind their troops. Their countries are at war. And what a war it is. After using the "good offices" of UN diplomacy (economic sanctions and weapons inspections) to ensure that Iraq was brought to its knees, its people starved, half a million of its children killed, its infrastructure severely damaged, after making sure that most of its weapons have been destroyed, in an act of cowardice that must surely be unrivalled in history, the "Allies"/"Coalition of the Willing"(better known as the Coalition of the Bullied and Bought) - sent in an invading army! Operation Iraqi Freedom? I don't think so. It's more like Operation Let's Run a Race, but First Let Me Break Your Knees. So far the Iraqi army, with its hungry, ill-equipped soldiers, its old guns and ageing tanks, has somehow managed to temporarily confound and occasionally even outmanoeuvre the "Allies". Faced with the richest, best-equipped, most powerful armed forces the world has ever seen, Iraq has shown spectacular courage and has even managed to put up what actually amounts to a defence. A defence which the Bush/Blair Pair have immediately denounced as deceitful and cowardly. (But then deceit is an old tradition with us natives. When we are invaded/ colonised/occupied and stripped of all dignity, we turn to guile and opportunism.) Even allowing for the fact that Iraq and the "Allies" are at war, the extent to which the "Allies" and their media cohorts are prepared to go is astounding to the point of being counterproductive to their own objectives. When Saddam Hussein appeared on national TV to address the Iraqi people after the failure of the most elaborate assassination attempt in history - "Operation Decapitation" - we had Geoff Hoon, the British defence secretary, deriding him for not having the courage to stand up and be killed, calling him a coward who hides in trenches. We then had a flurry of Coalition speculation - Was it really Saddam, was it his double? Or was it Osama with a shave? Was it pre-recorded? Was it a speech? Was it black magic? Will it turn into a pumpkin if we really, really want it to? After dropping not hundreds, but thousands of bombs on Baghdad, when a marketplace was mistakenly blown up and civilians killed - a US army spokesman implied that the Iraqis were blowing themselves up! "They're using very old stock. Their missiles go up and come down." If so, may we ask how this squares with the accusation that the Iraqi regime is a paid-up member of the Axis of Evil and a threat to world peace? When the Arab TV station al-Jazeera shows civilian casualties it's denounced as "emotive" Arab propaganda aimed at orchestrating hostility towards the "Allies", as though Iraqis are dying only in order to make the "Allies" look bad. Even French television has come in for some stick for similar reasons. But the awed, breathless footage of aircraft carriers, stealth bombers and cruise missiles arcing across the desert sky on American and British TV is described as the "terrible beauty" of war. When invading American soldiers (from the army "that's only here to help") are taken prisoner and shown on Iraqi TV, George Bush says it violates the Geneva convention and "exposes the evil at the heart of the regime". But it is entirely acceptable for US television stations to show the hundreds of prisoners being held by the US government in Guantanamo Bay, kneeling on the ground with their hands tied behind their backs, blinded with opaque goggles and with earphones clamped on their ears, to ensure complete visual and aural deprivation. When questioned about the treatment of these prisoners, US Government officials don't deny that they're being being ill-treated. They deny that they're "prisoners of war"! They call them "unlawful combatants", implying that their ill-treatment is legitimate! (So what's the party line on the massacre of prisoners in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan? Forgive and forget? And what of the prisoner tortured to death by the special forces at the Bagram airforce base? Doctors have formally called it homicide.) When the "Allies" bombed the Iraqi television station (also, incidentally, a contravention of the Geneva convention), there was vulgar jubilation in the American media. In fact Fox TV had been lobbying for the attack for a while. It was seen as a righteous blow against Arab propaganda. But mainstream American and British TV continue to advertise themselves as "balanced" when their propaganda has achieved hallucinatory levels. Why should propaganda be the exclusive preserve of the western media? Just because they do it better? Western journalists "embedded" with troops are given the status of heroes reporting from the frontlines of war. Non-"embedded" journalists (such as the BBC's Rageh Omaar, reporting from besieged and bombed Baghdad, witnessing, and clearly affected by the sight of bodies of burned children and wounded people) are undermined even before they begin their reportage: "We have to tell you that he is being monitored by the Iraqi authorities." Increasingly, on British and American TV, Iraqi soldiers are being referred to as "militia" (ie: rabble). One BBC correspondent portentously referred to them as "quasi-terrorists". Iraqi defence is "resistance" or worse still, "pockets of resistance", Iraqi military strategy is deceit. (The US government bugging the phone lines of UN security council delegates, reported by the Observer, is hard- headed pragmatism.) Clearly for the "Allies", the only morally acceptable strategy the Iraqi army can pursue is to march out into the desert and be bombed by B-52s or be mowed down by machine-gun fire. Anything short of that is cheating. And now we have the siege of Basra. About a million and a half people, 40 per cent of them children. Without clean water, and with very little food. We're still waiting for the legendary Shia "uprising", for the happy hordes to stream out of the city and rain roses and hosannahs on the "liberating" army. Where are the hordes? Don't they know that television productions work to tight schedules? (It may well be that if Saddam's regime falls there will be dancing on the streets of Basra. But then, if the Bush regime were to fall, there would be dancing on the streets the world over.) After days of enforcing hunger and thirst on the citizens of Basra, the "Allies" have brought in a few trucks of food and water and positioned them tantalisingly on the outskirts of the city. Desperate people flock to the trucks and fight each other for food. (The water we hear, is being sold. To revitalise the dying economy, you understand.) On top of the trucks, desperate photographers fought each other to get pictures of desperate people fighting each other for food. Those pictures will go out through photo agencies to newspapers and glossy magazines that pay extremely well. Their message: The messiahs are at hand, distributing fishes and loaves. As of July last year the delivery of $5.4bn worth of supplies to Iraq was blocked by the Bush/Blair Pair. It didn't really make the news. But now under the loving caress of live TV, 450 tonnes of humanitarian aid - a minuscule fraction of what's actually needed (call it a script prop) - arrived on a British ship, the "Sir Galahad". Its arrival in the port of Umm Qasr merited a whole day of live TV broadcasts. Barf bag, anyone? Nick Guttmann, head of emergencies for Christian Aid, writing for the Independent on Sunday said that it would take 32 Sir Galahad's a day to match the amount of food Iraq was receiving before the bombing began. We oughtn't to be surprised though. It's old tactics. They've been at it for years. Consider this moderate proposal by John McNaughton from the Pentagon Papers, published during the Vietnam war: "Strikes at population targets (per se) are likely not only to create a counterproductive wave of revulsion abroad and at home, but greatly to increase the risk of enlarging the war with China or the Soviet Union. Destruction of locks and dams, however - if handled right - might ... offer promise. It should be studied. Such destruction does not kill or drown people. By shallow-flooding the rice, it leads after time to widespread starvation (more than a million?) unless food is provided - which we could offer to do 'at the conference table'." Times haven't changed very much. The technique has evolved into a doctrine. It's called "Winning Hearts and Minds". So, here's the moral maths as it stands: 200,000 Iraqis estimated to have been killed in the first Gulf war. Hundreds of thousands dead because of the economic sanctions. (At least that lot has been saved from Saddam Hussein.) More being killed every day. Tens of thousands of US soldiers who fought the 1991 war officially declared "disabled" by a disease called the Gulf war syndrome, believed in part to be caused by exposure to depleted uranium. It hasn't stopped the "Allies" from continuing to use depleted uranium. And now this talk of bringing the UN back into the picture. But that old UN girl - it turns out that she just ain't what she was cracked up to be. She's been demoted (although she retains her high salary). Now she's the world's janitor. She's the Philippino cleaning lady, the Indian jamadarni, the postal bride from Thailand, the Mexican household help, the Jamaican au pair. She's employed to clean other peoples' shit. She's used and abused at will. Despite Blair's earnest submissions, and all his fawning, Bush has made it clear that the UN will play no independent part in the administration of postwar Iraq. The US will decide who gets those juicy "reconstruction" contracts. But Bush has appealed to the international community not to "politicise" the issue of humanitarian aid. On the March 28, after Bush called for the immediate resumption of the UN's oil for food programme, the UN security council voted unanimously for the resolution. This means that everybody agrees that Iraqi money (from the sale of Iraqi oil) should be used to feed Iraqi people who are starving because of US led sanctions and the illegal US-led war. Contracts for the "reconstruction" of Iraq we're told, in discussions on the business news, could jump-start the world economy. It's funny how the interests of American corporations are so often, so successfully and so deliberately confused with the interests of the world economy. While the American people will end up paying for the war, oil companies, weapons manufacturers, arms dealers, and corporations involved in "reconstruction" work will make direct gains from the war. Many of them are old friends and former employers of the Bush/ Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice cabal. Bush has already asked Congress for $75bn. Contracts for "re-construction" are already being negotiated. The news doesn't hit the stands because much of the US corporate media is owned and managed by the same interests. Operation Iraqi Freedom, Tony Blair assures us is about returning Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people. That is, returning Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people via corporate multinationals. Like Shell, like Chevron, like Halliburton. Or are we missing the plot here? Perhaps Halliburton is actually an Iraqi company? Perhaps US vice-president Dick Cheney (who is a former director of Halliburton) is a closet Iraqi? As the rift between Europe and America deepens, there are signs that the world could be entering a new era of economic boycotts. CNN reported that Americans are emptying French wine into gutters, chanting, "We don't want your stinking wine." We've heard about the re-baptism of French fries. Freedom fries they're called now. There's news trickling in about Americans boycotting German goods. The thing is that if the fallout of the war takes this turn, it is the US who will suffer the most. Its homeland may be defended by border patrols and nuclear weapons, but its economy is strung out across the globe. Its economic outposts are exposed and vulnerable to attack in every direction. Already the internet is buzzing with elaborate lists of American and British government products and companies that should be boycotted. Apart from the usual targets, Coke, Pepsi and McDonald's - government agencies such as USAID, the British department for international development, British and American banks, Arthur Anderson, Merrill Lynch, American Express, corporations such as Bechtel, General Electric, and companies such as Reebok, Nike and Gap - could find themselves under siege. These lists are being honed and re fined by activists across the world. They could become a practical guide that directs and channels the amorphous, but growing fury in the world. Suddenly, the "inevitability" of the project of corporate globalisation is beginning to seem more than a little evitable. It's become clear that the war against terror is not really about terror, and the war on Iraq not only about oil. It's about a superpower's self-destructive impulse towards supremacy, stranglehold, global hegemony. The argument is being made that the people of Argentina and Iraq have both been decimated by the same process. Only the weapons used against them differ: In one case it's an IMF chequebook. In the other, cruise missiles. Finally, there's the matter of Saddam's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. (Oops, nearly forgot about those!) In the fog of war - one thing's for sure - if Saddam 's regime indeed has weapons of mass destruction, it is showing an astonishing degree of responsibility and restraint in the teeth of extreme provocation. Under similar circumstances, (say if Iraqi troops were bombing New York and laying siege to Washington DC) could we expect the same of the Bush regime? Would it keep its thousands of nuclear warheads in their wrapping paper? What about its chemical and biological weapons? Its stocks of anthrax, smallpox and nerve gas? Would it? Excuse me while I laugh. In the fog of war we're forced to speculate: Either Saddam is an extremely responsible tyrant. Or - he simply does not possess weapons of mass destruction. Either way, regardless of what happens next, Iraq comes out of the argument smelling sweeter than the US government. So here's Iraq - rogue state, grave threat to world peace, paid-up member of the Axis of Evil. Here's Iraq, invaded, bombed, besieged, bullied, its sovereignty shat upon, its children killed by cancers, its people blown up on the streets. And here's all of us watching. CNN-BBC, BBC-CNN late into the night. Here's all of us, enduring the horror of the war, enduring the horror of the propaganda and enduring the slaughter of language as we know and understand it. Freedom now means mass murder (or, in the US, fried potatoes). When someone says "humanitarian aid" we automatically go looking for induced starvation. "Embedded" I have to admit, is a great find. It's what it sounds like. And what about "arsenal of tactics?" Nice! In most parts of the world, the invasion of Iraq is being seen as a racist war. The real danger of a racist war unleashed by racist regimes is that it engenders racism in everybody - perpetrators, victims, spectators. It sets the parameters for the debate, it lays out a grid for a particular way of thinking. There is a tidal wave of hatred for the US rising from the ancient heart of the world. In Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe, Australia. I encounter it every day. Sometimes it comes from the most unlikely sources. Bankers, businessmen, yuppie students, and they bring to it all the crassness of their conservative, illiberal politics. That absurd inability to separate governments from people: America is a nation of morons, a nation of murderers, they say, (with the same carelessness with which they say, "All Muslims are terrorists"). Even in the grotesque universe of racist insult, the British make their entry as add-ons. Arse-lickers, they're called. Suddenly, I, who have been vilified for being "anti-American" and "anti-west", find myself in the extraordinary position of defending the people of America. And Britain. Those who descend so easily into the pit of racist abuse would do well to remember the hundreds of thousands of American and British citizens who protested against their country's stockpile of nuclear weapons. And the thousands of American war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam. They should know that the most scholarly, scathing, hilarious critiques of the US government and the "American way of life" comes from American citizens. And that the funniest, most bitter condemnation of their prime minister comes from the British media. Finally they should remember that right now, hundreds of thousands of British and American citizens are on the streets protesting the war. The Coalition of the Bullied and Bought consists of governments, not people. More than one third of America's citizens have survived the relentless propaganda they've been subjected to, and many thousands are actively fighting their own government. In the ultra- patriotic climate that prevails in the US, that's as brave as any Iraqi fighting for his or her homeland. While the "Allies" wait in the desert for an uprising of Shia Muslims on the streets of Basra, the real uprising is taking place in hundreds of cities across the world. It has been the most spectacular display of public morality ever seen. Most courageous of all, are the hundreds of thousands of American people on the streets of America's great cities - Washington, New York, Chicago, San Francisco. The fact is that the only institution in the world today that is more powerful than the American government, is American civil society. American citizens have a huge responsibility riding on their shoulders. How can we not salute and support those who not only acknowledge but act upon that responsibility? They are our allies, our friends. At the end of it all, it remains to be said that dictators like Saddam Hussein, and all the other despots in the Middle East, in the central Asian republics, in Africa and Latin America, many of them installed, supported and financed by the US government, are a menace to their own people. Other than strengthening the hand of civil society (instead of weakening it as has been done in the case of Iraq), there is no easy, pristine way of dealing with them. (It's odd how those who dismiss the peace movement as utopian, don't hesitate to proffer the most absurdly dreamy reasons for going to war: to stamp out terrorism, install democracy, eliminate fascism, and most entertainingly, to "rid the world of evil-doers".) Regardless of what the propaganda machine tells us, these tin-pot dictators are not the greatest threat to the world. The real and pressing danger, the greatest threat of all is the locomotive force that drives the political and economic engine of the US government, currently piloted by George Bush. Bush-bashing is fun, because he makes such an easy, sumptuous target. It's true that he is a dangerous, almost suicidal pilot, but the machine he handles is far more dangerous than the man himself. Despite the pall of gloom that hangs over us today, I'd like to file a cautious plea for hope: in times of war, one wants one's weakest enemy at the helm of his forces. And President George W Bush is certainly that. Any other even averagely intelligent US president would have probably done the very same things, but would have managed to smoke-up the glass and confuse the opposition. Perhaps even carry the UN with him. Bush's tactless imprudence and his brazen belief that he can run the world with his riot squad, has done the opposite. He has achieved what writers, activists and scholars have striven to achieve for decades. He has exposed the ducts. He has placed on full public view the working parts, the nuts and bolts of the apocalyptic apparatus of the American empire. Now that the blueprint (The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire) has been put into mass circulation, it could be disabled quicker than the pundits predicted. Bring on the spanners. From menso at r4k.net Wed Apr 2 17:07:07 2003 From: menso at r4k.net (Menso Heus) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2003 13:37:07 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Aljazeerah bugged In-Reply-To: <20030401111921.6223.qmail@webmail22.rediffmail.com> References: <20030401111921.6223.qmail@webmail22.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: <20030402113707.GC249@r4k.net> On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 11:19:21AM -0000, slumbug wrote: > Someone seems to have bugged Aljazeerah. > Chk out > www.aljazeerah.net > and > www.aljazeerah.info I'm not sure with you mean by 'bugged' but basically, it's just the wrong URL. The correct url for the Al Jazeera newsservice is: http://www.aljazeera.net/ Menso -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- I just want all of you to know I have weapons of mass destruction -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From rehanhasanansari at yahoo.com Thu Apr 3 02:53:13 2003 From: rehanhasanansari at yahoo.com (rehan ansari) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2003 13:23:13 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] more Disorientation Message-ID: <20030402212313.98265.qmail@web40103.mail.yahoo.com> DisORIENTation visited ���By: Rehan Ansari ���March 31, 2003 One week into the US invasion of Iraq, the festival of contemporary Arab artists called DisORIENTation that I attended in Berlin last week, is becoming more memorable. Elias Khoury, the Lebanese novelist gave the keynote address at the start of the festival, which coincided with the bombing. He invoked Emile Zola, a Jewish writer from the 19th Century who wrote the essay �J�accuse� accusing his government of anti-semitism. Today, Khoury said, I accuse the US of imperialism and racism. Jesus! It�s true, the US is acting more imperial than the East India Company! Who would have thought that a power so supreme would condescend to such bare-faced brutality. In New York when I tell people in classrooms, living rooms and bars that that this is an imperial war, the term imperial leaves them unmoved. They understand the concept technically, not emotionally. Everybody agrees the invasion of Iraq is an imperial act since US is protecting its interests. But so what, the US does a lot of things in its interest. They are disturbed when I say an imperialist is a racist. Racism is something they know. But I can call these American acts in Iraq worse names. In Berlin Nazi history stares you in the face: imperialists are racists, only a racist would think it natural to destroy and then �reconstruct�. Moreover, imperialists with the technology for mass murder (Tomahawk missiles and 25,000 pound bombs) are Nazis. Khoury, in his speech, also lamented the despots of the Middle East. Saddam is a monster. You would have to be irrational to fight US armies. He will lay waste to his villages and cities and send all his people to their death. He is doing it and succeeding in making the US army pause and take stock. They don�t know whether to move on or wait for reinforcements. And next week begins summer in the desert. It�s as if Saddam has been waiting for this fight all his life. How perfectly mad of him! A normal dictator, like our Musharraf, wags his tail to a Colin Powell phone call. With their war the jehadi Christians and Jews in the State Department, Pentagon and the White House that are Cheney, Bush, Rumsfield, Wolfowitz and Perle have made an old school Arab nationalist and despot (was there ever any other kind?) into an anti-imperialist. In fact this stupid war will make Osama, the fundamentalist, an anti-imperialist as well. Elia Sulieman, the filmmaker from Palestine and maker of the terrific feature film Divine Intervention (it won at Cannes), present at the festival referred to the war and said: ��Sadly, we are all Palestinians now.�� One week after Suleiman made that comment Basra, Najf, Kif, Karbala all resemble West Bank and Gaza, where American made Israelis tanks, helicopter and F-16s fight Palestinian militia in ruined neighbourhoods. In the last scene of Divine Intervention we see the hero and his mother sitting across the room from a pressure cooker going berserk hissing on the stove. They keep sitting, keep watching with bored, deadpan expressions. The House of World Culture in Berlin, which houses this festival, is a German institution that is not interested in archiving or otherwise instituting national art. They came up with a idea called DisORIENTation and gave artists from places like Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Palestine, space, money and three years (!) to produce art. In New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art is salivating over exhibitions around Picasso and Matisse. One afternoon as I sat at a table with some of these artists I realised that I knew nothing at all about everyday life in their cities: Damascus, Cairo, Ramallah, Amman. When I said that to Moataz Nasr, a visual artist from Cairo, he said: �Too bad for you.� It�s worse for Americans, who are fighting a war with people it is very clear they don�t know, nor care to know. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more http://tax.yahoo.com From aiindex at mnet.fr Thu Apr 3 07:55:52 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 03:25:52 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Volunteers Needed To Help 125 Riot-Affected Children Message-ID: APPEAL FOR VOLUNTEERS TO HELP CHILDREN (VICTIMS OF THE GENOCIDE) Monica Wahi Dear Friends, Please go through this attachment. This is a programme for summer volunteering in Raigad, Maharashtra where 125 children from Vatwa & Naroda Patiya are studying at present. Volunteers need to go there for a minimum of 10 days.you can also put the 1st 2 pages on your office/college notice board.The 3rd to the 5th page explains the situation of children post riots in Gujarat.the last page talks about our experienc with the Raigad School and further expectations from the project. as mentioned in the document, food and staying expenses will be taken care of by the school. you'll just have to spend for your travel up to Raigad. In case you are interested you need to let me know asap, so that we can schedule the groups of volunteers. from the 1st to the 15th a group of students and a professor from St. Xaviers College, Bombay are coming to the school. so now we require volunteers only after the 15th of April. hope to hear from you in peace and harmony monica wahi ps: if you know of groups who would be interested in doing workshops (theatre, music, films etc) in Raigad this summer, please pass this on to them also and ask them to get in touch with us immediately. VOLUNTEERS NEEDED TO HELP 125 RIOT-AFFECTED CHILDREN required to teach & play with 125 riot- affected children between 15th April to 30th May. Victims of the Gujarat carnage, they are now studying in a boarding school in Maharashtra. THE RAIGAD SCHOOL PROJECT: A wonderful opportunity for riot affected kids to re-build their lives Children directly affected by the communal carnage of 2002 in Gujarat were identified from 2 areas in Ahmedabad - Vatwa and Naroda-Patiya. They have been given free boarding and lodging in the hostel of a school situated in Raigad District, Maharashtra. 125 children have come to the school since October 2002 in three batches. These children have now settled down in the school. The ratio of girls to boys is around 2:3. The age group varies from 5 to 15 years (majority is in the bracket of 8-12). The school, known as Dr. A. R. Undre High School is fully equipped with classes from KG to XII Std. It also runs a B.S.C college for girls. The school has around 1200 local students and is an English medium school. The school was set up over 20 years ago to provide quality education to rural students. The school is run by a trust - Royal Education Society. The promoters are the Undre family who unhesitatingly opened their hearts to these kids and took them in. Zia Hajeebhoy (from Bombay) liasoned with the school and with Volunteers working in relief camps in Ahmedabad who identified, selected & brought these kids to the school. STATUS - MARCH 2003 Boarding and Lodging: The School has ensured that every child has a bed, clean sheets and pillows, a trunk to keep their belongings etc. Clothes, uniform, shoes & toiletries have been provided. Girls and the little boys stay in the Girls Hostel and the Older Boys in the Boys hostel. Additional help including an additional warden, cooks, cleaners etc have been hired to provide for the needs of these children. The hostel provides wholesome nutritious meals including milk, eggs and non - vegetarian dishes and fresh fruits which the kids enjoy. Academic: 18 teachers and students went in the October holidays, voluntarily to give the children their first academic inputs. Their abilities and levels were assessed and they have now been assigned classes where they sit with the local students. 3 teachers have been appointed to give these children extra coaching after school hours. Emotional & Psychological: Mrs Undre, the staff at the school, the caretakers in the hostel, are wonderful and give tremendous affection and care. Volunteers in their interaction and others with their thoughtful contributions (school kids from Bombay donated their toys, clothes etc) brought these children a lot of love, cheer and hope. A group of counselors did a preliminary assessment of the emotional health of these children, which is being used as a valuable input in interaction with these children. Financial: Donations have come in from a variety of people in the form of one time contribution, long term financial commitments and resources in kind (clothes, shoes, games, books, food etc). Every little bit is helping, however the expenses exceed the donations and the gap is met by the school trust and personally by the Undres! WHAT CAN U DO? The immediate focus for the next two months [April and May]- when the school will shut down for holidays - is to help these kids catch up with their peers academically, especially in the sphere of English. Save a handful, most of these kids were previously studying in Gujarati medium, and a few in Urdu medium. Since the Raigad School is an English medium school, the children will suffer academically inspite of their intelligence and aptitude, if they do not get adequately familiar English. Though the school will close for holidays, the children from Gujarat will stay in the hostel to attend coaching classes from 1st of April to 30th of May. After which they will be given a holiday for 10 days, to visit their homes in Ahmedabad, before the commencement of the next academic year. We are looking for volunteers who will come to the Raigad School to teach English to the riot affected children and also play and spend time with them- for a minimum of 10 days. It is very simple to teach. We do not require professionals to teach English (although if they are willing to come, so much the better). Only a couple of the 18 volunteers who came in October holidays to teach the kids were in anyway connected with education. They just came because of their motivation and enthusiasm & they did a wonderful job! The kids already know their alphabets. Linkages between alphabet & sound and between word & meaning has to be reinforced, reading and conversational skills have to be upgraded. A structured syllabus will be handed down, which anyone fluent in English can follow. If you know of any kit / module meant for teaching English to vernacular students, you can get it along or inform us about it and we will make it available. The more inputs, the better. It can be a lot of fun. Besides being a rewarding experience, interacting and playing with these children can itself be a lot of fun for some people. It will be even better if you are accompanying friends. Because the place that you will be visiting- Borli-Panchatan village, Raigad - is located between green hills and warm blue waters! It has a lovely unspoiled, and as yet uncommercialised beach. Volunteers will teach the kids in the morning, play with them till early evening and then they can be on their own - to trek on the hills or swim in the sea. And the temperature will be significantly lower than the cities we stay in. What more can one ask for in the summers Besides the English classes, we have organised other activities. We are expecting theatre workshops, film screenings etc. Various groups from Delhi and Bombay will undertake these camps/ workshops. Meeting such a variety of people from various fields can itself be an interesting & exciting experience. It will easy on your purse. We realise the size of each individual's purse will vary! Nevertheless volunteers will only have to spend for travelling up to Raigad and back. A bus ride from Bombay to Raigad is approximately Rs 100. If you are from outside Bombay you can add this to the expense for travelling to Bombay. The School will take care of the food and the accommodation of the volunteers. When are volunteers required? from 15th of April to 30th of May For how long? We would prefer volunteers to stay for at least 2 weeks, but 10 days is the minimum. How many volunteers at a time? On an average we would like to have 10 to 15 volunteers at a time. So each volunteer can take care of 10 to 12 kids. How to reach? Busses ply to Borli, Raigad from Bombay (6 hrs); from Pune (5 hrs); from Goa (7 hrs). In case you are interested please inform us in advance. You can get in touch with: Monica Wahi: monicawahi at rediffmail.com ph: (0)9825412467 Zia Hajeebhoy: hajeebhoyzia at yahoo.com ph: (0)9820048509 Note: if you or your organisation are interested only in conducting workshops/ camps in the school during these two months, please write to us asap, so we can block the dates for you. A brief backgrounder on why the Raigad School Project was undertaken: Monica Wahi (a volunteer working with riot affected children in Ahmedabad) THE POST CARNAGE GUJARAT SCENARIO: vis-a-vis children EDUCATIONAL CRISIS (a) UNAFFORDABILITY Even though I'm sure, you are aware of the post -carnage situation in Gujarat, I would like to give you a brief background. This would reveal the variety and magnanimity of the problems vis-a-vis children. Let me first give you a glimpse of Vatwa, where most of the families come from. The Vatwa ward encompasses a huge area and is home both to the Hindu and the Muslim community. Within this area our work was restricted to the riot-affected urban village around the Qutb-e-alam Dargah which is inhabited predominantly by the Muslim populace. Vatwa came under severe communal attack during the riots, and suffered huge destruction of life and property. As in most cases, the government was quick to pull out support from the three relief camps functioning in the area. When we had conducted a survey in June, almost 800 families were staying in the 3 camps. The last of these camps -Jehangir camp no.9 was functioning unofficially on NGO support until 9th February 2003! The families who were still staying in these camps (almost a year after the riots!), were those who had nowhere to go to. They belong to pockets, which are predominantly Hindu - like Michdi Pir and Bandarvat Talav. The muslim residents of the area not only "perceive" threat but have literally been threatened against coming back. But these families were pushed out of relief camps as well and have since taken up accommodation on rent or are staying with relatives. Fearful and frustrated these families have little hope of permanent shelter and prospective livelihood. This despair is also true for residents who have returned to their re-constructed houses in the village. The families who have gone back now to their inadequately repaired houses are also struggling in their own ways. In almost all cases the livelihoods were destroyed. They are either unemployed even after one year or have shifted to occupations which they are unfamiliar with and generate even less income than before. A number of the inhabitants worked in factories before the riots. The factories have either been affected by the riots and therefore in no condition to function, or the workers have been refused re-employment in the factories because they belong to a community whose "employment may prove unsafe/risky". Little help has been extended to those who were self-employed- earned their livelihood through handcarts, corner shops etc. Their claims have either not been satisfied or in most cases not been recognised by the collector's office. A very insidious factor is the economic boycott that the community is facing. This is directed not only towards mill workers who have been fired, but towards a vast section of drivers, contractors and towards home based workers. The home based workers in spite of having the required skills and possessing required resources- (for example sewing machine for stitching) -are being refused work by traders in most cases by their own former 'Seths'. This has in turn lead to further reduction of the average purchasing power of the community which in turn affects the income of small time entrepreneurs who cater to the community in a (usually) ghettoised area. Besides, there are a host of casual labourers who inhabit the area whose situation has become worse than before. The ability to sponsor a child's education has been greatly reduced. Parents not only have to earn to feed the mouths in the family but also have to build their home afresh. In all cases, they have lost household essentials.. They have to start saving gradually to purchase these all over again. The NGOs, mainly Islamic Organisations have merely reconstructed 4 walls. Loss of livelihood has undoubtedly affected their spending power on what are regarded as essentials in any functioning democracy- food, health and education. Needless to say, the above situation is equally valid for Naroda-Patiya, where a substantial number of Raigad students come from. In fact another trend, which we witnessed in Patiya, is that many children previously studying in Private or English medium schools have now joined municipal schools because they simply cannot afford 'quality' education. (b) FEAR PSYCHOSIS & ACTIVE STATE DISCRIMINATION Children are still 'experiencing the riots' -only in less apparent ways.. More and more children from the minority community are being excluded or are choosing to leave main- stream schools, as a result of a fear psychosis of parents and the school management. Many schools including Xavier's Loyola Hall, Diwan Ballu Bhai and Ankur were asked to assist in a survey of their students. Some schools are reported to have asked parents to continue their children's education in their institutions at their own risk. There are many instances of minority children being roughed up by their seniors in school or by "hindus" on the way to school. This has created a fear psychosis in the community and they prefer then to go to schools in their area. But here they face other problems. One, not many "good" schools are present in predominantly muslim localities. Even the municipal schools are few and are less efficient and lesser equipped than the ones present in the "Hindu" areas. It has also been seen that the municipal schools present in the minority areas stop at class VII. The reason provided of course is that they do not get enough students for studies beyond V or VII std. But talk with parents and children, has proven otherwise. Our own experience with Raigad also reveals that parents are equally concerned about their daughters completing high school along with their sons. In fact in some cases, parents decided in favour of sending their daughters to Raigad over their sons as they were unsure of sending their daughters to school in Ahmedabad after a certain age due to "security" reasons. (c) RELOCATION TO ANOTHER AREA The displacement or relocation of families from one area to another, has also posed a serious challenge. -While the family is trying to come to terms with their immense loss and trying to familiarise themselves with new surroundings, getting children admitted to schools takes a backseat- at least for a while. -Often affected families have been relocated in areas (though with good intentions by NGOs), in areas where access to quality education is not easy - as in the case of Arsh colony and Faizal Park in Vatwa where families have been relocated from Naroda-Patiya and other minority areas. Education can act as a tool for normalisation for children who have gone through a time of extraordinary crisis. It is really unfortunate that they are denied this process. 45 families identified as the worst affected (from Naroda-Patiya) have been relocated to Faizal park, Vatwa. All these families have lost someone or the other. 20 children studying in the Raigad school at present are from Faizal Park. PSYCHOLOGICAL CRISIS According to an estimate there were 50,000 children inhabiting relief camps at various points of time. All of them have gone through varying levels of trauma. Naroda Patiya as you might know was the worst affected place in Ahmedabad- so children from here have all either been subjected to or been witness to gruesome incidents of violence. - from seeing their family members butchered or burned to death to seeing their mothers, aunts, sisters getting raped and instruments injected in their private parts. What must have these children made out of all this barbarism? No doubt there is a serious psychological affect on these children. Some of the students in Raigad are not only witnesses but survivors themselves. Even when children have not been subject directly to violence, they have in most cases been made to run/ hide for their lives. They have seen or heard "tolas" approaching their area. And they have heard numerous stories day in and day out of family & friends who have been killed, burnt, shot in the riots and their community as a whole which has been reduced to utter misery. Children whose houses were looted or burnt have undergone trauma in their own way. Children get used to surroundings they grow up in- they have faith in the certainty of visible surroundings and objects there. Imagine if in one go, everything around them evaporates. Their houses, the toys they used to play with- even little things like their spoons and bowls they used to eat from. Unlike adults they cannot rationalise all this. They are even less certain on how to approach their future. Also, every now and then the sense of security gets threatened. Hordes of families across Ahmedabad-including Naroda- went back to the camps after the Akshar-Dham incident, then again after Jaideep Patel was attacked in Naroda, again during the anniversary of the Godhra incident and Post-Godhra carnage, the day of the India-Pakistan cricket match and recently again when Haren Pandya was murdered. Violent incidents on an average erupt every 10 days in some part of the city or the other. To always live amid such fear and hostility must undoubtedly affect the psychological well being of the child.. We must remember that children are consumers also, they do not consume for utilitarian purposes but they like to possess things- which intrigue them, entertain and calm them. If their families could afford to buy them their little toys or candy, they simply cannot afford to do that now. Its certainly traumatising for a child. for eg, children in my area were extremely distressed at not being able to go to the annual carnival of Shah Alam. Its an occasion looked forward to, by everyone from the community- a time for enjoyment & mingling. But because their parents "could not give them money" they could not go to the mela. if we were to see it from a child's point of view, or even an adults point of view,- the denial of certain standard of living which one has been used to, for no fault of ones own is extremely distressing. Disturbing behavior is noticeable among children who have experienced the carnage. This ranges from the psychological disorders that individual children suffer; to the "violent" or "communal" games that children have creatively integrated in their play; to the prejudices that the children have internalized about the other community. This brings us to our next concern. SECULAR CRISIS The responses of these children towards this carnage may be "personal" today but as they grow up these responses will turn political. Children, who have been subject to or have witnessed incidents of violence, have no recourse but towards anger, fear and despair. They have been made to suffer because they are Muslims. This singular definition of their identity only pushes them further to take refuge in its singularity. When a friend had asked a group of riot-affected children about the attackers they said "the attackers were hindus in khaki chaddis". Hindu kaun ? (Hindus Who?) he asked further. "Those who believe in bhagwan". What will prevent these children from generalizing all Hindus as violent beings? as enemies? Here one must not forget that the carnage in Gujarat is not a one-time thing- ie; the feelings it generates is sustained through continuous discrimination by civil society. During the riots -Asmi High School in Vatwa where predominantly muslim children studied was burnt down by rioters lead by none other than the hindu principal of a nearby municipal school. What kind of values does this principal espouse? Similarly students talk of discrimination by their teachers, that they are taunted and failed purposely. Two brothers studying presently in Raigad were compelled to leave Pragati High School, Maninagar in similar circumstances. The majority children are fed myths about the "other; the foreigner"; they absorb drawing room conversations justifying the carnage; they consume school text- books categorizing Muslims, Christians and Parsees as foreigners! Responses and reactions are usually shaped by what one absorbs from the family, school and media. So children automatically get indoctrinated into an intolerant world antithetical to diversity, without recognizing the communal idiom as such. In view of all these problems faced by the children and their families, we felt that a well-meaning school outside Ahmedabad, committed to constructive progressive work with the students would address many of these predicaments. Zia and I discovered each other in Ahmedabad at the end of August. I had been working voluntarily since a few months in the relief camps of Vatwa. And Zia had taken time out of her busy schedule in Bombay and came to Ahmedabad with an earnest desire to do something, which could make a difference. We kept in close touch and soon Zia sought a school, which was willing to take a hundred children, and I already had a list of over 200 children who wanted to study outside Ahmedabad. (This list was prepared by various volunteers since the preceding 2-3 months). Zia liasoned with the school, and I selected the students and accompanied the first batch of 60 students to their new school on 5th October 2002. Action Aid facilitated the process. Two more batches followed subsequently. The total number of Gujarati children studying at present in Raigad are 125. About the-selection mechanism -we decided on Four over-riding Parameters of the most affected families: (a) who have lost one or more members of family in this carnage (b) who are still staying in camps (they have no shelter and most probably no source of income) (c) who have lost their livelihood due to the carnage and who still have no source of income (d) whose earning capacities have been greatly reduced due to the riots and therefore cannot afford their child's education any longer We had certain expectations: towards education, towards healing & towards harmonising - which we felt the Raigad school will be ideal for (a) towards Education: -The school addresses the unaffordability of education by providing the children with free boarding and lodging -Children are more likely to complete their high school & not drop out midway sheerly because there will be less (financial) strain-This is especially valid for girls, due to economic as well as security reasons. -Also the Raigad School is able to provide the children with a better standard of education- in terms of teachers and facilities. A bulk of the children will never be otherwise exposed to such an education. -Students who have been forced to leave main-stream English medium schools, because of their reduced financial budget get an opportunity to pursue the kind of education they had aspired for pre-carnage. (b) towards Healing: A major deciding factor for the school was the opportunity for the psychological healing of the students. Children may not show signs of trauma but they have residues of anger, pain, fear & confusion. It will be easier to address these outside their environment than in Ahmedabad where their families are fighting battles on various levels- to push through criminal cases, for compensations, for restoring livelihoods & in a lot of cases basic necessities like two square meal a day. Unfortunately, there has been no concerted effort to conduct counseling sessions for the children in Ahmedabad. At best efforts have been ad-hoc and irregular. Organisations working here often blame this lacuna on lack of expertise, and also lack of enthusiasm on the part of the holders of this expertise, in Ahmedabad. Keeping this foremost in our mind, we had hoped that we could organise a team of counselors from Bombay to visit the children in the school on a regular basis. One such team was organised in October. In the coming months the "Dream - Catchers" interactive sessions prepared by Sonali Ojha and Sonali Vakil will be used with the children. Recently two social workers with a psychology background have been employed by the school to look into their needs (with a special emphasis on emotional needs). Smita Desai, an esteemed counselor from Bombay has assured us of her guidance. Another plus point for Borli-Panchatan, the village where the school is situated- is the natural beauty of the place. By itself, the place is very calming. It is lush, green - amid hills, on the sea shore- away from the noise & pollution of the cities- like a retreat. The very surroundings are able to provide the much- needed peace and solace to the children. (c) towards Harmonising: When there is an over-riding atmosphere of communalism, the Raigad experience has shown at least these sets of students that there are people (non-muslim, majority community) who are equally concerned about their well-being, about their future prospects; and there are spaces (the Borli-Panchatan village- with an almost equal no. of Hindu-Muslim populace) - where people from both the communities stay amicably next to each other, interact with each other not only on a professional but a personal basis, and share a common culture which they treasure above all else. This is a window of hope- which they would have been denied in their segregated and/ or ghettoised surroundings in Gujarat. We also plan to actively promote discussions on various issues- not only about non-violence, secularism and diversity, but about caste, gender and development. This kind of an exposure will hopefully give a sane and progressive direction to their future. This is an area that both Zia and I are pursuing. Various organisations have shown interest in holding workshops with the children to engage them in such a dialogue. Some of these will take place this summer. Our Experience with the Raigad School I'd just like to add that the Raigad School has out-done our expectations.. I have already mentioned its advantages, regarding- healing and harmonising. Besides that there is a certain quality to the school. It is unlike the regimented, even beurocratic boarding schools that most of us have been exposed to. Though the syllabi and the functioning of the school is as good or as bad as any normal middle class city school, we have been offered a lot of flexibility as regards our intended programmes in the school. This is not only due to Dr. Undre himself who is committed to "secularism" but also doe to the well-meaning Principal, the Wardens of the hostels, the workers attending to the children in the school as well as the hostel. The Undres have been very encouraging in their invitations and acceptance of various progressive groups to work with the children. They have given and thereafter received unimaginable compassion and trust. There is a lot of free space for us to make the project as imaginative as we can. And we are trying to do just that. -- From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Thu Apr 3 07:17:20 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 02:47:20 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Boycotting Anglo-American products info? In-Reply-To: <200304021501.11544.sadan@sarai.net> Message-ID: <20030403014720.17031.qmail@web8005.mail.in.yahoo.com> Hi everyone I was looking for some/any info on the ongoing talks/acts of boycotting anglo-american products/companies/institutions in the wake of the invasion of Iraq: which are the organizations? initiatives? websites? any help would be appreciated thanks avishek ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com From lehar_hind at yahoo.com Thu Apr 3 13:56:41 2003 From: lehar_hind at yahoo.com (Lehar ..) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 00:26:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [Reader-list] barefoot in the bazaar Message-ID: <20030403082641.64338.qmail@web20909.mail.yahoo.com> the markets and civilians of baghdad.. babylon..kashmir..were bombed last week. the oldest markets in human history. this 50 year old classic poem is to them.. -- Shackles on your feet Translated from the Urdu of Faiz Ahmed Faiz by Poorvi Vora The Urdu version was written in Lahore Jail on 11 February, 1959. To Hariharan, Zakir Hussain and Ismail Merchant, for a wonderful rendering and picturization of this in the film �Muhafiz� Aaj bazzar mein Pabajolaan chalo.. Wet eyes and a crazed will are not enough; Nor are accusations of a furtive love; Stride in the bazaar today, shackles on your feet. Stride with arms spread open and in wild abandon; Stride with dust-covered hair and blood-stained shirt; Stride, all the beloved city watches the road. The official and the commoner; Sad mornings and barren days; Arrows of slander and stones of insult. Who but we can be their companion? Who in the beloved town remains free of guilt? Who remains worthy of the killer's hand? Broken-hearted ones, prepare to leave; Let us stride to meet our death today. ( Source: home.attbi.com/~poorvi/bazaar.html ) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ - Religions are all limited because they concentrate on only one aspect of the Truth. That's why they are always fighting amongst each other. There is no end to the Truth, so you cannot confine it to one scripture. When asked what religion I follow, 'I don't believe in sampradaya-sect. I believe in Sampradaha- incineration.' Burn down everything which gets in way of the Truth. - Aghori Vimalananda; At the Left Hand of God Organised religion is the prop of a man who has not found his Self/ God within. - Shaheed Bhagat Singh >From: Yousuf >To: "Vagish K. Jha" , rana arshed hafiz >, Lehar sethi zaidi , >sanjhi_virasat at yahoogroups.com >CC: peace_initiative at yahoogroups.com >Subject: Guess who >Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2003 20:02:09 -0800 (PST) > > >1. Which is the only country in the world to have >dropped bombs on over twenty different countries since >1945? > >2. Which is the only country to have used nuclear >weapons? > >3. Which country was responsible for a car bomb which >killed 80 civilians in Beirut in 1985, in a botched >assassination attempt, making it the most lethal >terrorist bombing in modern Middle East history? > >4. Which country's illegal bombing of Libya in 1986 >was described by the UN Legal Committee as a "classic >case" of terrorism? > >5. Which country rejected the order of the >International Court of Justice (ICJ) to terminate its >"unlawful use of force" against Nicaragua in >1986, and then vetoed a UN Security Council resolution >calling on all states to observe international law? > >6. Which country was accused by a UN-sponsored truth >commission of providing "direct and indirect support" >for "acts of genocide" against the Mayan Indians in >Guatemala during the 1980s? > >7. Which country unilaterally withdrew from the >Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in December 2001? > >8. Which country renounced the efforts to negotiate a >verification process for the Biological Weapons >Convention and brought an international >conference on the matter to a halt in July 2001? > >9. Which country prevented the United Nations from >curbing the gun trade at a small arms conference in >July 2001? > >10. Aside from Somalia, which is the only other >country in the world to have refused to ratify the UN >Convention on the Rights of the Child? > >11. Which is the only Western country which allows the >death penalty to be applied to children? > >12. Which is the only G7 country to have refused to >sign the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, forbidding the use of >land mines? > >13. Which is the only G7 country to have voted against >the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) >in 1998? > >14. Which was the only other country to join with >Israel in opposing a 1987 General Assembly resolution >condemning international terrorism? > >15. Which country refuses to fully pay its debts to >the United Nations yet reserves its right to veto >United Nations resolutions? > >Send your answers to president at whitehouse.gov. If your >answers to all the questions are correct, you could >win an all expense paid trip to Baghdad on a fancy new >aircraft called Cruise. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more http://tax.yahoo.com From aiindex at mnet.fr Thu Apr 3 22:13:13 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 17:43:13 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Detecting disinformation, without radar Message-ID: Asia Times April 3, 2003 Detecting disinformation, without radar By Gregory Sinaisky How to tell genuine reporting from an article manufactured to produce the desired propaganda effect? The war in Iraq provides us plenty of interesting samples for a study of disinformation techniques. Take the article "Basra Shiites Stage Revolt, Attack Government Troops", published on March 26 in The Wall Street Journal Europe. Using its example, we will try to arm readers with basic principles of disinformation analysis that hopefully will allow them in the future to detect deception. The title of the article sounds quite definitive. The article starts, however, with the mush less certain "Military officials said the Shiite population of Basra ... appeared to be rising". "Military officials" and "appeared to be" should immediately raise a red flag for a reader, especially given a mismatch with such a definitive title. Why "officials"? Were they speaking in a chorus? Or was each one providing a complementary piece of information? A genuine report certainly would tell us this and also name the officials or at least say why they cannot be identified. Why "appears to be"? There are always specific reasons why something "appears to be". For example, information about the uprising may be uncertain because it was supplied by an Iraqi defector who was not considered trustworthy and has not been confirmed from other sources. Again, every professional reporter understands that his job is to provide such details and it is exactly such details that make his reporting valuable, interesting, and memorable. If such all-important details are missing, this is a sure sign to suspect intentional disinformation. Going further down the article, we see even more astonishing example of the same vagueness. "Reporters on the scene said that Iraqi troops were firing on the protesting citizens ..." For an astute reader, this short sentence should raise a whole host of questions. Were the above-mentioned reporters Western media reporters embedded with the troops? What was their location and the distance from which they observed the event? Obviously, being inside a besieged city with riots going on is an exceedingly dangerous business. Why were the names of the reporters distinguished by such shining bravery concealed from us, instead of being proclaimed with pride? Why do they not want to tell us where they were observing from and how they managed to get there? In any case, under the circumstances, being closer to the scene than the distance of a rifle shot, say one kilometer, merits a special explanation. Now, an interesting question is, what are the visual clues allowing a reporter to distinguish, at such distance, between an uprising and, let's say, troops firing on looters or many other possible explanations for the same observation? The only cue I can think of is not visual, but an aural cue from an editor requesting the reporter to report what we cannot explain as anything but an attempt of intentional disinformation. Given a very specific nature of the disinformation produced in this particular case, its obvious potential effect on both resisting Iraqis and anti-war public opinion, we cannot see any other explanation for it, except that The Wall Street Journal directly collaborates with the psychological warfare department in the Pentagon. Some unexpected light on the story is shed in "UK: Iraq to feel backlash in Basra" posted on CNN.com also on March 26. In this article, the original report on a civilian revolt is attributed to "the British military authorities and journalists", again unnamed. Here, the chorus of "the officials" singing in unison with "journalists" makes the somewhat more specific and exceedingly bizarre statement: "We have radars, that, by tracing the trajectory of mortar rounds, are able to work out the source, as well as the target location, which in this case were civilians in Basra." So, now we know that the uprising in Basra was detected by British officials and journalists watching a radar screen! This amazing British radar can even tell an Iraqi official from a simple citizen and a civilian from a soldier! Moreover, it apparently can read minds and determine the reasons people fire on each other! Truly, there is a big lie in the information attributed to British officials. Or maybe I am wrong and this is an example of the famous British sense of humor deployed to get rid of pestering American correspondents? Chorus of American correspondents: "Is there an uprising going on in Basra? There must be. My editor told me to report it. You say, how would you know? That's impossible, my editor told me ..." British official: "All right, chaps. I see it on the radar." Sounds of cellphone dialling and keyboards rattling ... To conclude: Remember the following first rule of disinformation analysis: truth is specific, lie is vague. Always look for palpable details in reporting and if the picture is not in focus, there must be reasons for it. Want to know the names of rising stars of disinformation to watch? The Wall Street Journal article was "compiled" by Matt Murray in New York from reports by Christopher Cooper in Doha, Qatar, Carla Anne Robbins and Greg Jaffe in Washington, and Helene Cooper with the US Army's Third Infantry Division in Iraq. (Copyright 2003 Gregory Sinaisky) From eye at ranadasgupta.com Thu Apr 3 21:46:57 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 21:46:57 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] arundhati on war in guardian Message-ID: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,927849,00.html Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates How many children, in how many classrooms, over how many centuries, have hang-glided through the past, transported on the wings of these words? And now the bombs are falling, incinerating and humiliating that ancient civilisation Arundhati Roy Wednesday April 2, 2003 The Guardian On the steel torsos of their missiles, adolescent American soldiers scrawl colourful messages in childish handwriting: For Saddam, from the Fat Boy Posse. A building goes down. A marketplace. A home. A girl who loves a boy. A child who only ever wanted to play with his older brother's marbles. On March 21, the day after American and British troops began their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, an "embedded" CNN correspondent interviewed an American soldier. "I wanna get in there and get my nose dirty," Private AJ said. "I wanna take revenge for 9/11." To be fair to the correspondent, even though he was "embedded" he did sort of weakly suggest that so far there was no real evidence that linked the Iraqi government to the September 11 attacks. Private AJ stuck his teenage tongue out all the way down to the end of his chin. "Yeah, well that stuff's way over my head," he said. According to a New York Times/CBS News survey, 42 per cent of the American public believes that Saddam Hussein is directly responsible for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. And an ABC news poll says that 55 per cent of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein directly supports al-Qaida. What percentage of America's armed forces believe these fabrications is anybody's guess. It is unlikely that British and American troops fighting in Iraq are aware that their governments supported Saddam Hussein both politically and financially through his worst excesses. But why should poor AJ and his fellow soldiers be burdened with these details? It does not matter any more, does it? Hundreds of thousands of men, tanks, ships, choppers, bombs, ammunition, gas masks, high-protein food, whole aircrafts ferrying toilet paper, insect repellent, vitamins and bottled mineral water, are on the move. The phenomenal logistics of Operation Iraqi Freedom make it a universe unto itself. It doesn't need to justify its existence any more. It exists. It is. President George W Bush, commander in chief of the US army, navy, airforce and marines has issued clear instructions: "Iraq. Will. Be. Liberated." (Perhaps he means that even if Iraqi people's bodies are killed, their souls will be liberated.) American and British citizens owe it to the supreme commander to forsake thought and rally behind their troops. Their countries are at war. And what a war it is. After using the "good offices" of UN diplomacy (economic sanctions and weapons inspections) to ensure that Iraq was brought to its knees, its people starved, half a million of its children killed, its infrastructure severely damaged, after making sure that most of its weapons have been destroyed, in an act of cowardice that must surely be unrivalled in history, the "Allies"/"Coalition of the Willing"(better known as the Coalition of the Bullied and Bought) - sent in an invading army! Operation Iraqi Freedom? I don't think so. It's more like Operation Let's Run a Race, but First Let Me Break Your Knees. So far the Iraqi army, with its hungry, ill-equipped soldiers, its old guns and ageing tanks, has somehow managed to temporarily confound and occasionally even outmanoeuvre the "Allies". Faced with the richest, best-equipped, most powerful armed forces the world has ever seen, Iraq has shown spectacular courage and has even managed to put up what actually amounts to a defence. A defence which the Bush/Blair Pair have immediately denounced as deceitful and cowardly. (But then deceit is an old tradition with us natives. When we are invaded/ colonised/occupied and stripped of all dignity, we turn to guile and opportunism.) Even allowing for the fact that Iraq and the "Allies" are at war, the extent to which the "Allies" and their media cohorts are prepared to go is astounding to the point of being counterproductive to their own objectives. When Saddam Hussein appeared on national TV to address the Iraqi people after the failure of the most elaborate assassination attempt in history - "Operation Decapitation" - we had Geoff Hoon, the British defence secretary, deriding him for not having the courage to stand up and be killed, calling him a coward who hides in trenches. We then had a flurry of Coalition speculation - Was it really Saddam, was it his double? Or was it Osama with a shave? Was it pre-recorded? Was it a speech? Was it black magic? Will it turn into a pumpkin if we really, really want it to? After dropping not hundreds, but thousands of bombs on Baghdad, when a marketplace was mistakenly blown up and civilians killed - a US army spokesman implied that the Iraqis were blowing themselves up! "They're using very old stock. Their missiles go up and come down." If so, may we ask how this squares with the accusation that the Iraqi regime is a paid-up member of the Axis of Evil and a threat to world peace? When the Arab TV station al-Jazeera shows civilian casualties it's denounced as "emotive" Arab propaganda aimed at orchestrating hostility towards the "Allies", as though Iraqis are dying only in order to make the "Allies" look bad. Even French television has come in for some stick for similar reasons. But the awed, breathless footage of aircraft carriers, stealth bombers and cruise missiles arcing across the desert sky on American and British TV is described as the "terrible beauty" of war. When invading American soldiers (from the army "that's only here to help") are taken prisoner and shown on Iraqi TV, George Bush says it violates the Geneva convention and "exposes the evil at the heart of the regime". But it is entirely acceptable for US television stations to show the hundreds of prisoners being held by the US government in Guantanamo Bay, kneeling on the ground with their hands tied behind their backs, blinded with opaque goggles and with earphones clamped on their ears, to ensure complete visual and aural deprivation. When questioned about the treatment of these prisoners, US Government officials don't deny that they're being being ill-treated. They deny that they're "prisoners of war"! They call them "unlawful combatants", implying that their ill-treatment is legitimate! (So what's the party line on the massacre of prisoners in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan? Forgive and forget? And what of the prisoner tortured to death by the special forces at the Bagram airforce base? Doctors have formally called it homicide.) When the "Allies" bombed the Iraqi television station (also, incidentally, a contravention of the Geneva convention), there was vulgar jubilation in the American media. In fact Fox TV had been lobbying for the attack for a while. It was seen as a righteous blow against Arab propaganda. But mainstream American and British TV continue to advertise themselves as "balanced" when their propaganda has achieved hallucinatory levels. Why should propaganda be the exclusive preserve of the western media? Just because they do it better? Western journalists "embedded" with troops are given the status of heroes reporting from the frontlines of war. Non-"embedded" journalists (such as the BBC's Rageh Omaar, reporting from besieged and bombed Baghdad, witnessing, and clearly affected by the sight of bodies of burned children and wounded people) are undermined even before they begin their reportage: "We have to tell you that he is being monitored by the Iraqi authorities." Increasingly, on British and American TV, Iraqi soldiers are being referred to as "militia" (ie: rabble). One BBC correspondent portentously referred to them as "quasi-terrorists". Iraqi defence is "resistance" or worse still, "pockets of resistance", Iraqi military strategy is deceit. (The US government bugging the phone lines of UN security council delegates, reported by the Observer, is hard-headed pragmatism.) Clearly for the "Allies", the only morally acceptable strategy the Iraqi army can pursue is to march out into the desert and be bombed by B-52s or be mowed down by machine-gun fire. Anything short of that is cheating. And now we have the siege of Basra. About a million and a half people, 40 per cent of them children. Without clean water, and with very little food. We're still waiting for the legendary Shia "uprising", for the happy hordes to stream out of the city and rain roses and hosannahs on the "liberating" army. Where are the hordes? Don't they know that television productions work to tight schedules? (It may well be that if Saddam's regime falls there will be dancing on the streets of Basra. But then, if the Bush regime were to fall, there would be dancing on the streets the world over.) After days of enforcing hunger and thirst on the citizens of Basra, the "Allies" have brought in a few trucks of food and water and positioned them tantalisingly on the outskirts of the city. Desperate people flock to the trucks and fight each other for food. (The water we hear, is being sold. To revitalise the dying economy, you understand.) On top of the trucks, desperate photographers fought each other to get pictures of desperate people fighting each other for food. Those pictures will go out through photo agencies to newspapers and glossy magazines that pay extremely well. Their message: The messiahs are at hand, distributing fishes and loaves. As of July last year the delivery of $5.4bn worth of supplies to Iraq was blocked by the Bush/Blair Pair. It didn't really make the news. But now under the loving caress of live TV, 450 tonnes of humanitarian aid - a minuscule fraction of what's actually needed (call it a script prop) - arrived on a British ship, the "Sir Galahad". Its arrival in the port of Umm Qasr merited a whole day of live TV broadcasts. Barf bag, anyone? Nick Guttmann, head of emergencies for Christian Aid, writing for the Independent on Sunday said that it would take 32 Sir Galahad's a day to match the amount of food Iraq was receiving before the bombing began. We oughtn't to be surprised though. It's old tactics. They've been at it for years. Consider this moderate proposal by John McNaughton from the Pentagon Papers, published during the Vietnam war: "Strikes at population targets (per se) are likely not only to create a counterproductive wave of revulsion abroad and at home, but greatly to increase the risk of enlarging the war with China or the Soviet Union. Destruction of locks and dams, however - if handled right - might ... offer promise. It should be studied. Such destruction does not kill or drown people. By shallow-flooding the rice, it leads after time to widespread starvation (more than a million?) unless food is provided - which we could offer to do 'at the conference table'." Times haven't changed very much. The technique has evolved into a doctrine. It's called "Winning Hearts and Minds". So, here's the moral maths as it stands: 200,000 Iraqis estimated to have been killed in the first Gulf war. Hundreds of thousands dead because of the economic sanctions. (At least that lot has been saved from Saddam Hussein.) More being killed every day. Tens of thousands of US soldiers who fought the 1991 war officially declared "disabled" by a disease called the Gulf war syndrome, believed in part to be caused by exposure to depleted uranium. It hasn't stopped the "Allies" from continuing to use depleted uranium. And now this talk of bringing the UN back into the picture. But that old UN girl - it turns out that she just ain't what she was cracked up to be. She's been demoted (although she retains her high salary). Now she's the world's janitor. She's the Philippino cleaning lady, the Indian jamadarni, the postal bride from Thailand, the Mexican household help, the Jamaican au pair. She's employed to clean other peoples' shit. She's used and abused at will. Despite Blair's earnest submissions, and all his fawning, Bush has made it clear that the UN will play no independent part in the administration of postwar Iraq. The US will decide who gets those juicy "reconstruction" contracts. But Bush has appealed to the international community not to "politicise" the issue of humanitarian aid. On the March 28, after Bush called for the immediate resumption of the UN's oil for food programme, the UN security council voted unanimously for the resolution. This means that everybody agrees that Iraqi money (from the sale of Iraqi oil) should be used to feed Iraqi people who are starving because of US led sanctions and the illegal US-led war. Contracts for the "reconstruction" of Iraq we're told, in discussions on the business news, could jump-start the world economy. It's funny how the interests of American corporations are so often, so successfully and so deliberately confused with the interests of the world economy. While the American people will end up paying for the war, oil companies, weapons manufacturers, arms dealers, and corporations involved in "reconstruction" work will make direct gains from the war. Many of them are old friends and former employers of the Bush/ Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice cabal. Bush has already asked Congress for $75bn. Contracts for "re-construction" are already being negotiated. The news doesn't hit the stands because much of the US corporate media is owned and managed by the same interests. Operation Iraqi Freedom, Tony Blair assures us is about returning Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people. That is, returning Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people via corporate multinationals. Like Shell, like Chevron, like Halliburton. Or are we missing the plot here? Perhaps Halliburton is actually an Iraqi company? Perhaps US vice-president Dick Cheney (who is a former director of Halliburton) is a closet Iraqi? As the rift between Europe and America deepens, there are signs that the world could be entering a new era of economic boycotts. CNN reported that Americans are emptying French wine into gutters, chanting, "We don't want your stinking wine." We've heard about the re-baptism of French fries. Freedom fries they're called now. There's news trickling in about Americans boycotting German goods. The thing is that if the fallout of the war takes this turn, it is the US who will suffer the most. Its homeland may be defended by border patrols and nuclear weapons, but its economy is strung out across the globe. Its economic outposts are exposed and vulnerable to attack in every direction. Already the internet is buzzing with elaborate lists of American and British government products and companies that should be boycotted. Apart from the usual targets, Coke, Pepsi and McDonald's - government agencies such as USAID, the British department for international development, British and American banks, Arthur Anderson, Merrill Lynch, American Express, corporations such as Bechtel, General Electric, and companies such as Reebok, Nike and Gap - could find themselves under siege. These lists are being honed and re fined by activists across the world. They could become a practical guide that directs and channels the amorphous, but growing fury in the world. Suddenly, the "inevitability" of the project of corporate globalisation is beginning to seem more than a little evitable. It's become clear that the war against terror is not really about terror, and the war on Iraq not only about oil. It's about a superpower's self-destructive impulse towards supremacy, stranglehold, global hegemony. The argument is being made that the people of Argentina and Iraq have both been decimated by the same process. Only the weapons used against them differ: In one case it's an IMF chequebook. In the other, cruise missiles. Finally, there's the matter of Saddam's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. (Oops, nearly forgot about those!) In the fog of war - one thing's for sure - if Saddam 's regime indeed has weapons of mass destruction, it is showing an astonishing degree of responsibility and restraint in the teeth of extreme provocation. Under similar circumstances, (say if Iraqi troops were bombing New York and laying siege to Washington DC) could we expect the same of the Bush regime? Would it keep its thousands of nuclear warheads in their wrapping paper? What about its chemical and biological weapons? Its stocks of anthrax, smallpox and nerve gas? Would it? Excuse me while I laugh. In the fog of war we're forced to speculate: Either Saddam is an extremely responsible tyrant. Or - he simply does not possess weapons of mass destruction. Either way, regardless of what happens next, Iraq comes out of the argument smelling sweeter than the US government. So here's Iraq - rogue state, grave threat to world peace, paid-up member of the Axis of Evil. Here's Iraq, invaded, bombed, besieged, bullied, its sovereignty shat upon, its children killed by cancers, its people blown up on the streets. And here's all of us watching. CNN-BBC, BBC-CNN late into the night. Here's all of us, enduring the horror of the war, enduring the horror of the propaganda and enduring the slaughter of language as we know and understand it. Freedom now means mass murder (or, in the US, fried potatoes). When someone says "humanitarian aid" we automatically go looking for induced starvation. "Embedded" I have to admit, is a great find. It's what it sounds like. And what about "arsenal of tactics?" Nice! In most parts of the world, the invasion of Iraq is being seen as a racist war. The real danger of a racist war unleashed by racist regimes is that it engenders racism in everybody - perpetrators, victims, spectators. It sets the parameters for the debate, it lays out a grid for a particular way of thinking. There is a tidal wave of hatred for the US rising from the ancient heart of the world. In Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe, Australia. I encounter it every day. Sometimes it comes from the most unlikely sources. Bankers, businessmen, yuppie students, and they bring to it all the crassness of their conservative, illiberal politics. That absurd inability to separate governments from people: America is a nation of morons, a nation of murderers, they say, (with the same carelessness with which they say, "All Muslims are terrorists"). Even in the grotesque universe of racist insult, the British make their entry as add-ons. Arse-lickers, they're called. Suddenly, I, who have been vilified for being "anti-American" and "anti-west", find myself in the extraordinary position of defending the people of America. And Britain. Those who descend so easily into the pit of racist abuse would do well to remember the hundreds of thousands of American and British citizens who protested against their country's stockpile of nuclear weapons. And the thousands of American war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam. They should know that the most scholarly, scathing, hilarious critiques of the US government and the "American way of life" comes from American citizens. And that the funniest, most bitter condemnation of their prime minister comes from the British media. Finally they should remember that right now, hundreds of thousands of British and American citizens are on the streets protesting the war. The Coalition of the Bullied and Bought consists of governments, not people. More than one third of America's citizens have survived the relentless propaganda they've been subjected to, and many thousands are actively fighting their own government. In the ultra-patriotic climate that prevails in the US, that's as brave as any Iraqi fighting for his or her homeland. While the "Allies" wait in the desert for an uprising of Shia Muslims on the streets of Basra, the real uprising is taking place in hundreds of cities across the world. It has been the most spectacular display of public morality ever seen. Most courageous of all, are the hundreds of thousands of American people on the streets of America's great cities - Washington, New York, Chicago, San Francisco. The fact is that the only institution in the world today that is more powerful than the American government, is American civil society. American citizens have a huge responsibility riding on their shoulders. How can we not salute and support those who not only acknowledge but act upon that responsibility? They are our allies, our friends. At the end of it all, it remains to be said that dictators like Saddam Hussein, and all the other despots in the Middle East, in the central Asian republics, in Africa and Latin America, many of them installed, supported and financed by the US government, are a menace to their own people. Other than strengthening the hand of civil society (instead of weakening it as has been done in the case of Iraq), there is no easy, pristine way of dealing with them. (It's odd how those who dismiss the peace movement as utopian, don't hesitate to proffer the most absurdly dreamy reasons for going to war: to stamp out terrorism, install democracy, eliminate fascism, and most entertainingly, to "rid the world of evil-doers".) Regardless of what the propaganda machine tells us, these tin-pot dictators are not the greatest threat to the world. The real and pressing danger, the greatest threat of all is the locomotive force that drives the political and economic engine of the US government, currently piloted by George Bush. Bush-bashing is fun, because he makes such an easy, sumptuous target. It's true that he is a dangerous, almost suicidal pilot, but the machine he handles is far more dangerous than the man himself. Despite the pall of gloom that hangs over us today, I'd like to file a cautious plea for hope: in times of war, one wants one's weakest enemy at the helm of his forces. And President George W Bush is certainly that. Any other even averagely intelligent US president would have probably done the very same things, but would have managed to smoke-up the glass and confuse the opposition. Perhaps even carry the UN with him. Bush's tactless imprudence and his brazen belief that he can run the world with his riot squad, has done the opposite. He has achieved what writers, activists and scholars have striven to achieve for decades. He has exposed the ducts. He has placed on full public view the working parts, the nuts and bolts of the apocalyptic apparatus of the American empire. Now that the blueprint (The Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire) has been put into mass circulation, it could be disabled quicker than the pundits predicted. Bring on the spanners. From marisa at sfcamerawork.org Fri Apr 4 00:08:45 2003 From: marisa at sfcamerawork.org (Marisa S. Olson) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 10:38:45 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] anti-war art? Message-ID: Dear Reader group, I am writing a long mag essay on anti-war art--interesting contemporary work and also the history of such work. I would love your notes and thoughts on examples of the above... Thanks! Marisa _________________ Marisa S. Olson Associate Director SF Camerawork 415. 863. 1001 From aiindex at mnet.fr Fri Apr 4 06:13:01 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2003 01:43:01 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Progressive South Asian Voices Against War On Iraq [*] Message-ID: PROGRESSIVE SOUTH ASIAN VOICES AGAINST WAR ON IRAQ: Selected articles & reports (April 2, 2003) [Updated on 4 April 2003] compiled by The South Asia Citizens Web http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex ========== [1.] Global Crisis Over Iraq : Resistance is never futile (Arundhati Roy | January 2003) [2.] 'American Designs on Iraq : Its Consequences' on February 1, 2003 New Delhi [3.] Mahesh Bhatt's letter to Charles Mendies (5 Feb 2003 )) [4.] What sense can Iraq war make ( M.B. Naqvi | 10 Feb 2003 ) [5.] Political parties, civil society groups and TUs protest against the US lead war propaganda against Iraq. 10th of Feb, 2003 in New Delhi [6.] Anti-War Campaign Candlelight Vigil in New Delhi (15 February 2003) [7.] Supporting the war may be suicidal Dr Iftikhar H. Malik (15 February 2003) [8.] Pakistan: Anti-war rallies - Citizens Committee Against War formed (18 February 2003) [9.] News Report on Peace Vigil in Bombay , 15 February 2003 [10]. An Evening of Songs, Poetry, Dance and Drama To Protest The US Push For War Against Iraq (Hyderabad, February 19, 2003) [11.] In Hyde Park, for peace (Praful Bidwai | February 20, 2003) [12.] The Citizens Committee Against War (CCAW) rally against the war on Iraq in Karachi on Feb. 28, 2003 [13.] Antiwar protests in southern India (Ganesh Dev and Arun Kumar | 5 March 2003) [14.] Liberal Contortions on Iraq (Achin Vanaik | March 13, 2003) [15.] One Million, One Opinion (Kamal Mitra Chenoy | 13 March 2003) [16.] War For Hegemony, Not Justice - Stand up for peace! (Praful Bidwai | March 17, 2003) [17]. Dispatch from India (Praful Bidwai | March 20, 2003 ) [18.] Antiwar protests grow in India (WSWS correspondents | 20 March 2003) [19.] Attack on the human rights of Iraqi people (PUCL Press statement | March 20, 2003) [20.] [Delhi] University Community Against The War on Iraq (March 21, 2003) [21.] Attack on the People of Iraq - A Crime against Humanity (NAPM | March 21, 2003) [22.] Peoples Vigilance Committee on Human Rights [India] On US war & people of world (March 21, 2003) [23.] Machinehead (Praful Bidwai | March 22, 2003) [24.] Talk and Articles by Siddharth Varadarajan (March 24 - 27, 2003) [25.] "We do not want tears, we want solidarity" (Farida Akhter | 25 Mar 2003) [26.] Pakistan's mullahs thrive on anti-war fever (M B Naqvi | March 25, 2003 ) [27.] Opposition in India & Pakistan to the US-led invasion of Iraq | Radio Interviews with Arundhati Roy / Praful Bidwai / Abdul Hamid Nayyar | March 25, 2003 ) [28.] Joint Statement by leaders of India's Political Parties and Political Personalities Against War on Iraq (March 27, 2003) [29.] Boycott The Dollar To Stop The War! (Rohini Hensman | 27 March 2003) [30.] Into the Iraqi quagmire? (Praful Bidwai | March 27, 2003) [31.] 'People Against War' -- an umbrella of over 20 Mumbai-based organisations and citizens (March 27, 2003) [32.] Announcing Anti War Demos in Delhi, Calcutta, Chennai (March28, 2003) [33.] Consensus of the coerced (Praful Bidwai | March 28, 2003) [34.] Report / Resolutions Adopted at the Anti-War Rally in New Delhi on 28 March 2003 [35.] The war of occupation (Aijaz Ahmad | March 29, 2003) [36.] Revulsion, disgust in India at the war (Praful Bidwai | March 29, 2003) [37.] Indian legal community criticises attack on Iraq (Rakesh Bhatnagar | March 30, 2003) [38.] Anti-war rally in Kolkata (The Hindu | March 31, 2003) [39.] Calcutta Peace rally skirts war twins (The Telegraph | March 31, 2003) [40.] Editorial (Telegraph | March 31, 2003) [41.] The Naked Emperor (Achin Vanaik | Apr 01, 2003) [42.] Battle for Baghdad Flounders in Sea of Deception (Praful Bidwai | April 2, 2003) [43.] Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates (Arundhati Roy | April 2, 2003) [44.] Sri Lankan and other South Asian Women Protest against the war on Iraq (Cats Eye | 2 April 2003) [45.] The blame game begins (Praful Bidwai | April 03, 2003) [46.] A Strategy To Stop The War (Rohini Hensman | April 3, 2003) [47.] Brutal imperialism in the name of democracy (Aseem Srivastava | April 3, 2003) [48.] March of Folly (Praful Bidwai | 4 April 2003) [49.] Indefensible war (Rajeev Dhavan | 4 April 2003) [50.] Human chain against war in Chennai | 3 April 2003 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The full text digest of the above articles are (a single plain text file) available to all interested ; Should your require a copy write to . The document will be sent as an attachment in Word (316k size) From aiindex at mnet.fr Fri Apr 4 07:17:45 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2003 02:47:45 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Nadimarg massacre and Kashmiriyat Message-ID: Daily Times April 3, 2003 Op-Ed Nadimarg and Kashmiriyat : by Akhila Raman Massive solidarity demonstrations by the Kashmiri Muslims following the brutal killings of Pandits at Nadimarg reveal that Kashmiriyat continues to flourish. They also highlight the alienation and plight of the Kashmiris who continue to be brutalized by the militants and the Indian forces. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_3-4-2003_pg3_3 [Above Op-Ed with online references for those curious: http://www.mindspring.com/~akhila_raman/kashmir/nadimarg_links.htm ] In a dastardly act, ìunidentified gunmenî massacred 24 Kashmiri Pandits including 11 women and two children in Nadimarg village in Indian-administered Kashmir, on March 24. Kashmiris rallied in solidarity with the Kashmiri Pandits, voicing their outrage against the carnage. No militant group claimed responsibility; India promptly accused Pakistan-backed militants, while Pakistan also condemned the killings. Some local villagers besides militant groups have in fact accused Indian authorities of masterminding the carnage to undermine their freedom struggle [Kashmir Times, March 25]. What is really going on? The pattern is all too familiar and is reminiscent of the massacre of 35 Sikhs at Chattisinghpora by ìunidentified gunmenî in March 2000 when India had promptly accused Pakistan sponsored ìforeign militantsî. Following the massacre, Indian forces killed five persons in the nearby Panchalthan village and portrayed them as ìforeign militantsî responsible for the massacre; However, DNA test results released on July 16 have established that the slain persons were indeed innocent civilians, thus exposing the deception. Despite repeated demands by the Kashmiris for an impartial inquiry into the seed incident at Chattisinghpora, no inquiry has been conducted as of date. Similarly, the 1998 massacre of 23 Pandits at Wandhama went uninvestigated despite repeated demands by the Kashmiris. The All Party Hurriyet Conference, the leading separatist umbrella group, observed a protest strike demanding an inquiry; Amnesty Internationalís request to investigate Wandhama carnage was refused. This raises doubts about the credibility of the assertions of the Indian State. Let us take a snapshot of the chilling human rights record in Kashmir; 2477 civilians had been killed by the Indian forces during 1990-1998 according to conservative official estimates (which mostly exclude thousands of custodial killings); 6673 civilians had been killed by the militants in the same period which include 982 Hindus and Sikhs. Besides, thousands of renegade militants in the employ of the Indian forces have perpetrated excesses. In 1999, Gurbachan Jagat, the Director General of Police admitted that there were 1200 renegades in the payroll of the government. Renegades are believed by the locals to be behind many unexplained killings by ìunidentified gunmenî such as the killings of human right activists Jalil Andrabi, H N Wanchoo and Dr Farooq Ashai and continue to be the most dreaded group. While it is not yet clear who perpetrated the carnage, it is clear that the killers were interested in derailing the peace process initiated by the State Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. The killings have been a devastating blow to his efforts to bring back the minority Pandits who fled the Valley in a massive exodus in 1990. The killings also come closely on the heels of the disbanding of the dreaded SOG (Special Operations Group) which has committed massive human right violations in the past. As part of the ìhealing touchî policy, he is also considering releasing hundreds of those Kashmiris under detention who are not involved in militant activities; There are concerns that the Centre may be planning to wrest security matters from the State government following the massacre, which will reverse the ìhealing touchî policy. The motive of the gunmen is clear: To prolong the Kashmir tragedy, terrorise the minorities and taint the Kashmiri freedom struggle with a communal colour. It is heartening to note that thousands of Kashmiris rallied in support of the Kashmiri Pandits and held protest demonstrations. The entire Valley shut down on March 25 in response to a call for a strike by the Hurriyet, thus sending a clear signal to the killers that Kashmiri Muslims do not approve of killings of their Hindu brethren and that Kashmiriyat ó the composite culture with the glorious traditions of communal amity, tolerance and compassion ó is still flourishing. It is also clear that the Hurriyet enjoys immense support across the Valley; the strikes called by the Hurriyet are observed in near-total. The 42 per cent voter turn-out in last October elections in Indian-administered Kashmir has been misinterpreted by some, as a sign that Kashmiris are happy with India. It should be noted that, in response to Hurriyetís poll boycott call, the turn-out was only 11 per cent in Srinagar district and only 29 per cent in all of the Valley, where insurgency is concentrated. Those who voted were in fact voting for local issues such as electricity, hospitals and employment and voted in favour of a better administration. The larger issue of the resolution of the Kashmir issue remains unresolved. For instance, last October 27 ó the 55th anniversary of the arrival of Indian army ó the Valley observed a complete shut-down in response to a call by the Hurriyet. Every year, this day is being continually observed as the ìBlack Dayî on the call of the separatists since 1989 when the militancy erupted in Kashmir. The writing is on the wall for India to see. ìUnidentified gunmenî are often interpreted in Indian circles as a monolithic group of ìKashmir militantsî while in fact, there is a significant presence of renegades and self-appointed/Pakistan-backed foreign militants fighting for their Muslim brethren, who end up undermining the cause of the latter. There is an urgent need to order an impartial investigation by an independent agency to identify the killers in such incidents of communal killings and bring them to book. Kashmiris have long demanded impartial inquiry into such communal killings and India must address this grave matter. There is a greater need to address the larger problem which sustains militancy and alienation, namely the non-resolution of the Kashmir issue. As Moti Lal, one of the Nadimarg survivors pointed out, ìsuch killings cannot be stopped unless Kashmir issue is resolved. How can our Muslim brethren ensure our security when they are themselves dying?î Kashmiris, without doubt, are crying for peace, but certainly not for a peace on the terms dictated to them. India needs to recognise their legitimate grievances ó long-denied self-determination and erosion of autonomy ó and engage them and their representatives, namely the Hurriyet, in unconditional dialogues. The present ìcarrot and stickî policy has devastated the people in the past decade and must be abandoned. Any attempt to integrate Kashmir into India needs to be an emotional integration; Winning the hearts and minds alone can lead to lasting peace. From avinash332 at rediffmail.com Fri Apr 4 00:27:42 2003 From: avinash332 at rediffmail.com (avinash kumar) Date: 3 Apr 2003 18:57:42 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Edward Said on "The other America" Message-ID: <20030403185742.28134.qmail@mailweb34.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030403/92b8c20c/attachment.pl From announcer at pukar.org.in Fri Apr 4 09:48:51 2003 From: announcer at pukar.org.in (PUKAR @ Kitab Mahal) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2003 09:48:51 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Rethinking Urban Metabolism TOMORROW Message-ID: Dear Friends: PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research), in partnership with University College London and the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) invites you to a seminar titled "Rethinking Urban Metabolism: Water, Space and Society in Contemporary Mumbai" It is widely predicted that Mumbai will become the world's largest city within the next ten years. The rapid growth of metropolitan Mumbai is placing enormous pressure on the physical infrastructure of the city. This pressure is particularly acute in the fields of water supply and sanitation. Existing conceptions of the relationship between water and cities have tended to focus on technical issues, to the relative neglect of political, cultural and historial factors. In this seminar, a diverse spectrum of voices will be heard, ranging from engineering and urban planning to architecture and film-making, in order to explore the meaning and future prospects for water provision in Mumbai. Chair: MATTHEW GANDY is Reader in Geography at University College London. His research is concerned with the cultural and historical aspects of urban metabolism, and representations of nature and landscape in the visual arts. He is author of Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002). He is currently writing a book on the cultural histories of urban infrastructure and the "hidden city", which involves fieldwork in Los Angeles, Mumbai, Lagos and Berlin. Participants: DEV BENEGAL is a feature film-maker and director of Split Wide Open (2001), clips of which will be screened in the seminar. NIRUPA BHANGAR is a teacher and consultant on water conservation and management based in Mumbai. NAYAN PAREKH and RACHNA SHETH are architects working with Juhu Together. B.C. KHATUA is Secretary for Water Supply and Sanitation to the Government of Maharashtra. RAMESH BHATIA is Deputy Municipal Commissioner and Chief Hydraulic Engineer of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). Date: SATURDAY 5 APRIL 2003 4.00 p.m. to 7.00 p.m. At: PUKAR 4th Floor, Kitab Mahal Dr Dadabhai Naoroji Road Mumbai 400001 Next to New Excelsior Cinema, near VT Station Entrance from New Book Company, D.N. Road _____ PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research) P.O. Box 5627, Dadar, Mumbai 400014, INDIA E-Mail Phone +91 (022) 2207 7779, +91 98200 45529, +91 98204 04010 Web Site http://www.pukar.org.in _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From aiindex at mnet.fr Sat Apr 5 05:53:33 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2003 01:23:33 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] What We Do Now : A Peace Agenda Message-ID: The Nation April 3, 2003 What We Do Now A Peace Agenda by David Cortright Over the past six months, we've witnessed the emergence of a global antiwar movement so large it has seemed almost possible that US war plans could be stopped. But now that the war has begun, even without UN sanction, the antiwar movement is at a crossroads. Following is a forum in which David Cortright leads off a discussion on what the peace movement's goals should be now and in the longer term; his essay is followed by three responses--from Phyllis Bennis and John Cavanagh, Bill Fletcher Jr. and Medea Benjamin. --The Editors As the Bush Administration continues its illegal and unjust military invasion of Iraq, we must steel ourselves for the difficult days that lie ahead. We must also recognize that our work for peace has only just begun. We should not retreat from our core criticisms of Bush's war or be intimidated into silence. This war was and is completely unnecessary. Iraq was being disarmed through peaceful diplomatic means. It made numerous concessions to UN demands and was in the process of destroying missiles and disclosing its weapons activities when the United States attacked. Unprovoked war against another country without the approval of the Security Council violates the UN Charter and is illegal under US and international law. Such a war can never be just. The outbreak of war makes our work more important and necessary than ever. It creates enormous new challenges, but it also offers new opportunities. We must organize a broadly based campaign to address the causes and consequences of this war and to prevent such misguided adventures in the future. We can start by recognizing the tremendous accomplishments of the past few months. We have created the largest, most broadly based peace movement in history--a movement that has engaged millions of people here and around the globe. Never before have US churches, from the Conference of Catholic Bishops to the National Council of Churches, spoken so resolutely against war. Never before have so many US trade unions supported the antiwar movement. In practically every sector of society--business executives, women's groups, environmentalists, artists, musicians, African-Americans, Latinos--a strong antiwar voice has emerged. Antiwar rallies and vigils have occurred in thousands of communities, and many cities have passed antiwar declarations. The fact that this effort could not prevent war reflects not the weaknesses of our movement but the failures of American democracy and the entrenched power of US militarism. The Bush Administration has shown utter contempt for public opinion at home and abroad. It manipulated legitimate public concerns about terrorism to assert a false connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda and refused to tell the American people or Congress how much the invasion and occupation would cost until after the war was already under way. Our short-term objectives will depend on how the war unfolds, whether it is a short, "successful" military campaign or becomes a drawn-out war of attrition with constant sniper or guerrilla attacks. We hope there will be few casualties, both for Iraqis and Americans, but we know that a quick victory will bolster the very policies we abhor. We urge our government to do everything possible to avoid unnecessary death and destruction. Our short-term political agenda should include the following demands and issues: § Protect the innocent. The United States should provide massive humanitarian assistance and economic aid for the Iraqi people and other vulnerable populations in the region. We should support the reconstruction and development of Iraq. This assistance should be administered by civilian agencies, not the Pentagon. We should also demand, or if necessary provide, an accurate accounting of the civilian dead. § Support our men and women in the armed forces. We regret that their Commander in Chief has sent them on an ill-advised and unnecessary mission, but we respect and thank them for their service. We urge special support for the families of service members and reservists who have been sent to the Persian Gulf. We call for greater efforts to address the medical problems that will result from service in the gulf. More than 167,000 veterans are currently on disability as a result of their service in the first Gulf War. We condemn the cuts in veterans' benefits approved by the Republican-controlled Congress and call for increased availability of medical care and other benefits for veterans. § Bring home the troops. We urge the withdrawal of American military forces from Iraq as soon as possible. We oppose the creation of any long-term or permanent US military bases in Iraq. § No war or military threats against Iran. We oppose any attempt to coerce or threaten Iran with military attack. It is no secret that extremists in Washington and Israel favor a military strike against Iran as the next phase in the "war on terror." This would be a further catastrophe for the cause of peace and must be vigorously resisted. § No war for oil. We oppose any US effort to seize control of Iraqi oil or to demand a percentage of Iraqi oil revenues. Ownership of Iraqi oil should remain with the Iraqi people. Iraq was the first Arab nation to nationalize its petroleum resources, and it must be allowed to retain control over this wealth to rebuild its economy and society. § Peace in the Middle East. The United States should give active support to a genuine peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. We should pressure both sides to accept a peace settlement that ends the violence and creates two sovereign and viable states. § Support for regional disarmament. The Gulf War cease-fire resolution of 1991 specified that the disarmament of Iraq was to be the first step toward the creation in the Middle East of a "zone free from weapons of mass destruction." The elimination of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq should thus lead to their elimination throughout the region. Our response to war and military occupation in Iraq must also include a longer-term vision of an alternative US security policy. The Bush Administration claims that the deadly nexus of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction requires a radical new foreign policy of military pre-emption and the unilateral assertion of American technological power. This is the policy being implemented in Iraq. We must offer an alternative vision, one that takes seriously the terrorism and proliferation threat but that provides a safer, less costly and ultimately more successful strategy for countering these dangers. The outlines of our alternative strategy are visible in the policy proposals we have suggested in the current debate over Iraq. We support the disarmament of Iraq, North Korea and other nations regarded by the international community as potential proliferators. We favor vigorous UN weapons inspections to verify disarmament. We call on our government to work diplomatically through the UN Security Council. We endorse targeted sanctions (restrictions on the finances and travel of designated elites, and arms embargoes) and other means of containing recalcitrant states. We endorse lifting sanctions and providing incentives as means of inducing compliance. We support the international campaign against terrorism and urge greater cooperative efforts to prosecute and cut off the funding of those responsible for the September 11 attacks. At the same time, we recognize that disarmament ultimately must be universal. The disarmament of Iraq must be tied to regional disarmament, which in turn must be linked to global disarmament. The double standard of the United States and other nuclear states, in which we propose to keep these deadliest of weapons indefinitely while denying them to the rest of the world, cannot endure. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968 was based on a bargain--the nuclear powers' agreeing to pursue disarmament in exchange for the rest of the world's renouncing the nuclear option. The longer the United States and its nuclear partners refuse their obligation to disarm, the greater the likelihood that the nonproliferation regime will collapse. The only true security against nuclear dangers is an enforceable ban on all nuclear weapons. Chemical and biological weapons are already banned. The far greater danger of nuclear weapons also must be subject to universal prohibition. A global prohibition against all weapons of mass destruction is the best protection against the danger of terrorists' acquiring and using them. In effect, the disarmament obligations being imposed on Iraq must be applied to the entire world. All nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and long-range missiles should be banned everywhere, by all nations. This is the path to a safer and more secure future. Of course, a ban on weapons of mass destruction would be meaningless without robust means of verifying and enforcing such prohibitions. A world of disarmament will require much stronger mechanisms of monitoring and enforcement than now exist. The policies we have supported for the peaceful disarmament of Iraq--rigorous inspections, targeted sanctions and multilateral coercive diplomacy--can and should be applied universally to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction. The UN weapons-inspection capability should be increased a hundredfold and deployed throughout the world to monitor and verify the universal ban on weapons of mass destruction. Nations that refuse to comply with verified disarmament requirements should be subjected to targeted sanctions and coercive diplomatic pressures from the UN and other regional security organizations. Nations that cooperate with disarmament mandates should receive inducements in the form of economic assistance, trade and technology preferences, and security assurances. These policy tools, combined with a serious commitment to sustainable economic development for developing nations, are viable means for helping to assure international compliance with a global disarmament mandate. This is not a pacifist vision that eschews all uses of military force. The threat of force is sometimes a necessary component of coercive diplomacy. In some circumstances the actual use of force--ideally in a targeted and narrow fashion, with authorization from the UN Security Council or regional security bodies--may be necessary. In contrast with the policy of the Bush Administration, however, the proposed approach would allow the threat or use of force only as a last resort, when all other peaceful diplomatic means have been exhausted, and only with the explicit authorization of the Security Council or regional security organizations. In no circumstance would the United States or any other nation have the right to mount a military invasion to overthrow another government for the ostensible purpose of achieving disarmament. Rather, the United States would respect the Charter of the UN and would strive to achieve disarmament and settle the differences among nations through peaceful diplomatic means. Our immediate challenge in implementing these short- and long-term objectives is to change the political direction and leadership of the United States. In the upcoming political debates we must devote our energies to building support for our alternative foreign-policy vision and creating a mass political constituency that can hold candidates accountable to this vision. Our chances of preventing future military disasters depend in the short run on removing the Bush Administration from office and electing a new political leadership dedicated to international cooperation and peace. This is a formidable political challenge. It will be extremely difficult to accomplish by November 2004. We must begin to organize for this challenge now, however, and we must remain committed to this objective into the future, planning now for the additional election cycles that will probably be necessary to realize our goals. We must also recognize the enormity of the challenge we face in diminishing the unelected power of the national security establishment, which functions as a shadow government regardless of who is in office. These great challenges will be met only by a sustained, massive citizens' movement dedicated to the long-term challenge of fundamentally reshaping America's role in the world. The work begins now, as the military invasion of Iraq continues. We have no time to mourn. A lifetime of organizing and education lies ahead. From amitbasu55 at hotmail.com Sat Apr 5 09:59:21 2003 From: amitbasu55 at hotmail.com (Amit R Basu) Date: Sat, 05 Apr 2003 04:29:21 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: Arundhati ray in Guardian on Iraq War Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030405/305f2f3d/attachment.html From aiindex at mnet.fr Sat Apr 5 22:42:26 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2003 18:12:26 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Interview: Edward Said & Daniel Barenboim Message-ID: The Guardian Saturday April 5, 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,928709,00.html In harmony Daniel Barenboim is an Israeli and a world-famous conductor, Edward Said a Palestinian, renowned advocate of his people and a professor of literature. They tell Suzie Mackenzie about their unlikely friendship and their shared passion - music "Separation has no future": Daniel Barenboim (top) and Edward Said. Photo: AP It was some time in the mid-1990s, the conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim says - "1994, 1995, I don't remember, anyway it doesn't matter" - but roughly a year or so after a chance meeting in a London hotel with Edward Said, the Palestinian writer and professor of literature at Columbia University, that he took the decision, "as a Jew and an Israeli citizen", to go to the West Bank to see for himself the plight of the Palestinians. He had been privately critical for more than two decades of Israel's policy towards the Palestinians, "ever since Golda Meir's pronouncement in 1970 that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people. I thought then, you can't say this, you can't turn a blind eye, say they don't exist." He didn't want to go, he says, out of some spirit of empathy or compassion, but because the situation struck him as unjust. "That even though the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 was an act of universal justice, it has to be recognised that it has been achieved at the price of displacement, grief and tragedy for others. We had been unable to see this then, in 1948. But it has become an absolute necessity for us to see it now." Justice, he says, "strong ethics", is the basis of Jewish history, "as opposed to love which is the Christian tradition". And it was in this Jewish tradition that he went first and later returned twice - in 1999, and then again in 2002, to play a concert in Ramallah which resulted in death threats to himself and a headline in the Jerusalem Post, "With friends like Barenboim, who needs enemies?" So, as an outspoken critic of Israeli occupation of the West Bank ("It is wrong physically and morally - a corrupting influence, not just in the territories but back home"), Barenboim became vilified, "only by some", he points out, as an enemy to the land he loves. Is this a definition of friendship? Does true friendship consist only in a sort of appeasement, as the Jerusalem Post implies, saying the right thing at the right time, a refusal to give offence? And is this "friendship" any better than the kind of friendship that exists only in adversity, cheering yourself up with empathy, going to Palestine, for example, to exhibit pity for the Palestinians - an emotional tourism? Barenboim went to play music, and before an audience who, he was well aware, might consider him the enemy. According to this definition, which is his, friendship on the side of justice will always carry with it a risk. There are two sorts of people in the world, Barenboim says - and you can't but like him for this: "Those who like to converse only with those who agree with them, who get a sense of comfort from that. And others who are curious to hear a different point of view." It is one of the reasons he loves conducting. "Because in an orchestra you will have a number of great players, each of whom is creative and each with clear ideas of his own." In this sense, he says, an orchestra is a model of democracy, "because you have to leave space for others and therefore have no inhibitions about claiming a place for yourself". In Ramallah, Barenboim claimed a place for himself on the side of justice, though he couldn't be sure of the Palestinian response. "It occurred to me that, for the first time in my life, I might have to face an audience that was unfriendly." He was almost afraid. But fear, as he says, is always a lack of knowledge. "It is lack of knowledge that brings instability, so it is important to know not only how to do something but why you are doing something. It is the same with music." They gave him a standing ovation which he likes to think is as much because he is an Israeli "who stretched out his hand", as that he is a world-famous musician. Or maybe a mix of both. "Usually the only Israeli they see is an Israeli soldier." It was the same, Said says, a few years before when Barenboim gave a concert in Jerusalem. "I was there with him and the night before we had been to dinner at the home of a woman friend on the West Bank whose husband had just been deported." At the end of the concert, Barenboim thanked her for a wonderful evening, delicious food, denounced the deportation and dedicated his first encore to her. It was an extremely generous act, Said says. "And in this Daniel is quite unique in the music world. He likes to be engaged with the audience. Compared with someone like Brendel, who is more detached, aloof, Daniel is talkative." Gladness not sadness is talkative, the German philosopher Hannah Arendt has written. "And truly human dialogue differs from mere talk, in that it is entirely permeated by pleasure in the other person and what he says. It is tuned to the key of gladness." It is a wonderful idea this and it is the idea, the starting point, I think, for the book of dialogues, Parallels & Paradoxes, that Barenboim and Said have just published, conversations that took place over a period of five years, which they recorded, and based around the subject that for both is a source of gladness - music. What is striking about these two friends, Said and Barenboim, two men from radically different backgrounds, yes, but both intellectuals and sharing a common history - their relationship to the Holy Land - is how different they are. Not because one is an Israeli, one a Palestinian - they are, as individuals, temperamentally opposed: one, easy, expansive, the other, Said, more cautious, despite his outspokenness. Barenboim opens the door to his vast Claridge's suite - grand piano dwarfed in one corner, buckets of flowers - a napkin tucked into his shirt. He makes a sweeping gesture with his hand, "It's all rather grand, I'm afraid" - without sounding in the least bit contrite - and proceeds with his breakfast, a bowl of porridge. He is glad I have ordered tea, he adds, because with tea will come biscuits. Two things make him nervous, not eating and not sleeping. So he eats punctually and naps every afternoon. Music has been his life since memory began. "There was music before I could speak, both my parents were piano teachers, we were not rich." And as a child, when someone came to their apartment, in Buenos Aires where he was born in 1942, "they came to have a piano lesson, so I thought the whole world played the piano. I never met anyone who didn't play the piano." He was an only child and a brilliant child, "though the brilliance has gone, only the child remains", and he gave his first official concert at the age of seven. He has been performing all his life and his manner of speaking, half arrogance/authority, half self-deprecation/not too much authority - in elegant phrases that seem to spring fully formed from his lips - gives him a kind of comedic confidence. He is funny without you ever being certain that he means to be. He expects to be listened to and, though he denies it, he expects to be liked. "As a conductor, you have to give up any hope of being liked." Does he think that being an only child, the focus of attention, knowing somehow always who he was, has made him self-absorbed? "I don't think so. It depends how you define it. There are people who see only themselves. But being self-absorbed can also mean that whatever you see, hear, experience, you find something for yourself in it. In other words, you relate everything to yourself and yourself to everything. And that I am." Being with him, it is impossible to relax. Every 10 minutes, he tells me he will have to leave in five minutes, so I find myself suspended between maximum tension, maximum concentration. This he does for an hour and a half. And, of course, he is passionate. When asked why he felt the need to make a stand - why go to Ramallah? Why draw so much fire? - he replies, "What do you think music is about? Five hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, people loved, hated, were jealous. We didn't invent human nature. How do you expect me to sit at home and just be a musician? That wouldn't be playing music. That would just be playing a selection of notes." Music, he says, is a metaphor for life, "in the sense that music is in a constant state of becoming, it is making connections, between sounds, with things that are ephemeral." All of history, and all of his history, has been a demonstration of this. When he emigrated to Israel from Argentina in 1952, at the age of 10, Israel itself was in a state of becoming. "It was a socialist state in the best sense of the word socialist. The great problem with socialism is that you are made to feel that you work only for the state, not for the individual. But if there is no state and you are working towards it, then socialism has a totally different feel." It is from here, he says, that his idea, his instinct for the connection between the individual and the collective was forged. And conducting, as he says, is the apotheosis of this. "Any professional conductor can make a professional orchestra play the way he wants them to play. But that's not music. Music is when the conductor and the orchestra breathe as from one collective lung." It's probably fair to add at this point that Barenboim, for all his imperious confidence, is not a bully - his entire manner is the antithesis of coercion. You learn this as a parent, he says - he is the father of two sons. He worries about them and he knows you can't get it right as a parent. "I always believe you either treat them too long as babies or too soon as adults, you can't find the right moment because there is no right moment. And on the whole I would rather err on the side of treating them too soon as adults. That has some positive results, some negative." It is all about balance, he says. And balance, he could have added, is a definition of friendship. Different notes played with one accord - harmony. Which is why he calls Said his friend. "Edward and I have different narratives, so our interpretation of the past is different. But of the present we are more or less in concord. And our interpretation of the future, for Israel/Palestine, is in essence the same. That there must be a way to live side by side, each in his own country but with open contact. Separation has no future." Barenboim, as an Israeli, is situated on the side of power. He says, "We Jews, when we speak about the other, have to understand we are talking about those who depend on us, whose territory we have occupied." Said speaks on behalf of the dispossessed - characteristically a less negotiable position. Said is more dissonant than his friend, less at ease with himself, not less talkative, but more wary with words. Not surprising, perhaps, in a professor of literature aware of the weaponry of language. We meet in his publisher's offices in London where he accepts a cup of coffee in a plastic mug - though he'd rather have water, he prefers not to ask. He looks quite tired, he sleeps little, "three hours a night". Barenboim has described him as "the ultimate Renaissance man" - a scholar, an accomplished pianist. Until his 20s, Said had the hope that he might become a professional musician - "In the end I wasn't good enough." And he is, of course, the most passionate, articulate and, in the west, most visible advocate of the Palestinian people. Unlike Barenboim, who seems to have sprung fully formed into his world, it took Said almost 40 years to find his authentic voice, "my second self". It wasn't until 1973, soon after the Yom Kippur war, that he wrote his first political article for the New York Times. And you sense in him the diffidence of a man who has constructed himself from the outside. For the past 10 years he has added to "his struggle" the battle against cancer - he was diagnosed with leukaemia in 1991, began treatment in 1994 and has been under constant medical supervision ever since. He indicates a large bulge where his stomach is and asks if he looks fat - as a child, his father used to tease him about his physique. The lump is a tumour, a metastasis from the leukaemia. The cancer, he says, has changed him: "Of course. In the sense that you appreciate every day more." And he now finds it hard to travel long distances. "I couldn't, for example, go to Palestine. I always think of going back but I am too ill." But he can lecture and he can teach and he believes not arrogantly but sincerely in the usefulness of this. That in the public realm there is a place "for the not standard voice, for the alternative voice. I am that and always have been." Three things converged in Said's life in the early 90s. His illness, his meeting with Barenboim and his return to Palestine in 1992 for the first time since he had left in 1947. In 1994 he started work on his memoir, Out Of Place, an attempt to recuperate the "first self" he had left behind and to try to understand the confusion, inconsistencies and multiple contradictions that went into making his character. He was born in Jerusalem in 1935 into a wealthy, cultivated family - his father was the owner of a stationery company with franchises in Palestine and Cairo. He spent much of his youth in Egypt, attending British colonial schools. He always wanted to be a good son, yet from an early age, from his father to his teachers, all authority figures rebuked him. He writes touchingly about how his rebel sensitivity was formed. His father was a bully and his mother sometimes smothering, sometimes cold. Even his cleverness didn't please them. "Why do you insist on doing so badly?" his mother would ask him. Disgrace, fear, punishment seem to have been the template of his childhood and when he went to America in 1951, as a freshman to Princeton and then a graduate at Harvard, he has said he made a conscious decision to leave the past behind. There is a poignancy in this friendship between Said and Barenboim - that within a few years of Said's family leaving Jerusalem for good, in 1947, Barenboim's family was moving in. Two opposing trajectories, one going home, one being expelled from home. But unlike Barenboim, Said didn't come from a safe place, an open world that inspired openness - that was music, his parents, the piano. And more significantly perhaps, he didn't come from trust. Barenboim describes in his autobiography how, when in 1954 he was asked by the conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler to play with the Berlin Philharmonic, his father said no. It was too soon after the war for a Jewish boy to travel from Israel to Germany. And Barenboim had no problem with this. In a parallel story at the end of his memoir, Said tells how he was betrayed by his father into signing an illegal business contract that resulted in him being banned from Cairo for 15 years. From sanjayb at hotpop.com Sun Apr 6 04:39:42 2003 From: sanjayb at hotpop.com (Sanjay Bhangar) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2003 04:39:42 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] india plans moon landing? Message-ID: <002e01c2fbc8$7369cde0$870e0a0a@IDLI> hey, this article really disturbed me... http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,6236731%255E40 1,00.html does anyone know if this is true... ? we have the hindu bomb, and now the hindu moon? like, shit. -Sanjay From slumbug at rediffmail.com Sun Apr 6 12:25:26 2003 From: slumbug at rediffmail.com (slumbug) Date: 6 Apr 2003 06:55:26 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: reader-list digest, Vol 1 #204 - 1 msg Message-ID: <20030406065526.9505.qmail@mailweb33.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030406/930fd14b/attachment.pl From fred at bytesforall.org Mon Apr 7 01:19:32 2003 From: fred at bytesforall.org (Frederick Noronha (FN)) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 01:19:32 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] [APCPress] APC Statement: APC opposes actions again Al-Jazeera Website (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- STATEMENT BY THE ASSOCIATION FOR PROGRESSIVE COMMUNICATIONS (APC) OPPOSING ACTIONS AGAINST THE ONLINE PRESENCE OF MIDDLE EAST NEWS AGENCY, AL-JAZEERA 4 April 2003 APC opposes actions against the online presence of Al-Jazeera. The Internet must be allowed to freely perform its unique and vital role as a promoter of "freedom of expression" and content diversity, especially in times of conflict. APC opposes censorship on the Internet and states in its Internet Rights Charter[1] that "the Internet must be protected from all attempts to censor social and political debate". The Internet Rights Charter argues that "the Internet is an ideal space for the recording and promotion of culturally and politically diverse content". This is consistent with Article 19 of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights[2] which states that the right to freedom of opinion and expression, including the right to seek, receive and impart information is a recognised human right and must be protected. The Case of the Al-Jazeera Website: APC is concerned to note that a prominent online Middle Eastern news and information source - the Al-Jazeera website - has been the target of hacker attacks, domain name hijacking and the withdrawal of hosting services all within the first few weeks of the war on Iraq led by the United States. Called "an unusually independent voice in the Arab world" by the Associated Press wire service, the Al-Jazeera satellite TV network launched its English-language web site on Monday March 24, attracting significant media coverage. However, instead of news articles from an Arab perspective, visitors to the Al-Jazeera website on Thursday March 27 were greeted by the image of the United States' flag and a message proclaiming "Let Freedom Ring". The Al-Jazeera website address www.al-jazeera.net had been hijacked so that visitors who attempted to read either the English or Arab language sites were unable to do so as their browsers were automatically "redirected" to the pro-U.S. page. Al-Jazeera has also had to contend with denial of service (DOS) attacks from so-called "patriotic" hackers. These attacks artificially increase the levels of visitor traffic to a site until the server hosting the site cannot cope with the traffic any longer and crashes, knocking the site offline. Al-Jazeera's US-based Internet service provider has also just cancelled their contract with Al-Jazeera. It is understood that Al-Jazeera has found a new provider in Europe, however in the meantime on April 2 (the estimated date of the contract cancellation) the Al-Jazeera sites were unreachable. The computer hacks, online vandalism and the canceling of Al-Jazeera's web hosting contract all interfere with the UN declared right to "receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers". Diversifying our News and Information Sources: The Internet is a valuable tool for the diversification of media sources, especially for citizens of the countries that make up the invading coalition forces. "One could watch the US television networks around the clock for a week and not realise the extent of public opposition and disquiet [to the war] Why is the unease and disaffection of the American public so invisible? The answer is that it's only invisible if you're looking for it in the mainstream media. It's there all right - but it's on the net," wrote John Naughton of the British newspaper, the Observer[3]. In the second week of the war, the most searched on word in various search engines was "Al-Jazeera" and other variants. A considerable number of subscribers have joined their English language news service and North American readers in huge numbers are actively seeking outside media sources on the war, according to a study by the Pew Internet and American Life project[4]. As online information and communication pioneers, APC and APC members - groups which have facilitated the use of the Internet for social justice, development and peace to civil society since the late 1980s - believe that the Internet must be allowed to freely perform its unique and vital role as a promoter of "freedom of expression" and a multiplier and diversifier of information sources, especially in times of conflict. English Language Information Resources from the Arab-Speaking World: Besides Al-Jazeera, there are several English-language news sites that present an Arab perspective. Ra'ida Al-Zubi, member of the APC Women's Networking Support Programme recommends Al-Hayat (http://english.daralhayat.com), The Jordan Times (www.jordantimes.com) and Lebanon's Daily Star (www.dailystar.com.lb). An Arabic-English translation tool which translates web pages for a fee is considered the best Arabic translation tool online (http://tarjim.ajeeb.com/ajeeb/default.asp?lang=1). [1] http://rights.apc.org/charter.shtml#2 [2] http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cpr.html [3] http://www.observer.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,925333,00.html [4] http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=87 ============================================= ABOUT APC The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) is an international network of civil society organisations dedicated to empowering and supporting groups and individuals through the strategic use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially Internet-related technologies. Our network of members and partners spans the globe, with presence in Western, Central and Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America and North America. APC: http://www.apc.org Email: info at apc.org _______________________________________________ APC.Press mailing list APC.Press at lists.apc.org http://lists.apc.org/mailman/listinfo/apc.press From noquarter at rediffmail.com Fri Apr 4 14:21:29 2003 From: noquarter at rediffmail.com (renu iyer) Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2003 14:21:29 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] the nihilism of war! Message-ID: CTHEORY THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE VOL 26, NOS 1-2 *** Visit CTHEORY Online: http://www.ctheory.net *** Event Scene 122 03/04/02 Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker _____________________________________________________________________ The Nihilism of War ========================================================== ~Arthur and Marilouise Kroker~ Green screens & mismatched tongues tickertape slogans of disinformation 8000 bombs with no bleeding bodies History will not die at the Tigris and Euphrates Mesopotamia and the origin of writing America and the triumph of virtuality The circle of mythology is complete A graveyard of American empire in the desert sands Time and Space Earth and Sky Memory and Disappearance History will not die at the Tigris and Euphrates Now we are all citizens of Baghdad Not so much a fatal "clash of civilizations," but now something much more fateful: a global clash between the hegemonic spirit of the war-machine of American empire and the spirit of peace of a resisting humanity. Like a replay of Picasso's ~Guernica~ where a courageous human, and then artistic, refusal was brought to bear on the sight of fascist warplanes experimenting on a civilian population, the skin of humanity has taken to the streets in protest, all the more admirable for its political impossibility, against the illegal invasion of Iraq. From the Middle East to the cities of North America, from Indonesia to Latin and Central America, from Europe to San Francisco, a resurgent humanity pushes itself onto the screen of history, speaking always in the name of international law, protesting in the name of global human rights. Today for those opposed to the war, we are all citizens of Baghdad: all in solidarity with the suffering civilians of Iraq, all opposed to war crimes, all experimental subjects of American power, all waiting to be harvested by the war machine, all threatened with the use of "shock and awe," all positioned by the media as either "embedded" cheerleaders of the logic of war or disappeared as ethically surplus to the requirements of power. Against the framework of understanding provided by the liquid propaganda of the media with its technologically driven visions of hyper-war, with its nihilistic proclamations of the "coming battle for the prize of Baghdad," resisting humanity speaks in the more enduring ethical terms of 'crimes against humanity.' Which is why, of course, the hegemonic logic of war struggles so cynically to control the frame, to stay 'on-message,' to resist any moral disturbances of the war codes of CENTCOM, to redouble the physical destruction of Iraq with the moral pacification of the citizens of the globe. So then, the cynical rhetoric: "liberators" not invaders, disarmament of "weapons of mass destruction" not oil, "triumph" not terror. The complete invisibility of a one-sided war with, for example, the city of Basra with its one million citizens now targeted as a military site. The war-machine counts on the ethical fatigue of the television audience. It depends on its ability to carry out a secret war of human rights violation in the midst of a seemingly transparent global village. Those hooded, humiliated images of prisoners in Guatanamo are perhaps representative images of what awaits those who refuse the new American hegemon. We are speaking now of a critical moral divide that has been transgressed by the United States and Britain, of the contempt of the militarily powerful for the limits of international law. Or something more troubling. Consider these images: A hooded Iraqi POW cradles his child behind a barbed wire fence. An American soldier says: "We didn't think they would want to be separated." Or the morning briefer for CENTCOM who, when questioned about the killing of ten Iraqi women and children at a military checkpoint, replies that the army "accepts no moral responsibility." The ethical expediency of the war-machine. Could it be that we are witnessing the unmasking of the sustaining spirit of empire consciousness: an ability of the American Government not only to be ethically indifferent towards the suffering of others, but to market that suffering in an agit-prop image matrix that is a visual paean to power-- Nietzsche's 'last man' as the moral 'right stuff' for the invasion of Iraq. And, if this is so, are we not compelled to conclude that the United States as the spearhead of technological liberalism is itself the avatar of nihilism: a society driven forward by the spirit of exterminism, all comfortably camouflaged in the propaganda slogans of "liberty" and "democracy." As the sustaining rhetoric of hyper-colonialism flashes across the media screen, we finally know something of what it means to live in a culture of cynicism that thrives by inflicting cruelties on the victimized bodies of 'alien' scapegoats. There is also the 'question of technology.' Heidegger went to his death convinced that the question of technology was coeval with the ascendancy of the will to nihilation. His meditations on technology actually facialized the dominant movements of contemporary technoculture in the political language of "standing reserve", "harvesting", "objectification," "the culture of boredom." Yet even Heidegger missed Nietzsche's insight concerning the culture of nihilism that is so bitterly expressed by the invasion of Iraq. Namely that there can be such a pornography of media images of violence, such a clinical obscenity of night-time scenes of missile strikes on Baghdad cut with laconic reportage by suburban voiced commentators, such an emphasis on the hyper-language of war games to the exclusion of the disappeared victims because we are finally in the charismatic presence of technologies of death. When technology is invested with the war spirit then it is only in scenes of devastated cities and fiery explosions and cluster-bombed children that the scent of the pleasure of cruelty is to be found. The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, then, as also about the triumph of death-head technology: an armature of technologies of war invested with such extremes of ethnic hatred and religious animosity and capitalist self-interest and political jingoism and technical neutrality of terms that it has itself become the historical spearhead of the will to nihilism. The pornography of war is nourishing psychic food for the culture of boredom. A new dark age will begin with the fall of Baghdad. _____________________________________________________________________ * CTHEORY is an international journal of theory, technology and * culture. Articles, interviews, and key book reviews in * contemporary discourse are published weekly as well as * theorisations of major "event-scenes" in the mediascape. * * Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker * * Editorial Board: Jean Baudrillard (Paris), Paul Virilio (Paris), * Bruce Sterling (Austin), R.U. Sirius (San Francisco), Siegfried * Zielinski (Koeln), Stelarc (Melbourne), Richard Kadrey (San * Francisco), DJ Spooky [Paul D. Miller] (NYC), Timothy Murray * (Ithaca/Cornell), Lynn Hershman Leeson (San Francisco), Stephen * Pfohl (Boston), Andrew Ross (NYC), David Cook (Toronto), Ralph * Melcher (Sante Fe), Shannon Bell (Toronto), Gad Horowitz * (Toronto), Deena Weinstein (Chicago), Michael Weinstein * (Chicago), Andrew Wernick (Peterborough). * * In Memory: Kathy Acker * * Editorial Correspondents: Ken Hollings (UK), * Maurice Charland (Canada) Steve Gibson (Canada/Sweden). * * Editorial Associate: Ted Hiebert * WWW Design & Technical Advisor: Spencer Saunders (CTHEORY.NET) * WWW Engineer Emeritus: Carl Steadman _______________________________________________________________________ Odomos - the only mosquito protection outside 4 walls - Click here to know more! http://r.rediff.com/r?http://clients.rediff.com/odomos/Odomos.htm&&odomos&&wn From marni at thepaper.org.au Mon Apr 7 09:53:52 2003 From: marni at thepaper.org.au (Marni Cordell) Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2003 14:23:52 +1000 Subject: [Reader-list] A true telling of Australian history Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20030407141437.00a457a0@thepaper.org.au> Hi all, This is an article I put together while travelling through central and northern Australia earlier this year. Thought it might be of interest to those on the reader list. Cheers, Marni A true telling of Australian history by Marni Cordell Racquel Austin-Abdullah has old memories of being driven through the dry, saltbush landscape near Broken Hill in outback New South Wales, and feeling at home. She remembers her stepfather describing nearby Wilcannia as a “no good blacks’ town”, and wondering how it was, if the place was so wrong, that she could feel right there. At 29, Racquel now lives in Alice Springs with her 17-month-old daughter Milosh. Inside her small flat, a photo of a full-bellied woman, standing pregnant and proud next to a camel, dominates a wall. The picture was taken just weeks before Milosh was born. In black and white, Racquel is a classical Middle Eastern woman, with a strong face and dark smile. In real life her face is much softer and lighter, but her eyes - pure light green and arrowed - draw a clear path to the tracks of her ancestry. Racquel is a descendent of the Northern Frontier Province Afghan camel traders that came to Australia in the late 19th century. The ‘Afghans’ as the camel traders became known, were Afghan, Pakistani and Northern Indian men who transported goods to remote and otherwise unreachable areas of outback Australia before the advent of the motorised transport industry. Bourke and Wills brought the first cameleers to Australia as early as 1860, but many more soon followed, single or without their wives, with the hope of making their fortunes in the desert. Although never easily accepted in to white Australian society - their strictly religious and tribal culture commonly attracted fear and persecution - they quickly became an essential part of white man’s survival in the outback, as their long camel trains were able to travel into waterless areas of desert where bullocks and horses could not. Racquel’s family history also ties her to the indigenous Barkindji people, a decimated Aboriginal nation from the Darling River region near Broken Hill. A departure point for camel trading routes to South Australia and beyond, Broken Hill was also home to many Ghantowns; the small villages of tin shanty constructions that sprung up around the edges of major towns to house the excluded Afghans. It is thought that Racquel’s great grandfather met her great grandmother, a Barkindji woman, when he and his camel train had been stopped there for a pastoral or mission station visit. Their son, her paternal grandfather, grew up in a nearby aboriginal mission. The Barkindji people, like so many indigenous tribes to Victoria and NSW, were caught right in the heartland of colonial development. By the late 1800s, their land, livelihood and culture had virtually been decimated by pastoral occupation. In the early 1900s, with their major food sources gone, the Barkindji turned to police rationing centres for survival. Supplies were sparse, and they were still required to supplement with hunting and gathering. Many Barkindji ended up in missions, some forcibly placed and others through being convinced, after desperation and hunger set in, that a better life awaited them there. Her Irish grandmother was just a 14-year-old girl when Racquel’s father was born to her grandfather: a Barkindji/Afghan man from Lake Cargelligo Mission. Her father was adopted out at birth on advice from the local church, and was brought up in Adelaide by a couple who followed the Methodist faith, without knowledge or understanding of his cultural background and story. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that he was able to gain access to information on his biological parents, explains Racquel, and “realised that he was Koori.” “So my own connection with my Afghan/Barkindji roots didn’t really emerge until I was about 18. That’s when my dad started talking to me about his own personal journey”. There are mixed stories of how Aboriginal and Afghan societies interrelated in outback Australia. According to Christine Stevens, who has studied the cameleers in her book Tin Mosques and Ghantowns, “from their earliest encounters, Australian Afghans considered Aborigines inferior; their simple very basic lifestyle, lack of material comforts and their seemingly undeveloped religious life indicated to the Afghans an inferiority and lack of status.” But Racquel has had story “passed down through word of mouth” of close relationships between the two races, and believes that Afghan men may have even “identified with the customs and laws, society and kinship structure of the Aboriginal people.” According to Stevens, racism and persecution towards both groups from the white administration did mean that the two fragmented societies sometimes took solace in each other. Towards the turn of the century, the growing belief that Australia was in a dangerous position as a burgeoning ‘white’ nation within a ‘coloured’ region, allowed racial prejudice to flourish like it never had before. For the cameleers, who had always resided on the very fringes of white society, hostility steadily built until finally, writes Stevens, “the term ‘Afghan’ began to embody a notion of contempt, of racial inferiority, of uncleanliness, brutality, strangeness and fear. The Afghans became the untouchables in a white Australia.” In a letter to a local Broken Hill newspaper at the time, one European Australian implored: “white man can live anywhere and do anything a “nigger” can do so why bring them out?” In truth of course, many of the early European settlers found Australia’s arid landscapes hostile and harsh. But just as the desert was a rich and seasonal home for the local indigenous people; for the Afghan camel men, Australia proved a familiar and workable environment, and their long camel trains remained essential to white man’s dream of conquering the land right up until the motorised transport industry finally made them redundant in 1934. There has been little research done into the history of the Australian camel industry and Racquel knows that so many stories have already been lost, “they only write about how these men came to work with the camels, set up the industries and then went back home. They don’t acknowledge that some stayed here and that there are descendents from them.” The contribution and involvement of different cultures in the development of Australia has long been a bit of a taboo in this country, but the legacy of cultural and racial diversity that is left by immigration is often an even less acknowledged subject area. Descendents of immigrants are encouraged to loosen ties with their cultural roots and “become Australian”. But just as the predominantly Anglo-Celtic makeup of today’s Australia is a result of years of careful and race-based policies, what we have come to know as ‘history’ must surely have been dictated by similar fears and prejudice. There is no doubt that Racquel feels a sense of belonging to her country; although not in a nationalistic sense. She has an affinity with the land here and appears to view race and cultural identity as part learnt, part chosen and part earned. She does not distinguish between her Afghan and Aboriginal roots, but feels justified in claiming a connection to this country because her ancestors traversed, lived from and walked the land here. Racquel would argue that Australian ‘indigenousness’ has become a complex and multi-faceted concept. “It’s a hotly debated issue,” she explains, “because to be legally recognised as an Aboriginal, you must personally identify as Aboriginal, but you must also be identified by a community.” In many areas however, white infiltration and subsequent inter-marriage has meant that ‘community’ is no longer a definable entity. “It’s an issue that many people face especially in NSW and Victoria, because those areas were the first to be settled.” Currently studying Aboriginal Management Policy through the University of South Australia, Racquel hopes to one day go into film production, in order to “explore the many issues that make up aboriginality,” such as “family, culture, country, landscape, whether that be in a spiritual, practical or political sense;” and to normalise the idea of a complex aboriginality. Above all, in building her own story, she hopes to explore and integrate the paths of her ancestors, by reuniting with her father’s father’s family, “one day.” “My dad’s passed away now,” she explains, “he died early. So I think that’s also a driving force to constantly, and gently, find out about his history.” -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030407/10d63042/attachment.html From ghoshvishwajyoti at rediffmail.com Mon Apr 7 11:40:42 2003 From: ghoshvishwajyoti at rediffmail.com (vishwajyoti ghosh) Date: 7 Apr 2003 06:10:42 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] 2ND POSTING Message-ID: <20030407061042.15635.qmail@webmail5.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030407/96ae5f93/attachment.pl From faizan at sarai.net Mon Apr 7 16:45:18 2003 From: faizan at sarai.net (Faizan Ahmed) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 16:45:18 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: [AMUNetwork] UNJUST WAR Message-ID: <200304071645.18761.faizan@sarai.net> Hi All, Here is an Interesting stuff, please go through it. ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: [AMUNetwork] UNJUST WAR Date: Sun, 06 Apr 2003 09:07:30 +0300 From: "ahtashamuddin -" To: amunetwork at yahoogroups.com Dear All I am becoming increasingly saddened and demoralized every day the so-called “coalition forces” are approaching near to the total Palestine-style occupation of Baghdad. It will be another illegal and forceful occupation of a historical city of Muslims after Jerusalem by the Western civilization. I am not a fan of a dictator like Saddam but not an admirer of stubborn Americans and British colonialists at the same time. Though these two prospective occupiers are making claims of liberating Iraqis from a tyrant, the ground realities prove them hollow. I am yet to meet an Iraqi in Toronto, irrespective of his religion, who believes in this American propaganda, even though some of these Iraqi-Canadians have fled their country to avoid the brutal rule of Saddam. They prefer the present regime of Iraq to the Western occupiers in the present situation, as they are afraid of long-term Palestinian-type occupation of their homeland and exploitation of their wealth and culture. Recently I was surprised by the resolve of a female Christian Iraqi-Canadian who wanted to go back to Baghdad to fight for her homeland to save it from the occupiers. If these Westernized Iraqis think this way, what about more patriotic and conservative inland Iraqis? How can Americans expect a warm hug from them? If Americans care so much about the democracy and freedom of the people of the Muslim world, why have they not uttered a single word against Oman, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Morocco whose monarchs rule their countries with an iron fist more or less the same way Saddam does? Why have dictators like Musharraf of Pakistan and Husn-e-Mubarak of Egypt been the strongest allies of the West? On the contrary, why the democracies of Iran, Sudan, Malaysia and Indonesia are criticized as being fundamentalists? The reply is very simple. These Muslim monarchs and dictators serve American economic and political interests in that region while the Muslim democracies do not. America’s claim for a pre-emptive strike is not justifiable too. Iraq has never been found involved in any nefarious activities endangering the American lives. Americans have waged a war against Saddam because he is their critic. What about China, Cuba, Russia, France, Germany, Canada, Iran, India and Libya who do not go by the American doctrine of domination and self-interest? What about the 1.5 billion Muslim population of the world who do not like American attitude towards them, as evident from the American unflinching support to Israel for its unjust occupation of Palestine? What about the large section of the Westerners including Americans and Britishers who are against the war frenzy of the present American administration? Will the so-called coalition remove the legitimate governments of these countries and eliminate all these people from the earth too? If one individual group of psychopaths attacked America, has it got the right to destroy each and every opponent of theirs, just to take revenge? Furthermore, I am unable to understand the adamancy and violent behavior of the British government. No one has harmed their interests ever. Instead, they had exploited the whole world in the past. Probably it is their past colonial mentality that is still hounding them. Now the question arises why are the Americans so interested in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. The very first most important reason is the oil. Iraq has got the second largest reserves of oil, after Saudi Arabia, amongst oil producing and exporting countries (OPEC). Since the oil embargo in 1973 when the Arabs decided to use oil as a weapon to force the West to give Palestinians their legitimate rights and free the occupied lands of Jordan, Syria and Egypt captured by Israel in 1948 and 1968 wars, the United States was looking for an opportunity to control the oil to keep its prices low and ensure its uninterrupted supplies to them. The oil embargo not only hiked the oil prices from US $ 5 to 33 per barrel, but also stopped the supplies to some countries too. Americans and European scientists have tried to find an alternative to this fuel since then, but have failed miserably. Petroleum oil still remains the main energy source to run 90 percent of the world’s industries mainly located in the USA and Europe. The crisis was subdued by the assassination of the then Saudi King, Faisal Bin Abdulaziz, the champion of the Embargo and by the America’s support to the monarchies of these Arab and Persian OPEC member states in return of their promise to uninterrupted supply of oil. Americans were successful to some extent and brought the oil price down from US $ 33 to 18, but could not control them fully as the Arabs and the Iranians became little smarter and formed OPEC which took appropriate measures to stop the further slide in prices. Arabs resisted the presence of US troops on their soil as well. Unfortunately, Saddam gave them the opportunity by invading Kuwait. The Americans feared that if Saddam somehow dominated the region, he would use an oil embargo against them as Faisal did. Therefore, they brought in the machinery and military power to free Kuwait but left Saddam alive to use him as an excuse to keep their forces in the Gulf region. As a result, American bases were established in all the six Gulf oil-producing countries. Though the Arabs did not want them on their soil, their Kings accepted them to keep their monarchies in place. Thus, they indirectly occupied six Muslim OPEC members in 1991. Out of the remaining two, they will get Iraq now, and probably Iran (a member of the much clichéd phrase, the Axis of Evil) next year to completely control the Persian Gulf’s oil and remotely control its prices and supplies. The second important reason to attack Iraq is perhaps the hidden desire of the present American regime to control the world by crushing their opponents by their might to rein supreme in the world. This arrogant behavior of theirs has already lead the people believe that the Cold War was necessary to keep a balance in power in order to maintain world peace. Thirdly, religion seems to play a role as well. Use of words like CRUSADE and PAKIS in the past by the President of USA casted a doubt in many minds that he has indifferent attitude towards Muslims. Though most Americans do not discriminate based on religion, their President, a practicing Christian, seems to crusade knowingly or is being mislead by the fanatics around him who consider Islam as the foundation of global terrorism. Whatever the reasons of the present war may be, thousands of innocent American and Iraqi lives will be lost. Many children will be maimed and orphaned, men and women widowed, and many will live with the horror of war for rest of their lives. May God save humanity and prevail sanity in this world. Ahtashamuddin M.Sc., M.Lib.Sc. AMU 1968-80 Toronto, Canada ------------------------ Yahoo! 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Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ------------------------------------------------------- From sadan at sarai.net Tue Apr 8 02:37:20 2003 From: sadan at sarai.net (sadan) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 17:07:20 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Shahar Ke Nissan: Filling Colours in the City Message-ID: <200304071707.20361.sadan@sarai.net> Below is a posting of the field work done by Prabhas Ranjan. “Filling Colours in the City” Impressions: “People do not seem to understand that without artists how colourless the world would be!” ---Naresh Kumar Sagar Calender/Poster artist and part time Painter, Shahdara, Delhi. “They are not here to be an artist... actually there is too much of unemployment in our country. And, this work gets on easily...” ---Badal Chitrakar alias Banwari Lal Painter turned 'modern artist', Ghantaghar, Sabji mundi, Delhi. “ Earlier when i entered into this trade I assumed that I would get an artistic platform... But I found none! There is not much difference between us and a laborer.” Dharam Pal/ Keshav Painter, Bhajanpura, Delhi. (all these statements are translated) We are working on the project titled 'Shahar Ke Nissan'. We are currently looking at the bazaar of wall writings, sign boards and other forms of advertisements that a city produces and which in turn generate images of the city. Currently, we are interviewing painters / wall writers and other people who are involved in this sector. Please keep in mind that we are not looking at 'organised sector' of advertising business. We are working on local and highly unorganised sector of image making. Without going into much details on the contours of our subject area let me share with you the work done in the last month. During my field work, I have covered three areas: Shahdara, Bhajanpura and Old Subji mundi. The people contacted are, writers/artists of signboards, advertisers, painting shop owners, banner fitters, calender /poster artists and few others who started their carriers as painters but who have become advertisers and 'modern artists'. However, these are broad categories and their movement within this work domain is highly fluid as evrybody (irrespective of his status) is open to all types of jobs and opportunities. Thus the distinction on the basis of their work appears to be blurred and suggests that the logic of internal hierarchy should be located at somewhere else. The general picture that has come out of this field work has been of a decline of this local market. It also fits well with the coming up of big players, advancements of technology, globalisation etc. However, its too simple an equation to accept and it is too early to pass any concluding remark. I will discuss about the complexities at some other time. For the time being let me share some of the facets of the evolution of this bazaar in Delhi from one particular vantage point and as indicated by Badal Chitrakar of Ghanta ghar. Badal Chitrakar originally belongs to Rewari. He was born in 1944.In Rewari his father had a business of caps('topis'). After 1947, he had to think anew as muslims of his area migrated to Pakistan and his stature of a seth (big businessman, the term used is 'sethpana') came to an end. His father came to Delhi. Banwari Lal currently lives in Ghanta ghar, Sabjimundi. Banwari Lal is into the painting since his childhood. At the age of sixteen years, he joined the advertising shop of Mahendra Kumar in Daryagunj as a trainee painter. Here he got an opportunity to visit Amritsar with his 'guru' where he did his first assignment. It was an advertisement of Atlas Cycle.He has done 'all sorts of works in this painting line'. From 1961 to 1965 he worked as a 'painter'. In the period of 1965 to 1967 he made 400 covers for the popularnovels('jasusi upanyas'). He has also worked as a calender artist. In 1977, he made a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi with his blood. The 'punishment' that he received came in terms of his 'worldwide fame'. Gandhi Museum organised an exhibition of his works. A lady became so impressed ('fida hokar') that she took him to United States where he painted a gallery.These days he also takes classes in Indian Fine Arts and Crafts Society(IFACS) and is the art director there. He recollects, “Earlier (in 1960s) there were five to seven artists in Delhi. The art of painting film posters and calender painting was proliferating. The artists were few so there were only a few chelas(trainee painters).” He further recounts how the number has increased, “ actually, this work does not need big investments. All you need is paint and brush. Get down somewhere with them, paint few nameplates or number plates and you would earn hundred or two hundred rupees at the end of the day.” Consequently, it attracted a large number of unemployed people in the trade. The system of new recruitment and training is also open to one and all. Dharampal, a young painter of Bhajanpura says, “ In our system, a new probationary joins a painter's shop and learn writing and chitrakari(drawing) for a year or two. After initial few months of work, he also gets a minimum amount to take care of his basic needs.” After a few months of training, the trainee learns writing sign boards and banners. And now he may choose his independent course of work. Government institutions are also there to teach this art. ITI shahadra is one such institute. Dinesh, a painter /artist of Shahdara acquired the training at ITI Shahdara. He says, They( painters ) learn writing in three -four months and open their own shops. Actually it depends on the learning capacity of an individual and also on the painter 'ustad'. A crual ustad teaches less and keeps his chela engaged for a longer period of time. A painter has often two to six chelas working with him. The number of chelas also depends upon the volume of the work/assignments. Chelas play quite a significant role in the income of his ustad/painter. After acquiring the skill and gaining the experience chelas may also join the same paint shop as salaried painter. These chelas, promoted to the rank of salaried painters, quite often run the shop and take care of business. The actual owner, now, visits the shop only occasionally. However, in long run, these chelas may turn up as competitors. This is how the sphere of this bazaar spends its fulcrum. However, in current situation, we do not see the expansion of this bazaar. Dharampal laments, “ Our rate is getting down. We do not understand whether its due to our growing number or something else.”Think of technology here. The role of urban administration comes quite forcefully into the scene here. The West Bengal Prevention of Defacement of Property Act, 1976( Bengal Act 21 of 1976) has been 'extended to the Union Territory of Delhi ( now the National Territory of Delhi). The point number three of this rule states, “(1) Whoever defaces any property in public view by writing or marking with ink, chalk, paint or any other material, except for the purpose of indicating the memo and address of the owner or occupier of such property, shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months or with fine which may extend to one thousand rupees or with both”. Delhi Government has come up with various publicity strategies to implement and widen the scope of this hitherto minor rule. Newspaper advertisements of Delhi Governmentwith a logo of Bhagidari scheme in the extreme corner of it to 'educate' the citizens to 'keep the city clean' with a typical threatening language of governance---'No posters, stickers and writings on Walls'. This writing on the wall is followed by the above mentioned paragraph of the rule. The advertisement further informs, “this is one more step towards making Delhi a cleaner and better place to live in. We seek your cooperation.” A small innocent looking icon is also there--–'my delhi, i care'. I am not going to discuss the moral and the politics of this advertisement here. For me, the concern of a painter is at the stake. Dr. Ashok Kumar Walia, Urban Development Minister announces, “ During the last fifteen months MCD(the Municipal Corporation of Delhi) has removed 45,300 posters and 25, 156 banners. 2802 person have been arrested and 1725 are punished for wall writing, sticking posters, hanging banners etc.( The Hindustan Times, Delhi, 9th March 2003)”. Kindly also think about thousands of rupees went into bribe and exchanged hands between banner fitters and policemen. I will take a break here. The posting has already exceeded its normal length. To be continued... Comments and suggestions are invited. Thanking you, Prabhas Ranjan ( with Sadan Jha). From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Mon Apr 7 22:07:11 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2003 17:37:11 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Indian Govt Proposals for Re-Writing Indian History In-Reply-To: <20030406065526.9505.qmail@mailweb33.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: <20030407163711.67104.qmail@web8005.mail.in.yahoo.com> http://www.geocities.com/ifihhome/reports/nationalismworkingpaper.html Working Paper from the National Seminar on Philosophy of Indian Nationalism & Value-Oriented Education conducted on 23-25 February 2003 at Jadavpur University Campus, Kolkata Organized by : International Forum for India’s Heritage in collaboration with Sri Sri Sitaramdas Omkarnath Samskrita Siksha Samsad (Kolkata) Sponsored by : Indian Council of Philosophical Research (New Delhi),Indian Institute of Advanced Study (Shimla),& Indian Council of Historical Research (New Delhi) This three-day National Seminar, initiated and co-organized by the International Forum for India’s Heritage (IFIH), brought together a number of eminent scholars from all over India (also from the U.S.A. and Switzerland). The central theme of Indian Nationalism was treated from historical, cultural, traditional as well as educational viewpoints, and this provided a rich variety of presentations and debates. Chaired by Prof. Ramaranjan Mukherji, the concluding session on 25 February focussed on educational aspects of Indian Nationalism. It featured two young speakers, Shri M. Pramod Kumar, who spoke on “How to Make Nationalist Values Inspiring to Students”, and Ms. Chitwan Jaipuria, who spoke on “The Inadequacies of the Indian School Curriculum”. A discussion followed, moderated by a panel consisting, besides the chairperson, of Prof. Kapil Kapoor, Dr. Somesh Kumar Mishra, Dr. Ashok Mitra and Shri Michel Danino. The following points emerged, and it was agreed that a working paper, based on the central themes dealt with during the Seminar and ensuing discussions, would be submitted to the Government of India, incorporating practical proposals to make necessary improvements in the educational policy. This has now been done on behalf of both the Indian Council of Philosophical Research & International Forum for India’s Heritage. This paper is also being sent to a number of educational agencies, State boards of education, the media etc. * * * At the outset, it was noted that the Constitutional Amendment N°51-A (b) makes it a “fundamental duty of citizens” to “cherish and follow the noble ideals which inspired our national struggle for freedom.” Moreover, the recent Supreme Court judgement (12 September 2002) on the National Curriculum Framework for School Education reiterated the S. B. Chawan Committee’ report of 1996, which stated that “ national values can be imparted indirectly at the primary stage, while at the middle and secondary level, these can be included in the curriculum” (p. 30).* It was also noted that the present system of education has failed to inspire such values in students, mainly because of an overburdened syllabus and a dry, mechanical teaching of history in the form of largely irrelevant facts and dates that are forgotten soon after the examinations are over. The panel then agreed on the following recommendations: 1.The lives of the great early exponents of Indian Nationalism, for instance Swami Vivekananda, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Sri Aurobindo, Sister Nivedita, Subramania Bharati and others, must be taught in an inspiring manner. 2.A collection of brief extracts from inspirational writings by a wide selection of Indian Nationalists and freedom fighters, from all regions of India, should be made available to students as supplementary reading material. 3.The historical role and significance of the Bande Mataram national song by Bankim Chandra should be highlighted from the secondary level. 4.A certain number of misconceptions still plague the way in which the freedom movement is taught; for instance, the notion that the Indian nation came into existence only thanks to the colonial masters; the failure to highlight the distinctive features of Indian Nationalism as compared to Western types of nationalism; the eclipse of a number of important early pioneers of the freedom movement, their values, thoughts, action and role; the depiction of some freedom fighters as “terrorists”; party considerations in highlighting one group of leaders resulting in sacrificing the importance of the contributions of other leaders. A fair and objective account of the freedom movement, devoid of any ideological bias, is yet to be written. 5.Innovative methods making use of India’s rich heritage — art forms, folk songs, drama, literary wealth, etc. — must be promoted in place of the present system of learning by rote, also modern multimedia resources (for example films from the early decades of the twentieth century, documentaries...). Creative re-enactments of important stages or events or characters of the freedom movement in the form of dramas, exhibitions, etc., should be encouraged, especially with an interdisciplinary approach combining history, language skills and art forms. 6.For the purpose, the Central or State Governments should develop well-equipped National Resource Centres in a number of cities, where such material will be available to students, teachers and the general public in print and electronic medium and in the form of permanent exhibitions. 7.Such new material and methods will be in consonance with the approach that sees the student not as a mere recipient of academic learning, but as a soul to be ignited. 8.Students should be taken at least once a year to places of historical importance with regard to Indian Nationalism. Kanyakumari’s Rock Memorial, the Andaman penitentiary or the Alipore Jail, memorials to Tilak, Bankim or Subramania Bharati and hundreds of other such places, dot the country and should remain in the consciousness of present and future generations. 9.Keeping in mind the cultural roots of Indian Nationalism, which are far more ancient than the colonial era, Sanskrit should be taught at primary, middle and secondary levels. In particular, the two great Indian Epics, which have long played a considerable role in culturally unifying the nation, must be studied, preferably through innovative methods such as those outlined above. Here again, reference may be made to the recent Supreme Court judgement, which explicitly “emphasized the importance of Sanskrit study and declared the omission of Sanskrit from CBSE syllabus as unjustified” (p. 44). 10.The above recommendations are, in fact, part of a process of decolonization of the Indian mind, an indispensable process if students are to become truly Indian, conscious of what India has stood for throughout history and can still offer to humanity today and tomorrow. April 2003 --------------------------------- * Page numbers of the Supreme Court Judgement refer to the edition brought out by the NCERT. ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com From eye at ranadasgupta.com Tue Apr 8 12:12:32 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 12:12:32 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] US needs to take war momentum on to Syria and Iran Message-ID: http://www.motherjones.com/news/warwatch/2003/14/we_345_04.html#one On to Damascus? For months, even as Washington's hawks prepared for their long-sought war in Iraq, neoconservatives inside and outside the White House were eagerly speculating about which country would be next on the administration's list. Now, while US and British troops make their painstaking way across Iraq and toward an urban battle military leaders want desperately to avoid, war party pundits are eagerly speculating once more. But this time, they are only writing about two countries: Syria and Iran. This week, in a speech to the America Israel Public Affairs Committee, the country's pre-eminent pro-Israel lobby group, Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that Washington wanted to see "more responsible behavior" from Damascus. And he didn't stop there. Denouncing the Syrian government's harsh criticism of the US-led invasion of Iraq, Powell declared that Syria now "faces a critical choice." It was strong language reminiscent of the nuanced threats leveled at Iraq last year, and it was greeted by hearty applause from the AIPAC crowd. But is the Bush administration, in a war that few still believe will be quick or simple, actually considering turning its military attention toward Damascus? Neoconservatives dearly hope so. Just last year, most neocon pundits were bravely predicting that Iraqi forces would crumble at the first whiff of gunpowder, and that a swift victory over Saddam Hussein's despised regime would force other Arab governments to rapidly get in line or risk facing a similar onslaught. Their quick, clean war hasn't materialized, but the war party pundits are still pushing to keep the regime change express rolling. Like many of his hawkish colleagues, New York Daily News columnist Zev Chafets declares confidently that the war "won't end in Iraq." That's because, as far as Chafets is concerned, this isn't a war against Iraq or Saddam Hussein -- it's the first step in a global war against "armed Arab and Islamic fascism." "When Saddam goes, American forces will be sandwiched between two enemies. To the east, Iran, a charter member of the Axis of Evil. To the west, Syria, a new volunteer. Both will have to be defeated before this war is over. ... Syria is an inviting target for the U.S. Taking down the Assad government would rid the Middle East of an aggressive, anti-American fascist regime and also end Syria's occupation of Lebanon. That, in turn, would enable American forces to go after Hezbollah camps in the Bekaa Valley, just as they went after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Not only would that weaken international terrorism, but the U.S. hasn't forgotten that it was Hezbollah that murdered 241 American Marines in Beirut in 1983." Just hopeful thinking on Chafets' part? If so, he's not alone. New Hampshire's Manchester Union-Leader, which boasts one of the country's most conservative editorial pages, similarly urges Washington to keep the war going. "America's failure to deal with organizers, sponsors and enablers of terrorism -- including Arafat, Syria, Iran and Iraq (and Afghanistan until the crushing of the Taliban) -- has cost thousands of lives and allowed the unchecked breeding of radical anti-Western hatred. In light of clear evidence that terrorist organizations and some governments that harbor them are sending materiel and warriors to kill American troops, America can no longer pretend that these groups and governments are not in a state of active aggression against our interests and our people. Will this administration do as all previous ones and look the other way? Or will it deal with the situation as resolutely as it has dealt with the Taliban and Saddam Hussein?" The Union-Leader doesn't bother to expound on the "clear evidence," but some Bush administration officials have been making similar accusations in recent days, and there is little doubt that many would enthusiastically welcome such a policy shift. For instance, as The Guardian notes, such a scenario could well be considered a dream-come-true for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and other über-hawks. But the venerable British broadsheet has a warning: "These American delusions are dangerous." "Widening regional destabilisation was one of the reasons why so many people and nations opposed this foolish war. By issuing such provocative threats, even if they are essentially pre-emptive, the US behaves recklessly. The Iraqi regime must be delighted. It is already doing its level best to portray the conflict as one between the entire Arab 'nation' and the US, between Islam and the west, between the righteous and the 'Zionists'. Its call for Arab volunteers appears to be having some success. Its resort to suicide bombings, or 'martyrdom operations', creates an entirely deliberate, emotive association with the Palestinian intifada. ... This steady radicalisation of Muslim opinion, this broadening polarisation and alienation of the Arab and western spheres is exactly what Tony Blair and others in Europe strove to prevent when the US 'war on terror' was launched after September 11. Pro-western, so-called moderate Arab regimes also greatly fear what may yet ensue, not least Saudi Arabia. Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, glumly predicts the war will produce '100 Bin Ladens'. He may well be right. The US could not find a clear link between Iraq and al-Qaida. Now by its own woeful blunderings, it is creating one." As if to drive home the reckless nature of the hawkish dreaming, Britain's Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, declared that his government would have "nothing whatever" to do with military action against either Syria or Iran. As The Times of London reports, Prime Minister Tony Blair's government has been carefully working to improve relations with both countries, and isn't about to jettison that diplomatic effort simply because Washington's most vocal hawks are clamoring for a wider war. Meanwhile, Syrian officials and Arab commentators have responded with predictable vigor, arguing that Damascus is simply expressing "the international consensus which has said no to aggression against Iraq." And, as Arab News reports, Syrian officials are taking pains to call attention to the venue for Powell's speech. "Noting that Powell was speaking to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), [Syria] said he was clearly "affirming that all the actions of the US administration in the region serve Israeli interests and plans and satisfy Ariel Sharon," the Israeli prime minister. "The officials of this administration are thereby obtaining good conduct certificates from Israel and its supporters in the United States." The editors of the Daily Star of Lebanon, surveying the region's Arabic-language press, declare that most commentators "see the outpouring of bellicose rhetoric from Washington as a shot across Syria's bows," largely because Damascus has emerged as the Arab world's most vocal critic of the US-led war in Iraq. But others worry that Syria is "being granted belated membership of America's 'axis of evil' and set up as its next prospective target after Iraq." The war expansion US hawks so deeply want to see, the Arab editors assert, would only serve "to further the administration's strategy for global dominance and the agenda and territorial designs of its right-wing allies in Israel." The anti-Israeli rhetoric might be expected, particularly from Syria. But, in this case, Powell's choice of the AIPAC dinner is not the only connection. The evidence administration officials have cited in suggesting that Syria might be aiding Iraq seems to have come exclusively from Israeli sources. Most recently, an Israeli intelligence officer declared that his government suspects Saddam Hussein might have hidden chemical and biological weapons in Syria, along with long-range surface-to-surface missiles. Values in Wartime Straw's comments about Syria mark the first time since the war began that the British government has placed itself in direct opposition to its transatlantic allies. While there have been plenty of indications that the two governments disagree sharply over some aspects of the war -- and the reconstruction of Iraq following a war -- all have been papered over. But the paper seems to be getting a little worn. British commanders in Iraq are reportedly frustrated by the overly aggressive approach adopted by some American officers. Even British hawks are taking up the refrain. And while their comments seems in part motivated by simple national pride, their criticisms are impossible to dismiss. Among the most convincing is Patrick Bishop of The Telegraph. While no dove, Bishop worries that American forces have become so convinced by their leadership's martial rhetoric that "anyone who is not in a uniform that they instantly recognise is seen as a threat." "Many, probably most, Iraqis are willing to be persuaded that the Americans are in their country as liberators, not invaders. To do that, American soldiers have to not only curb their trigger-happy ways, but also come out from behind their Ray-Bans. They must start to recognise when it is time to forget the rule book and think of local sensibilities. They should learn to do simple things like waving at the children and saying hello in Arabic to their elders. In short, they must work harder to show that they belong to the human race." While Bishop worries that the Americans' shoot-first approach is undermining the effort to win hearts and minds, Jonathan Freedland is concerned more by the ideals the war is undermining. Among other things, Freedland, writing in the British Guardian, is convinced that the war is threatening the very values that define America. While many outside the US seem to believe that this war is "all too American," Freedland argues that such thinking does an injustice to the US and its history. "It assumes that the Bush administration represents all America, at all times, when in fact the opposite is true. For this administration, and this war, are not typical of the US. On the contrary, on almost every measure, they are exceptions to the American rule. The US was, after all, a country founded in a rebellion against imperialism. Born in a war against a hated colonial oppressor, in the form of George III, it still sees itself as the instinctive friend of all who struggle to kick out a foreign occupier - and the last nation on earth to play the role of outside ruler. For most of the last century, the US steered well clear of the institutions of formal empire (the Philipines was a lamentable exception). Responsibility was thrust upon it after 1945 in Germany and Japan. But as a matter of deliberate intent, America sought neither viceroys ruling over faraway lands nor a world map coloured with the stars and stripes. Influence, yes; puppets and proxies, yes. But formal imperial rule, never. Until now. George Bush has cast off the restraint which held back America's 42 previous presidents - including his father. Now he is seeking, as an unashamed objective, to get into the empire business." Thankfully, such arguments are not limited to the pages of British newspapers. Robert Scheer raises the very same historical red flag in his Los Angeles Times column, reminding us that America's revered revolutionaries were 'irregular' troops despised by the British for their flouting of accepted rules of warfare. But Scheer also warns that recent US history is one "of covert actions, political assassinations, special ops, anti-democratic coups and dirty tricks that are, even today, being used in Iraq." Sadly, to the extent that administration officials seem to believe that the ends of their policy "are so noble that even clearly illegal means, such as a preemptive invasion, are justified," this is a very American war, Scheer opines. Pentagon Planning and Peace With field commanders predicting a far longer and uglier war than many Washington hawks had promised, the Pentagon's civilian leaders are suddenly taking transparent pains to distance themselves from the much-criticized war plan. Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, for instance, is now telling reporters he cannot "take credit" for the plan, explaining that it was really all thought up by the military men. Apparently, at the Pentagon, the buck doesn't quite get to the top. War Watch can't help but wonder if we'll hear Rumsfeld declining "credit" for another plan in the weeks and months after the war. Because the very men who planned the war -- led by Rumsfeld -- are fighting desperately to consolidate their control over running the peace. Jim Lobe, writing in Asia Times, reports that top Pentagon civilians, especially Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, are trying to make sure that the State Department has little or no involvement in putting together the reconstruction team. Feith, Lobe reports "has supported Israel's Likud Party in the past and is said to consider some candidates to be too pro-Arab." And Rumsfeld is demanding that his choice to run the Pentagon's office of reconstruction and assistance, retired General Jay Garner, be given authority over all relief and aid work. And while Feith, Rumsfeld, and other Pentagon officials are fighting to keep the State Department on the margins, they're fighting even harder to keep the UN out of the picture entirely. "In testimony late last week, Feith insisted that as long as the situation on the ground is insecure, the military has to remain in control. "If things go well, we will be able to hand things over to the Iraqis so there would be no need for UN participation," he said." But is the Pentagon -- even a Pentagon shown to be run by effective and insightful planners -- really the best choice for managing the reconstruction of a ravaged nation? Robert Wright doesn't think so. And, like plenty of others, Wright isn't too convinced by the planning of this particular Pentagon , which has allowed ideologically-motivated wishful thinking to take the place of judicious planning. Which does not bode well for the Pentagon's handling of such an ideologically-charged job as nation-building. "[S]ome of the plan's most influential advocates -- Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle -- are among those who most consistently understated the difficulty of war. Perle was egregious: 'Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse at the first whiff of gunpowder.' Given the failure of this first step in Perle's master plan to unfold as guaranteed, I'm not feeling too good about the subsequent steps -- the part where Iraq's authoritarian neighbors yield to benign democracy through some magical process that has never been officially spelled out." From eye at ranadasgupta.com Tue Apr 8 12:17:25 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 12:17:25 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] russian site sets itself up as objective forum for war commentary Message-ID: Truth and Lies on the War in Iraq (Where to Find the Truth) by David Wiggins How did an obscure Russian aviation web site's Alexa ranking shoot from 95,865 over the last 3 months to 7,831 on March 23rd and 3,623 on March 24th? Perhaps because it is one of the few places on the net, or in any media, to find informed, timely, objective information on the situation in Iraq. The name of the site is Venik's Aviation - Aerospace News and Technical Information, which is an English language version of http://www.iraqwar.ru/. They describe themselves as an: "...analytical center was created recently by a group of journalists and military experts from Russia to provide accurate and up-to-date news and analysis of the war against Iraq...based on the Russian military intelligence reports." Most people assume Iraq's media to be biased and unreliable regarding reporting of the war. For this reason, even if truthful, reports from Iraqi media will not be taken seriously. Western media, particularly United States media has become nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Pentagon. Their errors have been so huge to be laughable if this wasn't such a serious business, or if there wasn't a chance they were doing it on purpose: "You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month." ~ CIA operative discussing with Philip Graham, editor Washington Post, on the availability and prices of journalists willing to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories. Katherine The Great, by Deborah Davis (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991) Embedded reporters are increasingly censored. Battles raged, but initially we saw little more than tanks speeding through empty desert. It seems there is a three-step process for seeing bad news on CNN, etc. First, evidence of a POW or fatality must be seen on Iraqi TV. Second, there must be a grudging admission by the Pentagon. Finally, we see the story on CNN, MSNBC and Fox. This all leads us to wonder how much is not being reported just because it did not show up first on Iraqi TV! There is little or no effort to independently verify the Pentagon's claims. Reports invariably begin with references to their sources in military or government positions. This is all given an air of legitimacy by some retired "expert" Colonel du jour who may very well be on the Defense Intelligence Agency's payroll. This is the plan, of course, and it allows the military to make blatant use of CNN, MSNBC, Fox, etc. as propaganda mouthpieces. The two most egregious examples of disinformation disseminated by the major news media are the battle for Umm-Qasr and the surrender of the Iraqi 51st Infantry Division. Demonstrating its first victory in battle and demonstrating mass surrenders on the part of the Iraqi Army was extremely important to the Pentagon. This would increase support for the war on the home front, increase coalition morale, and demoralize the Iraqi Army. It was so important to the Pentagon, in fact, that they chose to completely make it up. We're not talking about shading the truth here; we are talking lie - bold, plain and simple. All major media outlets dutifully reported that Umm-Qasr had fallen to coalition forces on 20 March. They have repeated the same lie every day since then, never demanding independent verification, just mouthing the same Pentagon lines. The truth is the battle there continues as of March 24th. So far, coalition forces have not taken a single town. CNN, MSNBC, Fox and others also reported that coalition forces took the city of Basra, a charade that was extremely simple to refute. Nonetheless, when the Pentagon told CNN Basra had fallen, CNN reported it as fact. On March 21st all major media reported the surrender of the entire Iraqi 51st Infantry Division. Where were the supposed 8,000 POWs? Don't ask General McChrystal who was asked this question during a Pentagon news briefing. "They must have run off," was his reply. Nobody laughed at him. In fact, nobody even asked a follow up question. Imagine his surprise (none I'm sure) to see the commander that "surrendered" on Al Jazeera March 23rd describing how well his division was fighting. Fortunately, humans have some latent desire to know the truth and at least a rudimentary ability to know BS when they hear it. In the past, this led to frustration because alternative sources for news were not readily available. Ironically, the DoD created the internet, and it has undone a great deal of their efforts to keep the people in ignorance and fear. Knowledge empowers people and facilitates another latent desire - the desire for justice. All over the world people who know better are demonstrating against the war in Iraq. Only in the United States and Israel, the homes of the world's most sophisticated disinformation apparatus, is there not an overwhelming majority in opposition to the war. This will change as the truth emerges. All this brings me back to that Russian website. The Russians have the intelligence capability to eavesdrop on coalition conversations, so they get the real uncensored scoop from the battlefield. They are not in NATO or closely allied to the United States, so they feel no need to shade the truth for the benefit of the United States. One might contend that the Russians are reporting mistruths in favor of the Iraq, but this should be tempered by the economic ties they have with the United States as well as the knowledge that the United States will almost certainly emerge victorious. A look at the site will reinforce its credibility. The reports are factual and detailed. They give a distinct air of credibility. They are also concerning and eyebrow raising. Here are some tidbits: - Coalition pilots are finding it very difficult to identify and destroy radar and aircraft due to the extensive use of mock-ups. "We engaged everything that looked like a radar. But there is no way in hell we can know what it really was!" - reported one of the coalition pilots back to ground control after releasing missiles against a suspected Iraqi radar site. " - At least two of the eight supposedly Iraqi missiles that hit Kuwait turned out to be US sea- launched cruise missiles that strayed off course. - A radio intercept made last night at approximately 4:40 am [March 22nd] indicated that two British helicopters were shot down by a "Strela" SAM system after flying into a SAM trap. The official explanation for the loss was that the two helicopters crashed into each other while taking-off from a ship. - Chairman Gen. Richard Mayers expressed strong criticism of the actions by the coalition commander Gen. Franks and proposed to strengthen his headquarters with several other senior military commanders. - A CIA referent in the combat area Col. Davis (likely to be a pseudonym) and the US DoD Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) regional director were demoted due to their inadequate performance in estimating the strength of Iraq's forces and their combat readiness. -According to the intercepted radio traffic, the US forces have sustained up to 40 killed, up to 10 captured and up to 200 wounded during the fighting near An-Nasiriya. The US forces have also lost up to 40 armored vehicles, including no less than 10 tanks. - The overall coalition losses at Umm Qasr during the past four days amounted to up to 40 killed and up to 200 wounded. The overall British losses on the Fao peninsula during the past four days of fighting include up to 15 killed and up to 100 wounded. Work is paralyzed at the coalition press-center in Kuwait. Journalists are not able to get any information except for the hourly press communiqué from the command. A variety of reasons are cited by the military to reduce the number of trips into the combat zone for the journalists. All reports coming from the journalists attached to the coalition units are now being strictly censored by the military. All live broadcasts, as those seen during the first day of the war, are now strictly prohibited by a special order from the coalition command. The required time delay between the time news video footage was shot and the time it can be broadcast has been increased to a minimum of four hours. From eye at ranadasgupta.com Tue Apr 8 14:40:48 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 14:40:48 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Perle's resignation does not change fundamental dynamics Message-ID: Perle's Resignation Not a Cure, Group Says Ethical Dealings of Advisory Boards Government-Wide at Issue, Watchdog Says By Christopher Lee Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, March 29, 2003; Page A02 The flap over defense adviser Richard Perle's business dealings is merely an example of the ethical concerns that plague an influential Pentagon advisory board, and his resignation as its chairman is not the cure, a government watchdog group said yesterday. Perle, a leading conservative who was an early proponent of attacking Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government, resigned his unpaid leadership post on the Defense Policy Board this week after disclosures that he was representing Global Crossing, a telecommunications company seeking Defense Department approval to be sold to a firm controlled by Chinese investors. Perle is not the only panelist with corporate ties to the Pentagon, however. Or the only one with a financial stake in the outcome of the Global Crossing deal. According to bankruptcy court records, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger's consulting company, Kissinger-McLarty Associates, has been paid $30,000 a month since November to represent Global Crossing, and is scheduled to receive a $200,000 "success fee" if the sale is approved. Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty, former Clinton White House chief of staff, said in an interview that Kissinger was not participating in the deal. McLarty said the fee arrangement is not unusual. In all, at least nine of the board's 30 members are linked to companies that won more than $76 billion in contracts with the Defense Department over the past two years, raising concerns that they might be using their public office for private gain, according to a report released yesterday by the Center for Public Integrity. "It's not a pretty picture," said Charles Lewis, the nonprofit group's executive director. "It is a picture of what has long been suspected of the incestuousness between the defense industry and the Pentagon." For example, the report says, former CIA director R. James Woolsey is a principal in a firm that is soliciting investment for homeland security companies. He also is a vice president at Booz-Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm that had contracts valued at more than $680 million last year, the report says. Retired Adm. William Owens, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sits on the boards of five companies that won more than $60 million in defense contracts in 2002, according to the report. Both men, who, like other members of the board are unpaid for their service, said there were no ethical conflicts. Defense contracts are just a small part of the businesses they are involved in, they said, and the firms' interests do not come up in the advisory board's broad policy discussions of such matters as North Korea and military alliances. If they were to, Woolsey and Owens said they would recuse themselves from the discussions. "We do this kind of thing because we care about the country," said Owens, who lives in Seattle. "We do this kind of thing for free. Indeed, I try to pay for my own travel so the government doesn't have to pay for it. . . . Most of us try very hard not to milk our connections in Washington." Woolsey noted that there are many similar advisory panels in agencies government-wide, drawing on the expertise of outside specialists who draw no compensation in return. "Other departments and agencies have these advisory boards, and as far as I'm aware the [ethics] rules apply similarly to all of them," Woolsey said. "What this really involves is whether the government wants to change the way it gets advice from people. And if it wants to have a lot fewer people and a lot fewer boards, that's fine." Perle, who remains on the defense board, said this week that he had done nothing wrong, and that he left the chairman's job only because he was "dismayed" that the Global Crossing controversy might distract Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld from the war against Iraq. "There was no conflict of interest, but it takes time for that to be sorted out," Perle said in an interview yesterday with Canadian Broadcasting Corp. "And the ethics officials at the Defense Department are now looking into all the details of this, and I haven't the slightest doubt how it will come out." At the Pentagon and elsewhere, federal advisory board members' potential conflicts of interest are difficult to determine because the panelists file confidential annual financial disclosure statements. What's more, federal law allows agency officials to grant waivers of ethics restrictions if they certify that the need for a member's service "outweighs the potential for a conflict of interest." At a minimum, board members' disclosure forms should be made public, Lewis said. And, he said, the Defense Department should have to report whatever sanctions or discipline it hands down to panelists who are found to have conflicts. "If you're going to have a system where you welcome that kind of experience and expertise, you'd better have mechanisms in place that assure transparency and openness and accountability," Lewis said. "And that does not seem to be the case with this board. . . . We're supposed to just trust the Pentagon, which always worries me." The financial disclosures are kept confidential because members of the defense panel and many other advisory boards serve as "special government employees." They are covered by federal ethics laws and regulations known as the Standards of Ethical Conduct, which prohibit conflicts of interest. Maj. Ted Wadsworth, a Pentagon spokesman, said the defense panel is a valuable source of advice for defense officials and strictly adheres to the ethics laws and regulations. "If the discussions of the board should involve matters that have a direct and predictable effect on a board member's financial interests, the board member is recused from taking part," he said. From lehar_hind at yahoo.com Tue Apr 8 16:25:16 2003 From: lehar_hind at yahoo.com (Lehar ..) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 03:55:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Indian Govt Proposals for Re-Writing Indian History In-Reply-To: <20030407163711.67104.qmail@web8005.mail.in.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20030408105516.85507.qmail@web20910.mail.yahoo.com> so what are we going to do about this rewriting of history? --- Avishek Ganguly wrote: > > http://www.geocities.com/ifihhome/reports/nationalismworkingpaper.html > > Working Paper from the National Seminar on > Philosophy > of Indian Nationalism & Value-Oriented Education > > conducted on 23-25 February 2003 at Jadavpur > University Campus, Kolkata > > Organized by : International Forum for India�s > Heritage in collaboration with Sri Sri Sitaramdas > Omkarnath Samskrita Siksha Samsad (Kolkata) > > Sponsored by : Indian Council of Philosophical > Research (New Delhi),Indian Institute of Advanced > Study (Shimla),& Indian Council of Historical > Research > (New Delhi) > > > This three-day National Seminar, initiated and > co-organized by the International Forum for India�s > Heritage (IFIH), brought together a number of > eminent > scholars from all over India (also from the U.S.A. > and > Switzerland). The central theme of Indian > Nationalism > was treated from historical, cultural, traditional > as > well as educational viewpoints, and this provided a > rich variety of presentations and debates. > > Chaired by Prof. Ramaranjan Mukherji, the concluding > session on 25 February focussed on educational > aspects > of Indian Nationalism. It featured two young > speakers, > Shri M. Pramod Kumar, who spoke on �How to Make > Nationalist Values Inspiring to Students�, and Ms. > Chitwan Jaipuria, who spoke on �The Inadequacies of > the Indian School Curriculum�. A discussion > followed, > moderated by a panel consisting, besides the > chairperson, of Prof. Kapil Kapoor, Dr. Somesh Kumar > Mishra, Dr. Ashok Mitra and Shri Michel Danino. > > The following points emerged, and it was agreed that > a > working paper, based on the central themes dealt > with > during the Seminar and ensuing discussions, would be > submitted to the Government of India, incorporating > practical proposals to make necessary improvements > in > the educational policy. This has now been done on > behalf of both the Indian Council of Philosophical > Research & International Forum for India�s Heritage. > This paper is also being sent to a number of > educational agencies, State boards of education, the > media etc. > > * * * > > At the outset, it was noted that the Constitutional > Amendment N�51-A (b) makes it a �fundamental duty of > citizens� to �cherish and follow the noble ideals > which inspired our national struggle for freedom.� > Moreover, the recent Supreme Court judgement (12 > September 2002) on the National Curriculum Framework > for School Education reiterated the S. B. Chawan > Committee� report of 1996, which stated that �� > national values can be imparted indirectly at the > primary stage, while at the middle and secondary > level, these can be included in the curriculum� (p. > 30).* > > It was also noted that the present system of > education > has failed to inspire such values in students, > mainly > because of an overburdened syllabus and a dry, > mechanical teaching of history in the form of > largely > irrelevant facts and dates that are forgotten soon > after the examinations are over. > > The panel then agreed on the following > recommendations: > > 1.The lives of the great early exponents of Indian > Nationalism, for instance Swami Vivekananda, Bal > Gangadhar Tilak, Sri Aurobindo, Sister Nivedita, > Subramania Bharati and others, must be taught in an > inspiring manner. > > 2.A collection of brief extracts from inspirational > writings by a wide selection of Indian Nationalists > and freedom fighters, from all regions of India, > should be made available to students as > supplementary > reading material. > > 3.The historical role and significance of the Bande > Mataram national song by Bankim Chandra should be > highlighted from the secondary level. > > 4.A certain number of misconceptions still plague > the > way in which the freedom movement is taught; for > instance, the notion that the Indian nation came > into > existence only thanks to the colonial masters; the > failure to highlight the distinctive features of > Indian Nationalism as compared to Western types of > nationalism; the eclipse of a number of important > early pioneers of the freedom movement, their > values, > thoughts, action and role; the depiction of some > freedom fighters as �terrorists�; party > considerations > in highlighting one group of leaders resulting in > sacrificing the importance of the contributions of > other leaders. A fair and objective account of the > freedom movement, devoid of any ideological bias, is > yet to be written. > > 5.Innovative methods making use of India�s rich > heritage � art forms, folk songs, drama, literary > wealth, etc. � must be promoted in place of the > present system of learning by rote, also modern > multimedia resources (for example films from the > early > decades of the twentieth century, documentaries...). > Creative re-enactments of important stages or events > or characters of the freedom movement in the form of > dramas, exhibitions, etc., should be encouraged, > especially with an interdisciplinary approach > combining history, language skills and art forms. > > 6.For the purpose, the Central or State Governments > should develop well-equipped National Resource > Centres > in a number of cities, where such material will be > available to students, teachers and the general > public > in print and electronic medium and in the form of > permanent exhibitions. > > 7.Such new material and methods will be in > consonance > with the approach that sees the student not as a > mere > recipient of academic learning, but as a soul to be > ignited. > > 8.Students should be taken at least once a year to > places of historical importance with regard to > Indian > Nationalism. Kanyakumari�s Rock Memorial, the > Andaman > penitentiary or the Alipore Jail, memorials to > Tilak, > Bankim or Subramania Bharati and hundreds of other > such places, dot the country and should remain in > the > consciousness of present and future generations. > > 9.Keeping in mind the cultural roots of Indian > Nationalism, which are far more ancient than the > colonial era, Sanskrit should be taught at primary, > middle and secondary levels. In particular, the two > great Indian Epics, which have long played a > considerable role in culturally unifying the nation, > must be studied, preferably through innovative > methods > such as those outlined above. Here again, reference > may be made to the recent Supreme Court judgement, > which explicitly �emphasized the importance of > Sanskrit study and declared the omission of Sanskrit > from CBSE syllabus as unjustified� (p. 44). > > 10.The above recommendations are, in fact, part of a > process of decolonization of the Indian mind, an > indispensable process if students are to become > truly > Indian, conscious of what India has stood for > throughout history and can still offer to humanity > today and tomorrow. > > April 2003 > > > > --------------------------------- > > * Page numbers of the Supreme Court Judgement refer > to > the edition brought out by the NCERT. > > === message truncated === __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more http://tax.yahoo.com From lehar_hind at yahoo.com Tue Apr 8 16:55:59 2003 From: lehar_hind at yahoo.com (Lehar ..) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 04:25:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Global Boycott Update Message-ID: <20030408112559.32614.qmail@web20908.mail.yahoo.com> Dear Friends Kudos to the Times of India for their People fopr Peace camopaign, which has on their front page- corporate ads against the genocide in Iraq. ( www.timesofindia.com) Due to a large number of queries on this issue, here is some more information on the gathering momentum of the global 'Boycott Genocide'/ Brand America' movement. Perhaps the only way out of this quagmire. The world's last 'great' empire was brought to its knees by the decades long Boyycott/Swadeshi movement in the land of the Mahatma Gandhi. -- The German restaurant boycotts of American products started small but spread rapidly after the Iraq war began on Thursday. The conflict has struck a raw nerve in a country that became decidedly antiwar after the devastation of World War II, which it initiated. "If people all around the world boycott American products it might influence their policies," said Jean-Yves Mabileau, owner of L'Auberge Francaise. The boycotts appear to be part of a nascent worldwide movement. One Web site, www.consumers-against-war.de, calls for boycotts of 27 top American firms from Microsoft to Kodak while another, www.adbusters.org, urges the "millions of people against the war" to "Boycott Brand America." Although boycotts are nascent, having a negligible impact on business, sources say that corporate America could lose upto 8.6 billion dollars per week( ie 1.3 bn dollar per day) if the global consumers decide to spread the boycott throught the 40 million strong global anti war movement. Establishments linked to the United States and the American way of life such as Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, McDonald's and Coca-Cola reported no major business impact from the protests. Chandler declined comment on whether it was hurting sales Despite such statements, consumer fury seems to be on the rise. Demonstrators in Paris smashed the gear to move in to protect staff and customers of the American fast-food outlet. The attackers sprayed obscenities and "boycott" on the windows. windows of a McDonald's restaurant last week, forcing police in riot In Indonesia, Iraq war opponents have pasted signs on McDonald's and other American food outlets, trying to force them shut. In the Swiss city of Basel, 50 students recently staged a sit-down strike in front of a McDonald's to block customers' entry, waved peace signs and urged people to eat pretzels instead of hamburgers. Anti-American sentiment has even reached parts of Russia, where some rural eateries put up signs telling Americans they were unwelcome, according to an Izvestia newspaper report. A German bicycle manufacturer, Riese und Mueller GmbH, canceled all business deals with its American suppliers. "Americans only pay attention when money is on the line," said director Heiko Mueller, whose firm buys $300,000 worth of supplies from half a dozen American firms each year. "We wanted to make a statement against this war and told our American partners that unless they renounce what their government is doing we won't do any business with them anymore." The German restaurant boycotts of American products started small but spread rapidly after the Iraq war began on Thursday. The conflict has struck a raw nerve in a country that became decidedly antiwar after the devastation of World War II, which it initiated. "If people all around the world boycott American products it might influence their policies," said Jean-Yves Mabileau, owner of L'Auberge Francaise. Free Press business writer JAMIE BUTTERS contributed to this report. Contact him at 313-222-8775 or butters at freepress.com. Boycott Brand America http://www.adbusters.org/ Because I am one of the millions of people against the war; And because the American government has made it clear that it won�t listen to world opinion; And because the symbols of American power are its corporations and their brands; I hereby pledge to boycott Brand America, from the moment the war begins and to the best of my ability until the empire learns to listen. -- Operation Liberate Yourself From Brand America has begun. Check your head and gauge your rage. Is it in you to boycott the lone-gun superpower? Add your name to the list and help get a million signatures for the Boycott Brand America pledge. http://www.consumers-against-war.de/caw.htm People in the whole world are holding their breath. Once again we are forced to witness a cruel and illegal war of aggression. Bush and his government have dismissed every objection, they have ignored UN resolutions and the protest of the people in the whole world, as they have been obsessed with their aim: taking hold of the oil wells in Iraq. People in the whole world are holding their breath - if they keep on doing it for too long they will suffocate. LET'S THERFORE TAKE A DEEP BREATH AND THEN CRY OUT LOUD! Let's go on protesting and demonstrating! Let's go on boycotting American products and thus the American economy, which is responsible for this war. Let's show America that we won't take this breach of international law! Let's put up a united front of independent and self-confident people, whose protest cannot be ignored! __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more http://tax.yahoo.com From lehar_hind at yahoo.com Tue Apr 8 17:07:08 2003 From: lehar_hind at yahoo.com (Lehar ..) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 04:37:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] rachel corrie:martyr Message-ID: <20030408113708.89977.qmail@web20910.mail.yahoo.com> Dear All, The tragic story of a young American girl, Rachel Corrie�s death under an Israeli bulldozer in the occupied territories has been around for some time. I am sending the note written by her parents to mark the death of their daughter. This news item was sent by Dr Kalim Ifrani (member Asiapeace, USA). Best regards, Ishtiaq Ahmed Moderator Asiapeace � An electronic discussion group Homepage: www.statsvet.su.se/forskning99/home_pages/ishtiaq_ahmed_ram.htm www.asiapeace.org http://groups.yahoo.com/group/asiapeace Affiliate of Association for Communal Harmony in Asia (ACHA). Associate Professor Department of Political Science Stockholm University 106 91 Stockholm SWEDEN. Ishtiaq.Ahmed at statsvet.su.se Rachel, an American teenager, was killed by Israeli bulldozers in Gaza, when she was trying to protest and protect against the demolitions. Forwarding her parents' brief statement and an excerpt from Rachel's e-mail sent on February 7, 2003, from Rafah, a city in the Gaza Strip. -Kalim From: "Karen Rockwell" Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 13:56:53 -0500 The following is a brief statement by Rachel Corrie's parents followed by an essay she wrote during her time in Rafah. Statement March 16, 2003 Craig and Cindy Corrie, parents of Rachel Corrie We are now in a period of grieving and still finding out the details behind the death of Rachel in the Gaza Strip. We have raised all our children to appreciate the beauty of the global community and family and are proud that Rachel was able to live her convictions. Rachel was filled with love and a sense of duty to her fellow man, wherever they lived. And, she gave her life trying to protect those that are unable to protect themselves. Rachel wrote to us from the Gaza Strip and we would like to release to the media her experience in her own words at this time. Thank you. Excerpts from an e-mail from Rachel Corrie to her family on February 7, 2003. I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to think about what's going on here when I sit down to write back to theUnited States--something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don't know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I'm not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere. An eight-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here, and many of the children murmur his name to me, "Ali"--or point at the posters of him on the walls. The children also love to get me to practice my limited Arabic by asking me "Kaif Sharon?" "Kaif Bush?" and they laugh when I say "Bush Majnoon" "Sharon Majnoon" back in my limited Arabic. (How isSharon? How is Bush? Bush is crazy. Sharonis crazy.) Of course this isn't quite what I believe, and some of the adults who have the English correct me: Bush mish Majnoon... Bush is a businessman. Today I tried to learn to say "Bush is a tool", but I don't think it translated quite right. But anyway, there are eight-year-olds here much more aware of the workings of the global power structure than I was just a few years ago--at least regardingIsrael. Nevertheless, I think about the fact that no amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can't imagine it unless you see it, and even then you are always well aware that your experience is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli Army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and, of course, the fact that I have the option of leaving. Nobody in my family has been shot, driving in their car, by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a major street in my hometown. I have a home. I am allowed to go see the ocean. Ostensibly it is still quite difficult for me to be held for months or years on end without a trial (this because I am a white US citizen, as opposed to so many others). When I leave for school or work I can be relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting half way between Mud Bay and downtown Olympia at a checkpoint? A soldier with the power to decide whether I can go about my business, and whether I can get home again when I'm done. So, if I feel outrage at arriving and entering briefly and incompletely into the world in which these children exist, I wonder conversely about how it would be for them to arrive in my world. They know that children in the United States don't usually have their parents shot and they know they sometimes get to see the ocean. But once you have seen the ocean and lived in a silent place, where water is taken for granted and not stolen in the night by bulldozers, and once you have spent an evening when you haven't wondered if the walls of your home might suddenly fall inward waking you from your sleep, and once you've met people who have never lost anyone-- once you have experienced the reality of a world that isn't surrounded by murderous towers, tanks, armed "settlements" and now a giant metal wall, I wonder if you can forgive the world for all the years of your childhood spent existing--just existing--in resistance to the constant stranglehold of the world's fourth largest military--backed by the world's only superpower--in it's attempt to erase you from your home. That is something I wonder about these children. I wonder what would happen if they really knew. As an afterthought to all this rambling, I am in Rafah, a city of about 140,000 people, approximately 60 percent of whom are refugees--many of whom are twice or three times refugees. Rafah existed prior to 1948, but most of the people here are themselves or are descendants of people who were relocated here from their homes in historic Palestine--nowIsrael. Rafah was split in half when the Sinai returned to Egypt. Currently, the Israeli army is building a fourteen-meter-high wall between Rafah in Palestine and the border, carving a no-mans land from the houses along the border. Six hundred and two homes have been completely bulldozed according to the Rafah Popular Refugee Committee. The number of homes that have been partially destroyed is greater. Today as I walked on top of the rubble where homes once stood, Egyptian soldiers called to me from the other side of the border, "Go! Go!" because a tank was coming. Followed by waving and "what's your name?". There is something disturbing about this friendly curiosity. It reminded me of how much, to some degree, we are all kids curious about other kids: Egyptian kids shouting at strange women wandering into the path of tanks. Palestinian kids shot from the tanks when they peak out from behind walls to see what's going on. International kids standing in front of tanks with banners. Israeli kids in the tanks anonymously, occasionally shouting-- and also occasionally waving--many forced to be here, many just aggressive, shooting into the houses as we wander away. In addition to the constant presence of tanks along the border and in the western region between Rafah and settlements along the coast, there are more IDF towers here than I can count--along the horizon,at the end of streets. Some just army green metal. Others these strange spiral staircases draped in some kind of netting to make the activity within anonymous. Some hidden,just beneath the horizon of buildings. A new one went up the other day in the time it took us to do laundry and to cross town twice to hang banners. Despite the fact that some of the areas nearest the border are the original Rafah with families who have lived on this land for at least a century, only the 1948 camps in the center of the city are Palestinian controlled areas underOslo. But as far as I can tell, there are few if any places that are not within the sights of some tower or another. Certainly there is no place invulnerable to apache helicopters or to the cameras of invisible drones we hear buzzing over the city for hours at a time. I've been having trouble accessing news about the outside world here, but I hear an escalation of war onIraqis inevitable. There is a great deal of concern here about the "reoccupation ofGaza." Gazais reoccupied every day to various extents, but I think the fear is that the tanks will enter all the streets and remain here, instead of entering some of the streets and then withdrawing after some hours or days to observe and shoot from the edges of the communities. If people aren't already thinking about the consequences of this war for the people of the entire region then I hope they will start. I also hope you'll come here. We've been wavering between five and six internationals. The neighborhoods that have asked us for some form of presence are Yibna, Tel El Sultan, Hi Salam,Brazil, Block J, Zorob, and Block O. There is also need for constant night-time presence at a well on the outskirts of Rafah since the Israeli army destroyed the two largest wells. According to the municipal water office the wells destroyed last week provided half of Rafah's water supply. Many of the communities have requested internationals to be present at night to attempt to shield houses from further demolition. After aboutten p.m.it is very difficult to move at night because the Israeli army treats anyone in the streets as resistance and shoots at them. So clearly we are too few. I continue to believe that my home,Olympia, could gain a lot and offer a lot by deciding to make a commitment to Rafah in the form of a sister-community relationship. Some teachers and children's groups have expressed interest in e-mail exchanges, but this is only the tip of the iceberg of solidarity work that might be done. Many people want their voices to be heard, and I think we need to use some of our privilege as internationals to get those voices heard directly in theUS, rather than through the filter of well-meaning internationals such as myself. I am just beginning to learn, from what I expect to be a very intense tutelage, about the ability of people to organize against all odds, and to resist against all odds. Thanks for the news I've been getting from friends in theUS. I just read a report back from a friend who organized a peace group inShelton,Washington, and was able to be part of a delegation to the large January 18th protest inWashingtonDC. People here watch the media, and they told me again today that there have been large protests in the United States and "problems for the government" in theUK. So thanks for allowing me to not feel like a complete polyanna when I tentatively tell people here that many people in the United States do not support the policies of our government, and that we are learning from global examples how to resist. ======================================= Michael ISM Media Coordinator Beit Sahour Occupied Palestine Phone: +972-2-2774602 Cell: +972-67-862 439 web: http://www.palsolidarity.org __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more http://tax.yahoo.com From menso at r4k.net Tue Apr 8 17:47:13 2003 From: menso at r4k.net (Menso Heus) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 14:17:13 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] anti-war art? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20030408121713.GF69035@r4k.net> On Thu, Apr 03, 2003 at 10:38:45AM -0800, Marisa S. Olson wrote: > Dear Reader group, > > I am writing a long mag essay on anti-war art--interesting > contemporary work and also the history of such work. I would love > your notes and thoughts on examples of the above... Hi Marisa, A group of artists in Amsterdam have covered the bigger half of Museum square with white crosses like that of graves. Museumsquare is a big grass field, right in the middle of the museum district and across from the Concert building. The reason this protest took place there is because on one of the corners of the square the US embassy is located. I took a picture of a picture that appeared in the Dutch newspaper NRC, and put it online here: http://www.xs4all.nl/~menso/museumplein.jpg If you need a good quality copy for the article, I suggest you contact the NRC newspaper :) bye, Menso -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "There are several good protections against temptation but the surest is cowardice." - Mark Twain -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From menso at r4k.net Tue Apr 8 18:20:36 2003 From: menso at r4k.net (Menso Heus) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 14:50:36 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] anti-war art? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20030408125036.GG69035@r4k.net> On Thu, Apr 03, 2003 at 10:38:45AM -0800, Marisa S. Olson wrote: > Dear Reader group, > > I am writing a long mag essay on anti-war art--interesting > contemporary work and also the history of such work. I would love > your notes and thoughts on examples of the above... I'd almost forgotten to mention the most brilliant 'Propaganda Remix' project, up at http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/PhotoAlbum1.html They basically took propaganda posters from previous wars and adjusted ('remixed') them to become current again. Some of my personal favorites: http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/.Pictures/votebox.jpg http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/.Pictures/hoover.jpg http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/.Pictures/education.jpg http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/.Pictures/signage.jpg http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/.Pictures/noelections.jpg http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/.Pictures/thoughtcrime.jpg http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/.Pictures/cuppa.jpg you can order prints and t-shirts from them as well :) Menso -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- If corn oil comes from corn, where does baby oil come from? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From felix at openflows.org Tue Apr 8 18:58:43 2003 From: felix at openflows.org (Felix Stalder) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 15:28:43 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Open Cultures :: Conference Announcement Message-ID: <20030408132753.6AE5026071@openflows.org> OPEN CULTURES: FREE FLOWS OF INFORMATION AND THE POLITICS OF THE COMMONS + Vienna, June 5 & 6, 2003 + http://opencultures.t0.or.at + open at t0.or.at ** Conference Announcement ** Call For Resources ** Travel Grants Available ========================================== ** CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT ========================================== Today's infosphere allows a quick and easy exchange of digitized information. The tools of creation and the means of distribution are becoming more affordable by the month, thus continuously expanding the range of creators and users. Yet, not everyone is happy with this. A coalition of large media conglomerates calls for Draconian measures to stop this free flow of information. New restrictive technologies and new oppressive laws are being developed right now, in an attempt to create scarcity out of the digital abundance. The current security fears are manipulated to equate openness with danger in a cynical effort to protect the assets of large industries against the forces of innovation. Against this backdrop, a counter movement is taking shape that is guided by the idea of 'the commons': resources accessible to all. Rather than expanding the means of control to catch up with the ease of data processing, this movement takes the free availability of information as its starting point. It recognizes that a free society needs free flows of information, that the attempt to control information quickly leads to controlling people. Creativity - commercial, scientific and artistic - requires the ability to easily and freely built upon what others have created. The Open Cultures conference will survey the new territory of the commons by bringing together leading thinkers and practitioners from different corners of this vast field. We will talk about access to scientific information, free software, patents and other forms of knowledge monopolies, wireless community networks, open distribution channels, about the economics and the aesthetics of the commons. We want to strengthen the understanding of the shared visions and goals, learn from the different experiences and approaches and send a signal that, yes, openness is possible, indeed, it's the only direction to move forward. The conference will focus on the following topics: * Information Commons Open Access Journals and other institutional initiatives to build a infrastructure for free access to information * Media of the Commons Grassroots publishing, peer-to-peer, free distribution, freenet * Wireless Community Networks Rather than buying bandwidth from global telecom giants rebuilding information flows locally, from the ground up. One wireless cell at a time. * Politics Of the Commons International treaties and international governing bodies. What are the possibilities of using them to advance openness and access? * Culture of the Commons What culture and art is emerging in the commons? The conference will include workshops of streaming technologies and on wireless networks as well as exhibition of media installations who explore the ideas of openess and free access. Speakers and Guest include: Shu Lea Cheang (Artist, Kingdom of Piracy), Vera Franz and Darius Cuplinskas (Open Society Institute, Budapest, osi.hu), Adam Hyde (Artist, Frequency Clock), Jaromil (Developer, Dyne:bolic), Jamie Love (CPTech), Armin Medosch (Artist), Eben Moglen (Professor of Law, Columbia University NYC, EFF Pioneer 2003), Eric Moeller (Journalist, infoanarchy.org), Andy Mueller-Maguhn (Chaos Computer Club, ccc.de, ICANN), Bruce Sterling (Novelist), Alan Toner (NY University, Media activist, freedistro.org) ========================================== ** CALL FOR RESOURCES ========================================== As we all know, a conference as a live event has a limited reach: a few dozen people at worst, a few hundred at best. Nevertheless, its value can be much greater. The event character of a conference serves to focus attention, to create a defined context in which people, ideas and projects meet, learning takes place and new ideas can grow. Made accessible and archived on line, this focus can become an important reference point for the larger discussion way beyond the actual event. We would like to invite you to expose your ideas/projects to this focus on Open Cultures without the burden of having to travel to Vienna. How? By submitting a resource to the "Open Cultures Repository". A resource can be a text, a media file, a project, or a call for participation. We are in the process of assembling critical resources for the theory/practice of free information flows. We invite you to contribute to this collection of resources, by submitting one, or more, resource(s) either as original media files, or as links to resources already out-there but hard to find. The resource that you want the community to know about can be your's or someone else's. Please browse the resources that are already online and contribute to expanding the scope and value of this open collection. Should you have any questions / comments to this project, please do not hesitate to contact us. http://opencultures.t0.or.at open at t0.or.at ========================================== ** TRAVEL GRANTS AVAILABLE ========================================== Thanks to a generous contribution from the Open Society Institute (OSI), a small number of stipends are available to cover participants' travel costs. Participants eligible for these stipends should be from countries outside the US and EU. If you wish to apply for a stipend, please send an email to open at t0.or.at indicating your interest in the conference and travel expenses. Deadline for applying is April 30, 2003. The stipends will be awarded in consultation with the OSI and recipients will be notified by May 15. ----+-------+---------+--- http://felix.openflows.org From eye at ranadasgupta.com Tue Apr 8 19:07:20 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 19:07:20 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] argentina Message-ID: I've been writing about Argentina in the last few weeks and wanted to share some of the incredible news that is coming out of there that some of you may have not come across. We have all heard about the crisis that peaked in December 2001 when the Argentinian peso lost 2/3 of its value and the banks stopped all withdrawals, and when mass protests led to the fall of the government. The situation was extraordinary in the extent to which a putatively democratic system that had been a capitalist poster-child until very recently lost all legitimacy, in the eyes not only of the poor, but also the middle classes, whose savings had been almost wiped out. This, and the continued desperate economic situation, has created an environment in which intense debate is going on as to alternative political and economic structures, and much of this debate is taking off into experiments with local assemblies, worker-run companies, etc. It is worth looking at how some of this experimentation is playing out. there is a huge amount of writing about this (notably, by the international socialist press that sees Argentina as something of a crucible of future revolutions...) and i will just post links here. I think the following two paragraphs from Naomi Klein's piece give a sense of what is happening, however: "In the past year, between 130 and 150 factories, bankrupt and abandoned by their owners, have been taken over by their workers and turned into cooperatives or collectives. At tractor plants, supermarkets, printing houses, aluminium factories and pizza parlours, decisions about company policy are now made in open assemblies, and profits are split equally among the workers. "In recent months, the "fabricas tomadas" (literally, "taken factories") have begun to network among themselves and are beginning to plan an informal "solidarity economy": garment workers from an occupied factory, for example, sew sheets for an occupied health clinic; a supermarket in Rosario, turned into a workers' cooperative, sells pasta from an occupied pasta factory; occupied bakeries are building ovens with tiles from an occupied ceramic plant. "I feel like the dictatorship is finally ending," one asamblista told me when I first arrived in Buenos Aires. "It's like I've been locked in my house for 25 years and now I am finally outside."" Naomi Klein, 'Out of the Ordinary' (parts 1 & 2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,880651,00.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4591063,00.html Total crisis of capitalism in Argentina: The only way out: the struggle for workers' democracy http://www.marxist.com/Latinam/argentina_only_way0202.html Argentine Left Debates Strategy as Mass Protests Continue http://www.socialistaction.org/news/200202/left.html Diary of a revolution http://www.guardian.co.uk/argentina/story/0,11439,880919,00.html Do Cry for Argentina http://www.jubilee2000uk.org/worldnews/lamerica/argentina070602.htm R From eye at ranadasgupta.com Tue Apr 8 20:31:38 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 20:31:38 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] can we have one too please? Message-ID: george bush's prescriptions for a post-war government in Iraq sound so good! i wonder if we can all get a government like that. the comments about oil are particularly astonishing. "The oil of Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people" says Colin Powell. treasury secretary john snow says: "This effort will ensure that the assets and funds belonging to the Iraqi people are dedicated to the wellbeing and benefit of their nation." Bush has repeatedly said that it is time to remove the evil leadership of Iraq so that the Iraqi people can live in peace and liberty and benefit from the oil wealth that is their own. one can only imagine that in the light of a truly miraculous conversion of this sort that Bush will act, with a convert's zeal, to nationalise Exxon-Mobil, Amoco, Unocal etc. he will find it tough. but he has never been one to be cowed by the irrational prejudices of the unwashed masses. R From abroeck at transmediale.de Tue Apr 8 20:58:28 2003 From: abroeck at transmediale.de (Andreas Broeckmann) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 17:28:28 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] can we have one too please? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: on this point - the Berliner Zeitung recently reported that the US government has seized iraqi assets in the us as well as in switzerland - money in bank accounts which is now being used to pay for the services of us-american companies that are rebuilding the infrastructure that has just been destroyed by the bombs. (you would think that even if this money belongs to saddam himself, it should be given back to the iraqi people, rather than to the us-finance dept.) i wonder whether they are also making the iraqis pay for the fuel of those b-52s flying in from britain to drop the humanitarian bombs ... but i am sure that the liberated iraqui people are enlightened and kind enough to share their oil wealth with their great peace-loving friends, modernisers and liberators, so things are cool! -a >"The oil of Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people" says Colin Powell. > >treasury secretary john snow says: "This effort will ensure that the assets >and funds belonging to the Iraqi people are dedicated to the wellbeing and >benefit of their nation." > >Bush has repeatedly said that it is time to remove the evil leadership of >Iraq so that the Iraqi people can live in peace and liberty and benefit from >the oil wealth that is their own. From khadeejaarif1 at rediffmail.com Tue Apr 8 22:21:07 2003 From: khadeejaarif1 at rediffmail.com (khadeeja arif) Date: 8 Apr 2003 16:51:07 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] oil belongs to Iraq.... Message-ID: <20030408165107.11903.qmail@mailweb34.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030408/ecfa5719/attachment.pl From shuddha at sarai.net Wed Apr 9 11:09:57 2003 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 11:09:57 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Iraq War Culture by Joe Lockard Message-ID: <03040911095703.01108@sweety.sarai.kit> Dear Readers, Here is an excellent voice from within the United States talking about the "domestic" consequences of the war againts Iraq. This is the editorial statement of the latest (special Iraq issue) of 'Bad Subjects : Political Education for Everyday Life', written by Joe Lockard. I have always profited from looking at Bad Subjects, (http://eserver.org/bs/)and would recommend its excellent content to all on this list. This issue (no 63) contains the following excellent articles, and each of these is available online from the Bad Subjects website. Joe Lockard, issue editor Iraq War Culture Boaventura de Sousa Santos Collective Suicide? Leslie Roberts When the Enemy Is Me Dickie Wallace Defending the Homeland War: A View from Croatia David Manning A Tale of Two (or Three) Marches Niaz Kasravi and A. Rafik Mohamed Freedom of Speech...Just Watch What You Say Michelle Renee Matisons Saying Something: Academia's Normalization of Crisis Max Fraad-Wolff and Rick Wolff The Empire's War on Iraq Debra Benita Shaw Making Starship Troopers Arturo Aldama The 'Reality' Video Game of War: Loose Reflections on the Invasion on Hope Cynthia Fuchs The War Show Babak Rahimi Social Death and War: US Media Representations of Sacrifice in the Iraq War Michael Hoffman War as a Sporting Event Steven Rubio "War! Blog! Good Gawd, Y'all! What Are They Good For?" Jo Rittenhouse and Elisabeth Hurst Operation Iraqi Freedom: Misdirection in Action Nathan Snaza Reflections Toward Visibility Binoy Kampmark Riddles of Disarmament: Saddam and the Washington Sniper Claire Norton Marines versus Fedayeen: Interpretive Naming and Constructing the 'Other' tobias c. van Veen Affective Tactics: Intensifying a Politics of Perception   I am sure that readers will remember what Arundhati Roy said in her recent article in the Guardian on Iraq, (posted on to this list by Rana Dasgupta some days ago) - "Most courageous of all, are the hundreds of thousands of American people on the streets of America's great cities - Washington, New York, Chicago, San Francisco...American citizens have a huge responsibility riding on their shoulders. How can we not salute and support those who not only acknowledge but act upon that responsibility? They are our allies, our friends." So here is something that I think tells us more about how the war is affecting our friends and allies in the United States. cheers Shuddha ____________________________________________________- Iraq War Culture Joe Lockard Bad Subjects, Issue # 63, April 2003 http://eserver.org/bs/63/editors.html Cutbacks and Repression The US political landscape of the Iraq War is characterized by massive cutbacks in social expenditures, together with tax structures that underwrite capital accumulation by a narrow alliance of social allies. Corporate, military and government leadership have become an integrated, interlocking circle, one that promotes an ideological culture of the nation-state as the fundamental source of progress and power to consume. Yet this is a crisis-bound society in need of affirmations of its superiority. Since the inauguration of the Bush administration, the US economy has lost 2.1 million jobs. The US educational system is in the middle of financial crises generated by astonishing military expenditures, corporate welfare, and tax giveaways to the rich. According to a January survey by the National Council of State Legislatures, US states had cut $49.1 billion in public services, health and welfare benefits, and education in their fiscal 2003 budgets, and were due to cut another $25.7 billion. That $74.8 billion in cutbacks represents significantly less than the Bush administration's initial $80 billion budget request for the Iraq War, with many billions of future supplementary requests certain to follow. This is a war that is quite literally being fought on the backs of schoolchildren and university students, the working poor, single mothers, hospital and home-care patients, and now-unemployed teachers, health workers, and other public employees. Culture, conceived in the broadest sense as the social exegesis of mass phenomena, assembles, integrates and responds to these profound and rapid social developments. Iraq War culture is much more than its imagery of Homeland Security orange alert warnings, proliferating global protests, video shots of nighttime blasts in Baghdad, or the still image of a wounded Iraqi woman caught in cross-fire. This culture represents a revolving economy between violent imagery and US political hegemonism that reinforces itself through reference to the same violent imagery. As a culture, it is an accumulation of adverse phenomena at crisis point, a continuing social cross-fire created by capital making markets and un-making labor rights. It is the clearance of shared communities ? from villages in the occupied West Bank to cohesive but impoverished working-class neighborhoods in Cairo that send workers to the Gulf ? and labor migrations endured by peoples of color without alternatives, the unrecognized neo-slaveries that support contemporary economies. This is a culture of exhibitionist violence and invisible labor. A key linkage exists here, because the Iraq War marks the emerging division between global domains where interventionist violence is visible and labor invisible, and those where violent intervention is invisible and elite labor visible. Iraq is the site of permissible imperial violence and majority un- or underemployment, whereas military violence is nominally impermissible in the United States and its economy responds either favorably or less so to the success of overseas violence. We have reached a new high tide mark in the consolidation of global economic inequalities and the compounding advantages of Western economies that can finance information-driven and superior war technologies. Such is the cultural hierarchy that information labor has produced. Iraq War culture is the cutting edge of American economic, military and information culture, with its techno-aesthetic and assertion of universal dominion under an ideological banner of Freedom Incarnate. The truly liberated class today is the mercenary migrants of state violence, the global warrior class that asserts its rights of mobility and occupational freedom, with digital video uplinks from the front lines to document its work product. Simultaneously, at a domestic level in the United States ? one that can no longer be described accurately as domestic given its global integration ? a set of repressive legal enactments adopted in the name of national security have been establishing new models for international imitation. Where Britain's Emergency Regulations once established the legal mechanisms for colonialism in India, Hong Kong, Kenya, Palestine and other locales, in this still-new century the United States is framing the security legislation that is already being promulgated by other West-allied nations. If enacted, the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 ? also known as the USA/Patriot Act II ? will radically alter constitutional legal protections, already in substantial decline since the first Patriot Act. Should John Ashcroft prevail, Fourth Amendment protections against domestic security surveillance will fade into a ghostly remnant, where surveillance would be conducted entirely at the Attorney General's discretion without judicial review. Secret warrantless searches would expand; nearly any private record would be subject to investigative demands; secret detentions would be permitted without criminal charge, and habeas corpus would be annulled by provisions to prevent such litigation and even forbid release of basic information about detainees; lawful residents could be deported without a hearing; and federal and state orders limiting police spying on community activists would be cancelled. A new culture of systematic automated surveillance and Total Information Awareness has established itself, one that points to a vista of unending conflict as its self-justification. There is no particular note of social apocalypse here, only a gray statement of the rationales of perpetuation required in order to integrate an information economy with an economy that produces and exports violence, then must guard against its return. If this information culture attempts to transform the transactions that constitute social life into a security database, it treats absence of information as an identified object of suspicion. Non-integration into the global database signs either ungoverned or ungovernable; it signs the presence of an atavistic and potentially barbaric subject. The discipline of market control ? and social cutbacks ? cannot be exerted where citizens remain unintegrated into the dominant information culture. To be outside control, whether as nation-state or citizen-subject, is to invite the discipline of information technology and its potential forms of destruction. Iraq War culture is a culture that promotes the objectivity of a consensus of power. The test of cultural validity comes in its conformity with information power. When Iraq's minister of information, Mohamed Saeed al-Sahaf, looks into an al-Jazeera camera and speaks of crushing US forces, while 3rd Division tanks are moving at will through Baghdad, he occupies a paradoxical ? and deeply antiquated ? position as a political fabulator whose rhetorical disinformation meets simultaneous disproof via live feeds from the same city. The minister is reduced to arguing that these are Associated Press rather than Arab-owned media feeds. It is as though the minister has been transplanted from the Nasserite rhetorical world of the late 1960s, part of a once-collapsed and now-revivified rhetorical bubble. Al-Sahaf's extraordinary denial of reality was in part a retreat into a fictional, could-be, and might-still-be world, a familiar reaction to the imminence of cultural defeat. Validity and falsity are now functions of transmissibility and integration into technological networks. The information flow that matters in Iraq today comes from US Army colonels in P3 Orion intelligence planes, riding electronic shotgun with laptops and streaming video, flying over their advancing columns. An incorporative disciplinary culture stretches today between the US and Iraq, one based on the absorption of unincorporated territory into the infosphere.Necrophilic Speech The war occasions more than the war; it is a beginning of progressive regimentalization. It supplies rationales of repression, demands for the subordination of counter-argument, delimitations between permissible speech and silence that knows its place. War culture is speech in its own right, one that functions in rhetoric of demand and conquest. Yet the geist of attempted homogenization of opinion is unworkable home-front psy-ops, one that will fail because mass political opinion is chaotic in nature and hysterias are transitory phenomena. War culture, in all its efforts to heroicize and memorialize the dead, embraces state violence as the apogee of citizenship. Public speech responds to the demands of citizen-sacrifice. Russ Castronovo argues in Necro Citizenship that "While US political culture revolves around intercourse with the dead ? from suicidal slaves to injured white male sexual subjects, and from passive female clairvoyants to generic though lifeless citizens ? the dead do not remain eternally estranged. No matter how enamored the state and its citizenry are of passive subjects, political necrophilia is also charged with an impossible desire to forget the dead." Iraq War culture expands the discourse of state-sanctified death, but that same vision of an ennobled battlefield requires symbols, codes and ideologies to mask its barbarism. Memorialization of the fallen-to-be proceeds before the fact and to dissent is to disgrace the memories of citizen-soldiers who have not yet died but must die. Speech that opposes unnecessary death is itself unnecessary, and political necrophilia waves its flags. But as Babak Rahimi points out, there is a collective shared experience of death that demands transformation through public rituals and ideological appropriation of citizen 'sacrifice.' "All of America is grateful for your sacrifice," George Bush tells Marines at Camp Lejeune, honoring the collaboration pact with civil suicide promoted by classes that remain alive to make speeches. Where opposition to necrophilic citizenship was once limited to combatant nations, the last century's history has witnessed an ever-expanding international public assertion of entitlement to oppose state violence. Jurisdictional assertions have followed, entrained on that developing international consciousness, as the inauguration of the International Criminal Court evidences. Despite this development, the US invasion of Iraq, undertaken in defiance of world opinion, has been underwritten by State Department assertions of international legal exceptionalism for the US military and its actions. The American Empire is being underwritten by claims that a national willingness to promote and engage in a harmonization of collective necrophilia and destructive techno-worship entitles it to a higher standing in international citizenship. The transparent inadequacies of such US claims to national exceptionalism contribute both to immediate antagonism and to the continuation of global efforts to create and enforce preventative mechanisms based in international law. In the world of opposition, Iraq War culture is the raw emotion of street demonstrations; of myriad coffeehouse discussions of energy-driven US imperialism and corporate colonialism; of popular intellectual counter-hegemonism in formation and yet-to-form; of experimental thought and democratic expression. Global contempt towards the US cites its transparent imperial interests, the hypocritical distance between its idealistic advocacies and barbaric means, and the transformation of a post-World War II model-nation (undeserved as this reputation may have been) into a twenty-first century Dirty Harry nation-state. Oppositional culture has found its anti-model, the sole remaining superpower operated as a fundamentalist Christian franchise licensee. In the days of its greatest success, US war culture has generated its greatest and most energetic opposition. Yet because 'culture' cannot be understood in itself as immanent and self-explained, its originating political and historical frameworks intertwine themselves throughout that expression. Without this simultaneity of understandings, an opposition remains inadequate to its purposes. Sloganeering critiques of US war culture mirror the simplifications and hollow cultural 'knowledges' that enable US policymakers to model a world that will appreciate its heroic necrophilia.Anti-war Cultural Criticism This special issue of Bad Subjects is born in political anger and the need to develop a critique. Like millions of others worldwide, many Bad Subjects editors have turned out for demonstrations and demanded international justice and peace. Most of those same millions demonstrated and marched with few illusions about either the nature of the Bush administration's plans or the Iraqi regime. Despite overwhelming opposition from international opinion and the refusal of the United Nations to sanction an Anglo-American imperial expedition, a twenty-first century version of Lord Kitchener's Nile campaign, the war proceeded, driven inexorably by the preemptive and militaristic unilateralism that has been brewing in right-wing US policy circles for a full generation and more. Prosecution of this war represents the defeat of international democracy, not the vision of Baghdad's liberation that emerges in the Napoleonic rhetoric voiced by George Bush. The Gordon Memorial Service, September 4, 1898, held by military chaplains for British forces after the Battle of Omdurman and the capture of Khartoum. "Well, we have given them a good dusting," spoke Lord Kitchener as he looked out over a battlefield at Omdurman littered with over 10,000 enemy corpses killed by British Maxim guns. Even as such aggression contravenes international law, it also constitutes a window of publishing opportunity for cultural politics, for that aggression emerges from US culture that desperately needs analysis. No one journal or special issue can pretend to offer more than a glimpse, a provocation, or a public rumination. To publish an emergency issue at this time is a collective re-assertion of the same democracy that has been abused by Iraq War culture; it speaks towards an alternative culture based on values of dialogue, reason, and repugnance towards militarism. In short, this issue affirms the global social justice that the Iraq War attempts to deny but cannot. When Theodor Adorno wrote "Cultural criticism rejects the progressive integration of all aspects of consciousness within the apparatus of material production," he specified the task of cultural criticism in the contemporary US where the integration of global production functions to supply the means of empire and its military policing. Inasmuch as social justice begins with the framing of grievances and their rationales, cultural criticism is integral to anti-war politics in the Iraq War era. Criticism's function becomes to disassemble a consciousness based on what, in his excellent essay that opens this issue, Portuguese critic Boaventura de Sousa Santos describes as "a political logic [based] on the supposition of total power and knowledge, and on the radical rejection of alternatives." de Sousa Santos argues that the Iraq War has its roots in the prevailing climate of neo-liberal globalization and that violent domination on behalf of the West is an endemic force of these politics. Adorno speaks here to a role for cultural criticism as a mobile force, as a resistance to immobilizing ideologies and pseudo-knowledges, as a discourse that floodlights intolerant antagonisms and privilege embedded within claims to an objective and non-ideological knowledge. Where there is a repressive surveillance and suppression of dissent, normalized as broad public agreement, cultural criticism has an irreplaceable function in developing critiques of that consciousness.Protest and Resistance Narratives American cultural insularity is arguably a major contributing factor to the Iraq War, one that enables and animates a nationalistic mono-perspective. A counter-tradition, identifiable in American narrative since at least the eighteenth century, emphasizes the social enlightenment and self-understanding gained from distance. To be profoundly 'American' does not necessarily correspond with physical location within the United States. Two US academics, Leslie Roberts and Dickie Wallace, contribute essays from New Zealand and Croatia respectively. As Roberts joins a peace march in Christchurch with her daughter, she discovers that, against her own desire, she wears the unwanted identity of 'enemy.' Wallace writes from the Croatian town of Knin where news of war crimes trials dating from the Yugoslav break-up form a paradoxical and very current backdrop against which to view news of the US invasion of Iraq. Both essays evidence the profound discomfort of US citizens abroad who are contemptuous of their government's international behavior and who need to voice their alienation. If US globalism represents an empire of privilege, it also creates a space from which its subjects can construct new civil visions from the outside, from places that are not America and better off for it. From faizan at sarai.net Wed Apr 9 15:21:17 2003 From: faizan at sarai.net (Faizan Ahmed) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 15:21:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] AMERICAN AGGRESSION AGAINST IRAQ - WHO IS TERRORIST? Message-ID: <200304091521.17598.faizan@sarai.net> AMERICAN AGGRESSION AGAINST IRAQ - WHO IS TERRORIST? Asghar Ali Engineer (Islam and Modern Age April, 2003) (I) The aggression against Iraq by President Bush of America and Prime Minister Blair of the U.K. has attracted worldwide condemnation and rightly so. The forces of these two countries are ruthlessly bombarding Iraq. Even market places and civilian buildings have not been spared - probably deliberately targeted. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in last two weeks. More they (USA and U.K.) get frustrated more ruthlessly they bomb particularly Baghdad. And ironically now it is Bush and Blaire who are villains and President Saddam Hussain who is a hero. This raises one question - who is greater terrorist - Osama bin Laden or Bush and Blaire? When the New York twin towers were attacked on 9/11 the world media raised hell and condemned not only bin Laden (which would have been justified) but Islam itself and equated Islam with terrorism. There were host of articles in leading news papers and magazines round the world condemning Islam as responsible for terrorism and that Islam is a violent religion which urges upon its followers to wage jihad. Now that President Bush is committing all these crimes against humanity in the name of 'liberating Iraq' who shall we blame for it? Osama bin Laden was of course an individual, a head of al-Qaida, an organisation floated by Osama himself, and not elected by any people or Muslims of the world or any country, for that matter. Even then American media wrote as if all Muslims were responsible for the crime committed by Osama. Can the crimes against humanity being committed by Bush - an elected representative of USA - on the people of Iraq be blamed on Christianity since he invokes Christianity, like Osama who invoked Islam for the crime he committed against three thousand or so people working in those towers. Bush is also invoking Christianity but organising Christian prayers in White House or conducting the Bible study circles and invoking God time and again? No, clear no. Christianity or Christians are in no way responsible for what Bush is doing. Like Osama, Bush himself alone is responsible for his crimes. His greed for oil makes him shed pints of human blood. And, let us make no mistake, it is not oil alone. He is being backed in his crimes by scores of American multi-nationals, apart from Israel, are also backing this aggression against the innocent people of Iraq. The military-industrial complex is well known for its greed for money and this formidable combination in the USA keeps war machinery going in one part of the third world or the other so that it can make tonnes of money. The Zionists of Israel also are powerful block urging American ruling establishment to destroy the Arab countries around them so that it can fulfill its expansionist dreams. It is well known that whenever vested interests want to grab power or someone elses wealth or property they invoke God on their side and create religious sanctions to legitimise their misdeeds. Laden and Bush-Blaire are no different in this respect. If one examines the terminology being used by Bush-Blaire it makes things abundantly clear. Bush makes it out as if he is doing all this to 'liberate' Iraq from a dictator. Mr. Blaire also recently said when confronted by some for killing innocent civilians said that one had to pay this price for ridding this world of dictators. If such wars are not fought, the world, according to Bush and Blair will be full of dictators. What an excuse for war. As if America has not supported dictators in Asia, Africa and Latin America all these years. These dictators have committed worst crimes against their people with full support of American ruling establishment for years during cold war. Mr. Blaire is also fully aware of all this. And yet today America wants to project itself as champion of Iraq's liberation by getting it rid of Saddam Husain. America has been demanding for years now that Iraq be disarmed and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) be destroyed. Now this war of aggression has clearly shown who possesses weapons of mass destruction Iraq or America? America is the only nation in possession of huge piles of WMD, no one else. It can destroy the world several times over. It has used these weapons in several countries in killing innocent people. In Hiroshima-Nagasaki it killed hundreds of thousands of people, in Vietnam it killed unarmed peasants working in their fields. For what? To destroy communism. What kind of liberty it wants - liberty for people or liberty for American ruling establishment to loot and exploit poorer nations? However, though American ruling establishments have been using rhetoric of freedom only to establish their hegemony all over the world. To retain this hegemony it can destroy all those who come in its way. As far as America is concerned the words like freedom, liberty, human rights and so on are nothing but empty rhetoric. Any person of common sense knows this. As for WMD America has been insisting on this for last 13 years. Who does not know that America had supplied technology to Iraq to manufacture poisonous gases so that these weapons could be used against Iran to destroy Khomeini's revolution. It was American ruling establishment, which wanted to use Iraq to destroy Islamic revolution in Iran. It is for this reason that Bush is so sure that Iraq posses WMD. USA itself had supplied this technology for its own selfish ends. Iraq did try to develop nuclear capability for manufacturing weapons. But much before it could do so Israel destroyed Iraq's nuclear plant through air raid. It was also an act of great aggression but USA allowed it and it allowed it with impunity. Unfortunately no other country condemned it, not even the Arab countries. In the Arab countries all monarchs and Sheikhs who suppress democracy in these countries have been friends of American rulers as they serve American interests in a most servile way. America has launched its war of aggression from Kuwait and without support from Kuwait and without use of Kuwait territory it could not have launched this aggression against Iraq. Who is ruling over Iraq? Is the Sheikh of Kuwait not a dictator? Why then America so keen to support the ruling Sheikh in Kuwait? It is greatly handicapped since Turkey's Parliament did not allow USA to land its army in Turkey and launch invasion against Iraq from Turkey. Now Powel is on the visit to Turkey to persuade its rulers to allow American army to invade Northern Iraq. Thus most of the Islamic countries do not have democracy today thanks to US support for dictators in Islamic countries. And in Iraq they want to establish 'democracy' and want to 'liberate' people of Iraq. US did not have time to study the social and political history of Iraq. People of Iraq may or may not like Saddam but they do love their country, their nation. They will not allow outside aggressors to 'liberate' them. It is heartening to note that unlike the cold war era people cannot be easily deceived now by deceptive rhetoric. The US and U.K. ruling establishments can no longer deceive people of their own countries by this deceptive rhetoric of 'democratic values' and 'liberating' people of 'corrupt and ruthless dictatorship'. People today can easily understand the real intent of aggressors and their naked interests. In fact the American aggression against Iraq is any time worse than 19th century colonial invasions of European countries. Earlier the Christian church used to remain silent as USA often used anti-Communist rhetoric to invade other countries. This time in the absence of any communist power USA cannot deceive Christian Church to justify its aggression against Iraq. The Churches, both Catholic and Protestant, did not buy American position and have protested, in most cases, vehemently, against war against Iraq. The Pope appealed to his followers throughout world to fast on a particular day to protest aggression against Iraq. The World Council of Churches has also issued a strongly worded statement against the USA for its war against Iraq. Many Catholics in Latin America are also strongly condemning the US for launching aggression against Iraq. Some activists of these churches even tried to appeal for forming human shield in Iraq against American bombing. Such an act of solidarity by the Christian Churches is a matter of great significance and must be enthusiastically welcome by all concerned. Bush's Christian rhetoric thus cannot deceive anyone. God is being invoked by Bush (the American soldiers have been asked to pray every day and even send their prayers to White House as if they are fighting a 'just' war and God is on their side. God cannot be on the side of those who kill innocent civilians who have nothing to do with either Bush' vested interests or Saddam's political designs. These innocent people want to live in peace. Christ is considered the prince of peace and he cannot be on the side of aggressors who kill innocent people ruthlessly even though they may take his name thousand times. Christ always talked of peace and was always on the side of the oppressed. According to the Bible the meek shall inherit the earth. The Qur'am also says the same thing in 28:5. Thus the Church is on the side of the poor and weak and so is the Qur'an. It is only the vested interests and the powerful are on the side of Bush and Blaire, none else. We also have to reflect deeply about the way our democracies are functioning. Democracy tends to become pocket borough of the rich and the powerful. They can maneuver it quite successfully. The people of America, at least a large number of them, are against the war in Iraq. There have been huge demonstrations against war in New York, Washington and Los Angeles and so many other cities of America. Similarly there were massive protests against war in London and other cities of U.K. and yet the rulers in USA and UK went ahead with war dismissing these protests with contempt. Not only this these powerful individuals manipulate media and propagate lies and half -truths to legitimise their aggression against another country. It is ironical that these very people criticise those countries, which lack democracy. America has declared war ostensibly to eliminate the dictator Saddam and gift people of Iraq 'democracy' so that they can enjoy 'freedom'. And Bush is even prepared to kill hundreds of innocent citizens of Iraq so that the people of Iraq can enjoy 'freedom and democracy'. It is also a matter to be reflected upon that due to such aggressive invasion against other countries the quality of democracy in USA is being eroded. Dissent is no more tolerated by the Bush administration. While Bush is keen to gift freedom to the people of Iraq, he is unhesitatingly suppressing freedom at home. The police is pouncing upon the demonstrators against war and those journalists who do not agree with the analysis of war situation in Iraq are loosing their employment. The case of Mr. Peter Arnett, a veteran war reporter with the NBC T.V. has received enough attention worldwide. Since Mr. Arnett appeared on Baghdad T.V. and gave opinion that the war is not going as planned by the USA and its allies, lost his job. It clearly indicates that democratic freedoms are under attack in USA. It has never happened before. After the terrorist attack on twin towers in New York democratic values have come under serious challenge. Of course it is for the people of America to struggle against such violations of democracy in their own country. They should not, under any circumstances allow McCarthian era to return. It is difficult to predict the outcome of war in Iraq at this stage. America has terrible superiority of arms over Iraq. Iraq has been virtually disarmed over last one decade. A few weeks before war it was compelled to destroy its Samoud missiles having more than 150 kms range. It is virtually fighting against most powerful allies armed to teeth without arms. It now possesses only some outdated small arms. It is irony of the situation that the country which possess most dreadful arms of mass destruction is considered 'champion of world freedom' and Iraq which hardly possessed any arms was being pressurised by the whole world to disarm and disclose all its weapons of mass destruction. In the region if any country possesses WMD it is Israel. Israel possesses all sorts of weapons including nuclear weapons. But since it is faithful ally of USA and guards its interests in the region, it is no threat to world security. According to American rule, those who threaten American interests are 'threat' to world security. Everyone knows the world has totally skewed structure and everyone bows before power and minds his interests. Principles and values are only to be invoked by the weak. The powerful has to dismiss such a discourse. America also uses human rights rhetoric when it comes to third world countries. But there too, if the regime is US friendly ths discourse can be dispensed with. (II) We would now like to turn our attention to the role of Islamic countries in this whole affair. There too Islamic rhetoric is used by vested interests to protect themselves. This Islamic rhetoric is, of course, meant for Muslim masses. The most obvious rhetoric used is of 'ummah'. Muslim ummah is supposed to be united like rock and stand up to all crises. However, such unity of ummah is never to be seen from earliest part of Islamic history. Muslim ummah split into various interest or sectarian groups with few years of Holy Prophet's death. Such unity is no where to be seen since that early period. Today the ummah is as much divided with no signs of ever taking a united stand on any issue. On aggression against Iraq too Muslim countries are deeply divided. Unfortunately Kuwaiti rulers are more than eager to provide all facilities to the US and its allies to launch aggression from its territory. The Allied troops were first massed in Kuwait and all the provisions for the troops are also being supplied from there. Thus Kuwait is the lifeline for the Allied forces for their war against Iraq. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt also are amongst the supporters of the USA in the region. Though they are not actively helping the US they are all silent spectators. They are not even protesting, as it will harm their interests. Pakistan has also been cowed down and its military rulers are cooperating with the US. They are afraid of earning wrath of US masters. Syria is of course protesting and will invite wrath of America. Of course the Muslim masses in these countries are seething with rage and are eager to help Iraq. In some countries like Pakistan Muslims are staging massive demonstrations under the leadership of Ulama. However, it is possible to demonstrate in Pakistan but people in other countries are not that lucky. In Saudi Arabia for example, though there is no less anger against America but they cannot even demonstrate and vent their spleen. The accumulated anger can have disastrous consequences. It is also important to note that such acts of imperialist aggression that lead to terrorism in the Muslim world. There are two things, which are mainly responsible for promoting terrorism: acts of aggression against Muslim countries and suppression of democratic freedoms with the help of authoritarian rulers ready to align with the US. Unfortunately Osama bin Laden's acts of terrorism thus find justification in the eyes of Muslims due to such acts of aggression on the part of US. Many people including Hasni Mubarak, President of Egypt are now suggesting that there will be many more Osamas now in the Islamic world. This will in turn be blamed on Islam and 'clash of civilisation' theory will find even more acceptability in the western world. The technological progress has enabled nations like the USA, which want to dominate the world, to develop weapons of mass destruction and kill hundreds of thousands of people across the world. There is nothing to be proud of to be in 21st century. Even Chengez Khans of the medieval world could not have killed as many people as countries like USA are killing in wars today. In the two world wars in 20th century millions of people were killed because of this killer technology. We should feel ashamed that despite so much progress of science we have not been able to suppress our desire to rule or dominate over others at any cost. We have hardly succeeded in refining our aggressive instinct. It is here that we need value based approach to our problems. Science without human values can be an unmitigated desire. From Hitler's Germany to Hiroshima to Vietnam to Iraq it has been long history of this unmitigated disaster. Unfortunately most of these people were killed in the name of saving democracy and freedom. All religions of the world can be great boon for humanity if their leaders do not ally with vested interest as they have done in the past and stand by spiritual values like compassion and mitigating suffering. Like Buddhism and Christianity, Islam too, lays great emphasis on compassion and justice. The religious leaders across the world should come together to fight against mass killings by powerful nations of the world by invoking hollow words like freedom and democracy. It is highly gratifying that religious leaders have given a call to protest against American designs in Iraq. Some of them even proposed human shield against ruthless American bombing. Unfortunately many Muslim religious leaders - though not all - are not showing, enough courage to give a call to resist American aggression in Iraq. Islam is a great religion, which inspires people to fight against injustice, though not necessarily violently. We must use the concept of non-violent struggle to fight against injustices all over the world. It is the only way to fight terrorism too. If Muslim religious leaders take initiative to promote non-violent resistance against such acts of aggression by USA and its allies, it will be a great service to humanity. It will save hundreds of innocent lives in future. If there is no such non-violent resistance which needs tremendous courage, likes of Osama will the bill again causing tremendous suffering to the people. We must impress on Muslims that taking innocent lives is an un-Islamic act (5:32). Also, a Muslim has to act with wisdom (Allah is Hakim) and has to suppress his/her anger (3:134). Suppressing anger, however, does not mean compromising with injustice but to elevate it to higher form and combining it with wisdom and using on-violent means so as to save human lives and minimise human suffering while fighting against injustices. Let us hope our religious leaders would not issue fatwas resulting even in more human suffering and would give creative lead to struggle against injustices being inflicted on Muslim world by America in its arrogance of power. In the Qur'anic language America is resorting to istikbar and Allah brings downfall of all mustakbirin (arrogant rulers drunk with power) and this downfall can be hastened by human agents acting with wisdom. ********************************** Institute of Islamic Studies, Mumbai:- 400 055. From eye at ranadasgupta.com Wed Apr 9 14:41:09 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 14:41:09 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] can we have one too please? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Jonathan Glover, in his "Humanity: A Moral History of the 20th Century" has a category called the "Cold joke". The cold joke is part of the vocabulary of organised violence. "Among the strongest expressions of lack of respect is the cold joke. During the occupation of Kuwait, some Iraqis who had killed a boy told his family they wanted money to pay for the bullet. They could simply have forced Kuwaitis at random to give them money. The added cruel humour in this demand is what makes it a cold joke." R -----Original Message----- From: reader-list-admin at mail.sarai.net [mailto:reader-list-admin at mail.sarai.net]On Behalf Of Andreas Broeckmann Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2003 8:58 PM To: reader-list at mail.sarai.net Subject: Re: [Reader-list] can we have one too please? on this point - the Berliner Zeitung recently reported that the US government has seized iraqi assets in the us as well as in switzerland - money in bank accounts which is now being used to pay for the services of us-american companies that are rebuilding the infrastructure that has just been destroyed by the bombs. (you would think that even if this money belongs to saddam himself, it should be given back to the iraqi people, rather than to the us-finance dept.) i wonder whether they are also making the iraqis pay for the fuel of those b-52s flying in from britain to drop the humanitarian bombs ... but i am sure that the liberated iraqui people are enlightened and kind enough to share their oil wealth with their great peace-loving friends, modernisers and liberators, so things are cool! -a >"The oil of Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people" says Colin Powell. > >treasury secretary john snow says: "This effort will ensure that the assets >and funds belonging to the Iraqi people are dedicated to the wellbeing and >benefit of their nation." > >Bush has repeatedly said that it is time to remove the evil leadership of >Iraq so that the Iraqi people can live in peace and liberty and benefit from >the oil wealth that is their own. _________________________________________ 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 amitbasu55 at hotmail.com Wed Apr 9 19:42:17 2003 From: amitbasu55 at hotmail.com (Amit R Basu) Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2003 14:12:17 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] ECT in India: Join the Protest Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030409/b2534682/attachment.html From gabrown at axionet.com Wed Apr 9 22:37:41 2003 From: gabrown at axionet.com (graham a brown) Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2003 10:07:41 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] International Call To Creative Action Message-ID: Hi I would like to bring to your attention the International Call To Creative Action. The theme is to explore your post 9€11 experience. All the winning and finalists entries will be published September 2003, on the 9€11 International Call to Creative Action, a digital storytelling interactive DVD, to be presented to the United Nations Library, and Canadian Parliamentary Library and the American Library of Congress. Categories: Writer, Visual Artist, Photography, Multimedia, and a separate family or school entry. Detailed information is on the web site or email info at netcomediainteractive.com. Entry fee: fifteen ($15) US money order with one (1) entry or twenty five dollars ($25) US money order for three (3) entries.1st Prize: $250, 2nd Prize: $150, all in US currency. Winners will receive a copy of the published DVD. Deadline post marked May 1, 2003 c/o netcoMedia Interactive 1027 Davie Street, Suite 532 Vancouver, BC, Canada V6E 4L2 http://www.netcomediainteractive.com info at netcomediainteractive.com From eye at ranadasgupta.com Thu Apr 10 07:01:53 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 07:01:53 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Interview with Chomsky re Iraq Message-ID: Today's article is an extensive contextual interview done with Noam Chomsky in the Indian newspaper Frontline. The Interviewer is VK Ramachandran. Iraq Is A Trial Run By Noam Chomsky Noam Chomsky , University Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founder of the modern science of linguistics and political activist, is a powerhouse of anti-imperialist activism in the United States today. On March 21, a crowded and typical - and uniquely Chomskyan - day of political protest and scientific academic research, he spoke from his office for half an hour to V. K. Ramachandran on the current attack on Iraq. V. K. Ramachandran : Does the present aggression on Iraq represent a continuation of United States' international policy in recent years or a qualitatively new stage in that policy? Noam Chomsky : It represents a significantly new phase. It is not without precedent, but significantly new nevertheless. This should be seen as a trial run. Iraq is seen as an extremely easy and totally defenceless target. It is assumed, probably correctly, that the society will collapse, that the soldiers will go in and that the U.S. will be in control, and will establish the regime of its choice and military bases. They will then go on to the harder cases that will follow. The next case could be the Andean region, it could be Iran, it could be others. The trial run is to try and establish what the U.S. calls a "new norm" in international relations. The new norm is "preventive war." Notice that new norms are established only by the United States. So, for example, when India invaded East Pakistan to terminate horrendous massacres, it did not establish a new norm of humanitarian intervention, because India is the wrong country, and besides, the U.S. was strenuously opposed to that action. This is not pre-emptive war there is a crucial difference. Pre-emptive war has a meaning, it means that, for example, if planes are flying across the Atlantic to bomb the United States, the United States is permitted to shoot them down even before they bomb and may be permitted to attack the air bases from which they came. Pre-emptive war is a response to ongoing or imminent attack. The doctrine of preventive war is totally different it holds that the United States - alone, since nobody else has this right - has the right to attack any country that it claims to be a potential challenge to it. So if the United States claims, on whatever grounds, that someone may sometime threaten it, then it can attack them. The doctrine of preventive war was announced explicitly in the National Security Strategy last September. It sent shudders around the world, including through the U.S. establishment, where, I might say, opposition to the war is unusually high. The Security Strategy said, in effect, that the U.S. will rule the world by force, which is the dimension - the only dimension - in which it is supreme. Furthermore, it will do so for the indefinite future, because if any potential challenge arises to U.S. domination, the U.S. will destroy it before it becomes a challenge. This is the first exercise of that doctrine. If it succeeds on these terms, as it presumably will, because the target is so defenceless, then international lawyers and Western intellectuals and others will begin to talk about a new norm in international affairs. It is important to establish such a norm if you expect to rule the world by force for the foreseeable future. This is not without precedent, but it is extremely unusual. I shall mention one precedent, just to show how narrow the spectrum is. In 1963, Dean Acheson, who was a much respected elder statesman and senior Adviser of the Kennedy Administration, gave an important talk to the American Society of International Law, in which he justified the U. S. attacks against Cuba. The attack by the Kennedy Administration on Cuba was large-scale international terrorism and economic warfare. The timing was interesting - it was right after the Missile Crisis, when the world was very close to a terminal nuclear war. In his speech, Acheson said that no "legal issue" arises when the United States responds to a challenge to its "power, position, or prestige", or words approximating that. That is also a statement of the Bush doctrine. Although Acheson was an important figure, what he said had not been official government policy in the post-War period. It now stands as official policy and this is the first illustration of it. It is intended to provide a precedent for the future. Such "norms" are established only when a Western power does something, not when others do. That is part of the deep racism of Western culture, going back through centuries of imperialism and so deep that it is unconscious. So I think this war is an important new step, and is intended to be. Ramachandran :Is it also a new phase in that the U. S. has not been able to carry others with it? Chomsky : That is not new. In the case of the Vietnam War, for example, the United States did not even try to get international support. Nevertheless, you are right in that this is unusual. This is a case in which the United States was compelled for political reasons to try to force the world to accept its position and was not able to, which is quite unusual. Usually, the world succumbs. Ramachandran :So does it represent a "failure of diplomacy" or a redefinition of diplomacy itself? Chomsky : I wouldn't call it diplomacy at all - it's a failure of coercion. Compare it with the first Gulf War. In the first Gulf War, the U.S. coerced the Security Council into accepting its position, although much of the world opposed it. NATO went along, and the one country in the Security Council that did not - Yemen - was immediately and severely punished. In any legal system that you take seriously, coerced judgments are considered invalid, but in the international affairs conducted by the powerful, coerced judgments are fine - they are called diplomacy. What is interesting about this case is that the coercion did not work. There were countries - in fact, most of them - who stubbornly maintained the position of the vast majority of their populations. The most dramatic case is Turkey. Turkey is a vulnerable country, vulnerable to U.S. punishment and inducements. Nevertheless, the new government, I think to everyone's surprise, did maintain the position of about 90 per cent of its population. Turkey is bitterly condemned for that here, just as France and Germany are bitterly condemned because they took the position of the overwhelming majority of their populations. The countries that are praised are countries like Italy and Spain, whose leaders agreed to follow orders from Washington over the opposition of maybe 90 per cent of their populations. That is another new step. I cannot think of another case where hatred and contempt for democracy have so openly been proclaimed, not just by the government, but also by liberal commentators and others. There is now a whole literature trying to explain why France, Germany, the so-called "old Europe", and Turkey and others are trying to undermine the United States. It is inconceivable to the pundits that they are doing so because they take democracy seriously and they think that when the overwhelming majority of a population has an opinion, a government ought to follow it. That is real contempt for democracy, just as what has happened at the United Nations is total contempt for the international system. In fact there are now calls - from The Wall Street Journal , people in Government and others - to disband the United Nations. Fear of the United States around the world is extraordinary. It is so extreme that it is even being discussed in the mainstream media. The cover story of the upcoming issue of Newsweek is about why the world is so afraid of the United States. The Post had a cover story about this a few weeks ago. Of course this is considered to be the world's fault, that there is something wrong with the world with which we have to deal somehow, but also something that has to be recognised. Ramachandran :The idea that Iraq represents any kind of clear and present danger is, of course, without any substance at all. Chomsky : Nobody pays any attention to that accusation, except, interestingly, the population of the United States. In the last few months, there has been a spectacular achievement of government-media propaganda, very visible in the polls. The international polls show that support for the war is higher in the United States than in other countries. That is, however, quite misleading, because if you look a little closer, you find that the United States is also different in another respect from the rest of the world. Since September 2002, the United States is the only country in the world where 60 per cent of the population believes that Iraq is an imminent threat - something that people do not believe even in Kuwait or Iran. Furthermore, about 50 per cent of the population now believes that Iraq was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. This has happened since September 2002. In fact, after the September 11 attack, the figure was about 3 per cent. Government-media propaganda has managed to raise that to about 50 per cent. Now if people genuinely believe that Iraq has carried out major terrorist attacks against the United States and is planning to do so again, well, in that case people will support the war. This has happened, as I said, after September 2002. September 2002 is when the government-media campaign began and also when the mid-term election campaign began. The Bush Administration would have been smashed in the election if social and economic issues had been in the forefront, but it managed to suppress those issues in favour of security issues - and people huddle under the umbrella of power. This is exactly the way the country was run in the 1980s. Remember that these are almost the same people as in the Reagan and the senior Bush Administrations. Right through the 1980s they carried out domestic policies that were harmful to the population and which, as we know from extensive polls, the people opposed. But they managed to maintain control by frightening the people. So the Nicaraguan Army was two days' march from Texas, and the airbase in Grenada was one from which the Russians would bomb us. It was one thing after another, every year, every one of them ludicrous. The Reagan Administration actually declared a National Emergency in 1985 because of the threat to the security of the United States posed by the Government of Nicaragua. If somebody were watching this from Mars, they would not know whether to laugh or to cry. They are doing exactly the same thing now, and will probably do something similar for the presidential campaign. There will have to be a new dragon to slay, because if the Administration lets domestic issues prevail, it is in deep trouble. Ramachandran :You have written that this war of aggression has dangerous consequences with respect to international terrorism and the threat of nuclear war. Chomsky : I cannot claim any originality for that opinion. I am just quoting the CIA and other intelligence agencies and virtually every specialist in international affairs and terrorism. Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy , the study by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the high-level Hart-Rudman Commission on terrorist threats to the United States all agree that it is likely to increase terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The reason is simple: partly for revenge, but partly just for self-defence. There is no other way to protect oneself from U.S. attack. In fact, the United States is making the point very clearly, and is teaching the world an extremely ugly lesson. Compare North Korea and Iraq. Iraq is defenceless and weak in fact, the weakest regime in the region. While there is a horrible monster running it, it does not pose a threat to anyone else. North Korea, on the other hand, does pose a threat. North Korea, however, is not attacked for a very simple reason: it has a deterrent. It has a massed artillery aimed at Seoul, and if the United States attacks it, it can wipe out a large part of South Korea. So the United States is telling the countries of the world: if you are defenceless, we are going to attack you when we want, but if you have a deterrent, we will back off, because we only attack defenceless targets. In other words, it is telling countries that they had better develop a terrorist network and weapons of mass destruction or some other credible deterrent if not, they are vulnerable to "preventive war". For that reason alone, this war is likely to lead to the proliferation of both terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Ramachandran :How do you think the U.S. will manage the human - and humanitarian - consequences of the war? Chomsky : No one knows, of course. That is why honest and decent people do not resort to violence - because one simply does not know. The aid agencies and medical groups that work in Iraq have pointed out that the consequences can be very severe. Everyone hopes not, but it could affect up to millions of people. To undertake violence when there is even such a possibility is criminal. There is already - that is, even before the war - a humanitarian catastrophe. By conservative estimates, ten years of sanctions have killed hundreds of thousands of people. If there were any honesty, the U.S. would pay reparations just for the sanctions. The situation is similar to the bombing of Afghanistan, of which you and I spoke when the bombing there was in its early stages. It was obvious the United States was never going to investigate the consequences. Ramachandran :Or invest the kind of money that was needed. Chomsky : Oh no. First, the question is not asked, so no one has an idea of what the consequences of the bombing were for most of the country. Then almost nothing comes in. Finally, it is out of the news, and no one remembers it any more. In Iraq, the United States will make a show of humanitarian reconstruction and will put in a regime that it will call democratic, which means that it follows Washington's orders. Then it will forget about what happens later, and will go on to the next one. Ramachandran :How have the media lived up to their propaganda-model reputation this time? Chomsky : Right now it is cheerleading for the home team. Look at CNN, which is disgusting - and it is the same everywhere. That is to be expected in wartime the media are worshipful of power. More interesting is what happened in the build-up to war. The fact that government-media propaganda was able to convince the people that Iraq is an imminent threat and that Iraq was responsible for September 11 is a spectacular achievement and, as I said, was accomplished in about four months. If you ask people in the media about this, they will say, "Well, we never said that," and it is true, they did not. There was never a statement that Iraq is going to invade the United States or that it carried out the World Trade Centre attack. It was just insinuated, hint after hint, until they finally got people to believe it. Ramachandran :Look at the resistance, though. Despite the propaganda, despite the denigration of the United Nations, they haven't quite carried the day. Chomsky : You never know. The United Nations is in a very hazardous position. The United States might move to dismantle it. I don't really expect that, but at least to diminish it, because when it isn't following orders, of what use is it? Ramachandran :Noam, you have seen movements of resistance to imperialism over a long period - Vietnam, Central America, Gulf War I. What are your impressions of the character, sweep and depth of the present resistance to U.S. aggression? We take great heart in the extraordinary mobilisations all over the world. Chomsky : Oh, that is correct there is just nothing like it. Opposition throughout the world is enormous and unprecedented, and the same is true of the United States. Yesterday, for example, I was in demonstrations in downtown Boston, right around the Boston Common. It is not the first time I have been there. The first time I participated in a demonstration there at which I was to speak was in October 1965. That was four years after the United States had started bombing South Vietnam. Half of South Vietnam had been destroyed and the war had been extended to North Vietnam. We could not have a demonstration because it was physically attacked, mostly by students, with the support of the liberal press and radio, who denounced these people who were daring to protest against an American war. On this occasion, however, there was a massive protest before the war was launched officially and once again on the day it was launched - with no counter-demonstrators. That is a radical difference. And if it were not for the fear factor that I mentioned, there would be much more opposition. The government knows that it cannot carry out long-term aggression and destruction as in Vietnam because the population will not tolerate it. There is only one way to fight a war now. First of all, pick a much weaker enemy, one that is defenceless. Then build it up in the propaganda system as either about to commit aggression or as an imminent threat. Next, you need a lightning victory. An important leaked document of the first Bush Administration in 1989 described how the U.S. would have to fight war. It said that the U.S. had to fight much weaker enemies, and that victory must be rapid and decisive, as public support will quickly erode. It is no longer like the 1960s, when a war could be fought for years with no opposition at all. In many ways, the activism of the 1960s and subsequent years has simply made a lot of the world, including this country, much more civilised in many domains. =================================== This message has been brought to you by ZNet (http://www.zmag.org). Visit our site for subscription options. From tkr at del6.vsnl.net.in Thu Apr 10 10:14:11 2003 From: tkr at del6.vsnl.net.in (Rajlakshmi) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 10:14:11 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The new "liberators" of Iraq Message-ID: <3E94F69B.2CB16830@ndf.vsnl.net.in> -An interesting piece on the new "civilian" administrator elect of Iraq. No cognitive metaphors here. TKR The Man Who Would Be King of Iraq Ian Williams While the U.S. military finds itself bogged down on the road to Baghdad, the real hitch in Bush administration's grand vision for post-war Iraq may well be the man slated to take charge of it -- arms-dealer and former "Star Wars" guru General Jay Garner. In a move typical for what passes for U.S. diplomacy these days, the Pentagon developed and announced its occupation plan without consulting the rest of the alleged coalition (no, not even trusty Britain) or the State Department. Worse, to this highly visible and important position, it picked a man with a dubious past and ideological credentials worthy of a Bush appointee. A unilateralist hawk, the retired general is an ideological soulmate of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, his main collaborators in developing the "axis of evil" approach to U.S. foreign policy. But when it comes to the Middle East, his track record is even more alarming. In 2000, Garner and 26 other U.S. officers signed a statement released by the right-wing Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) praising the Israeli Defense Forces for its "remarkable restraint in the face of lethal violence orchestrated by the leadership of a Palestinian Authority." Indeed, the choice of Garner seems designed to enflame local and regional resistance. This is a man who after one JINSA junket declared, "A strong Israel is an asset that American military planners and political leaders can rely on." Fortune magazine burbled that "Garner's civilian status is a big plus." But although his official title is "co-ordinator of civilian administration,"Garner has always been a die-hard advocate of all things military --sometimes at the expense of the facts. During the first Gulf War he went to Congress and touted the success of the Patriot missiles during the Iraqi attack on Israel. He did not issue a retraction when it was revealed that the Patriots caused more damage to Israel than the Iraqi Scuds they were supposed to bring down. The man who will be in charge of the disarmament of Iraq was also a fervent proponent of the fatally flawed Star Wars missile defense system, touting its virtues even when the results of its testing was later revealed to be rigged. Garner's so-called civilian career was also closely related to the Pentagon. In a classic example of the military-industrial complex at work, Garner retired from the military in 1997 to become President of SY Technology, a defense contractor specializing in missile defense systems. The company soon landed non-competitive contracts as part of the Star Wars program that Pentagon whistleblower, former Lt. Colonel Biff Baker, alleged were procured through Garner's influence. SY Technology sued Baker for defamation and for "causing loss of privacy" for Garner. The case was settled out of court in January this year, just as Garner was moving to his new and very public position. And by a yet another startling coincidence, the company was awarded a $1.5 billion contract this year to provide logistics services to U.S. special operations forces. The Iraqis themselves may be unhappy, if not surprised, to hear that their to-be satrap's former company has contracts to help build Patriot missile systems for Israel and Kuwait. The Bush administration has been busy spinning Garner's record to make him appear the perfect, sensitive, team player that Iraq needs to rebuild itself in the American image. But it seems entirely appropriate that Garner was unilaterally appointed on Jan. 20, even as the US was still officially trying to get a UN resolution for the invasion of Iraq. Nor did Garner's visit to the UN impress the aid officials. He made it clear the only job for the UN in Iraq is to help finance the U.S.-led occupation. But if anything can save Iraq from Garner's tender clutches, it will be the need for UN money. The Bush Administration is like the Red Queen in Alice in the Looking Glass, perfectly able to believe in three impossible things before breakfast. This is a White House that has committed itself both to tax cuts and an expensive war. It claims Iraqi oil fields are the property of its people even as it prepares to pay the post-war reconstruction with the same oil. The same administration that pledged to ensure a role for the UN at the Azores Summit had already announced plans for an all-American administration headed by Jay Garner. At the heart of Washington's contradictory and constantly shifting position is the desire to monopolize the control of Iraq but persuade the rest of the world to split the bill. The U.S. attitude is best epitomized by the junior diplomat who turned up at the United Nations in the first week of the war and asked the UN officials to hand over the money they had allocated for relief and humanitarian aid -- money that the White House sorely needed since Congress had failed to appropriate any money for the worthy effort. Not surprisingly, Kofi Annan refused. The two sides finally reached a temporary compromise on Friday when the Security Council unanimously passed a short-term measure allowing the UN to take charge of the oil-for-food program and sign off on food shipments, which then will be distributed by the coalition forces to the Iraqis. But the resolution also made it very clear that the UN is not interested in financing a U.S.-ruled Iraq. It stressed that "to the fullest extent of the means available to it, the occupying power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population." So when the time comes to set up a post-war administration in Iraq, the U.S. will either have to pay its own way or play ball with the rest of the Security Council. But so far, there are few signs that the White House is willing to change its greedy ways. Even the British were not impressed with the U.S. decision to let the infamous union-busting company, Stevedoring Services of America, run the newly "liberated" port of Umm Qasr -- a role that they thought rightly belonged to the Iraqis. Aiming General Jay Garner at the innocent civilians of post-war Iraq will be yet another ham-handed, arrogant decision that guarantees an aftermath that is as messy and potentially disastrous as its initiation. From eye at ranadasgupta.com Thu Apr 10 10:14:23 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 10:14:23 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Zizek and the "Fall of Baghdad" Message-ID: zizek's constant embracing of ambiguity always makes him good for moments like this. this is a piece he wrote a few weeks ago before the war and it may have been posted here before. but i think it's worth looking at again. as is his earlier essay on yugoslavia, 'against the double blackmail.' in which he denies the absolute separation of tyrant and democratic opinion, shows their interdependence. denies the "blackmail" that forces us to choose between these two halves, wishes to unhook himself from psychological dependence on this whole [neurotic] construct. even the rambling, rhetorical form of his writing seems to go well with the kinds of complexity we face in trying to understand situations like this. R Iraq War: Where is the true danger? by Slavoj Zizek We all remember the old joke about the borrowed kettle which Freud quotes in order to render the strange logic of dreams, namely the enumeration of mutually exclusive answers to a reproach (that I returned to a friend a broken kettle): (1) I never borrowed a kettle from you; (2) I returned it to you unbroken; (3) the kettle was already broken when I got it from you. For Freud, such an enumeration of inconsistent arguments of course confirms per negationem what it endeavors to deny - that I returned you a broken kettle... Do we not encounter the same inconsistency when high US officials try to justify the attack on Iraq? (1) There is a link between Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda, so Saddam should be punished as part of the revenge for 9/11; (2) even if there was no link between Iraqi regime and al Qaeda, they are united in their hatred of the US - Saddam's regime is a really bad one, a threat not only to the US, but also to its neighbors, and we should liberate the Iraqi people; (3) the change of regime in Iraq will create the conditions for the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The problem is that there are TOO MANY reasons for the attack... Furthermore, one is almost tempted to claim that, within the space of this reference to the Freudian logic of dreams, the Iraqi oil supplies function as the famous "umbilical cord" of the US justification(s) - almost tempted, since it would perhaps be more reasonable to claim that there are also three REAL reasons for the attack: (1) the control of the Iraqi oil reserves; (2) the urge to brutally assert and signal the unconditional US hegemony; (3) the "sincere" ideological belief that the US are bringing to other nations democracy and prosperity. And it seems as if these three "real" reasons are the "truth" of the three official reasons: (1) is the truth of the urge to liberate Iraqis; (2) is the truth of the claim the attack on Iraq will help to resolve the Middle East conflict; (3) is the truth of the claim that there is a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. - And, incidentally, opponents of the war seem to repeat the same inconsistent logic: (1) Saddam is really bad, we also want to see him toppled, but we should give inspectors more time, since inspectors are more efficient; (2) it is all really about the control of oil and American hegemony - the true rogue state which terrorizes others are the US themselves; (3) even if successful, the attack on Iraq will give a big boost to a new wave of the anti-American terrorism; (4) Saddam is a murderer and torturer, his regime a criminal catastrophe, but the attack on Iraq destined to overthrow Saddam will cost too much... The one good argument for war is the one recently evoked by Christopher Hitchens: one should not forget that the majority of Iraqis effectively are Saddam's victims, and they would be really glad to get rid of them. He was such a catastrophe for his country that an American occupation in WHATEVER form may seem a much brighter prospect to them with regard to daily survival and much lower level of fear. We are not talking here of "bringing Western democracy to Iraq," but just of getting rid of the nightmare called Saddam. To this majority, the caution expressed by Western liberals cannot but appear deeply hypocritical - do they really care about how the Iraqi people feel? One can make even a more general point here: what about pro-Castro Western Leftists who despise what Cubans themselves call "gusanos /worms/," those who emigrated - but, with all sympathy for the Cuban revolution, what right does a typical middle class Western Leftist have to despise a Cuban who decided to leave Cuba not only because of political disenchantment, but also because of poverty which goes up to simple hunger? In the same vein, I myself remember from the early 1990s dozens of Western Leftists who proudly threw in my face how for them, Yugoslavia still exists, and reproached me for betraying the unique chance of maintaining Yugoslavia - to which I always answered that I am not yet ready to lead my life so that it will not disappoint Western Leftist dreams... There are effectively few things more worthy of contempt, few attitudes more ideological (if this word has any meaning today, it should be applied here) than a tenured Western academic Leftist arrogantly dismissing (or, even worse, "understanding" in a patronizing way) an Eastern European from a Communist country who longs for Western liberal democracy and some consumerist goods... However, it is all too easy to slip from this fact to the notion that "under their skin, Iraqis are also like us, and really want the same as we do." The old story will repeat itself: America brings to the people new hope and democracy, but, instead of hailing the US army, the ungrateful people do want it, they suspect a gift in the gift, and America then reacts as a child with hurt feelings because of the ingratitude of those it selflessly helped. The underlying presupposition is the old one: under our skin, if we scratch the surface, we are all Americans, that is our true desire - so all is needed is just to give people a chance, liberate them from their imposed constraints, and they will join us in our ideological dream... No wonder that, in February 2003, an American representative used the word "capitalist revolution" to describe what Americans are now doing: exporting their revolution all around the world. No wonder they moved from "containing" the enemy to a more aggressive stance. It is the US which is now, as the defunct USSR was decades ago, the subversive agent of a world revolution. When Bush recently said "Freedom is not America's gift to other nations, it is god's gift to humanity," this apparent modesty nonetheless, in the best totalitarian fashion, conceals its opposite: yes, BUT it is nonetheless the US which perceives itself as the chosen instrument of distributing this gift to all the nations of the world! The idea to "repeat Japan in 1945," to bring democracy to Iraq, which will then serve as model for the entire Arab world, enabling people to get rid of the corrupt regimes, immediately faces an insurmountable obstacle: what about Saudi Arabia where it is in the vital US interest that the country does NOT turn into democracy? The result of democracy in Saudi Arabia would have been either the repetition of Iran in 1953 (a populist regime with an anti-imperialist twist) or of Algeria a couple of years ago, when the "fundamentalists" WON the free elections. There is nonetheless a grain of truth in Rumsfeld's ironic pun against the "old Europe." The French-German united stand against the US policy apropos Iraq should be read against the background of the French-German summit a month ago in which Chirac and Schroeder basically proposed a kind of dual Franco-German hegemony over the European Community. So no wonder that anti-Americanism is at its strongest in "big" European nations, especially France and Germany: it is part of their resistance to globalization. One often hears the complaint that the recent trend of globalization threatens the sovereignty of the Nation-States; here, however, one should qualify this statement: WHICH states are most exposed to this threat? It is not the small states, but the second-rate (ex-)world powers, countries like United Kingdom, Germany and France: what they fear is that, once fully immersed in the newly emerging global Empire, they will be reduced at the same level as, say, Austria, Belgium or even Luxembourg. The refusal of "Americanization" in France, shared by many Leftists and Rightist nationalists, is thus ultimately the refusal to accept the fact that France itself is losing its hegemonic role in Europe. The leveling of weight between larger and smaller Nation-States should thus be counted among the beneficial effects of globalization: beneath the contemptuous deriding of the new Eastern European post-Communist states, it is easy to discern the contours of the wounded Narcissism of the European "great nations." And this great-state-nationalism is not just a feature external to the (failure of) the present opposition; it affects the very way France and Germany articulated this opposition. Instead of doing, even more actively, precisely what Americans are doing - MOBILIZING the "new European" states on their own politico-military platform, ORGANIZING the common new front -, France and Germany arrogantly acted alone. In the recent French resistance against the war on Iraq, there definitely is a clear echo of the "old decadent" Europe: escape the problem by non-acting, by new resolutions upon resolutions - all this reminiscent of the inactivity of the League of Nations against Germany in the 1930s. And the pacifist call "let the inspectors do their work" clearly IS hypocritical: they are only allowed to do the work because there is a credible threat of military intervention. Not to mention the French neocolonialism in Africa (from Congo-Brazzaville to the dark French role in the Rwanda crisis and massacres)? And about the French role in the Bosnian war? Furthermore, as it was made clear a couple of months ago, is it not clear that France and Germany worry about their own hegemony in Europe? Is the war on Iraq not the moment of truth when the "official" political distinctions are blurred? Generally, we live in a topsy-turvy world in which Republicans freely spend money, creating record budget deficits, while Democrats practice budget balance; in which Republicans, who thunder against big government and preach devolution of power to states and local communities, are in the process of creating the strongest state mechanism of control in the entire history of humanity. And the same applies to post-Communist countries. Symptomatic is here the case of Poland: the most ardent supporter of the US politics in Poland is the ex-Communist president Kwasniewski (who is even mentioned as the future secretary of NATO, after George Robertson), while the main opposition to the participation of Poland in the anti-Iraq coalition comes from the Rightist parties. Towards the end of January 2003, the Polish bishops also demanded from the government that it should add to the contract which regulates the membership of Poland in the EU a special paragraph guaranteeing that Poland will "retain the right to keep its fundamental values as they are formulated in its constitution" - by which, of course, are meant the prohibition of abortion, of euthanasia and of the same-sex marriages. The very ex-Communist countries which are the most ardent supporters of the US "war on terror" deeply worry that their cultural identity, their very survival as nations, is threatened by the onslaught of cultural "americanization" as the price for the immersion into global capitalism - we thus witness the paradox of pro-Bushist anti-Americanism. In Slovenia, my own country, there is a similar inconsistency: the Rightist nationalist reproach the ruling Center-Left coalition that, although it is publicly for joining NATO and supporting the US anti-terrorist campaign, it is secretly sabotaging it, participating in it for opportunist reasons, not out of conviction. At the same time, however, it is reproaching the ruling coalition that it wants to undermine Slovene national identity by advocating full Slovene integration into the Westernized global capitalism and thus drowning Slovenes into contemporary Americanized pop-culture. The idea is that the ruling coalition sustains pop culture, stupid TV amusement, mindless consumption, etc., in order to turn Slovenes into an easily manipulated crowd unable of serious reflection and firm ethical posture... In short, the underlying motif is that the ruling coalition stands for the "liberal-Communist plot" : ruthless unconstrained immersion in global capitalism is perceived as the latest dark plot of ex-Communists enabling them to retain their secret hold on power. The almost tragic misunderstanding is that the nationalists, on the one hand, unconditionally support NATO (under the US command), reproaching the ruling coalition with secretly supporting antiglobalists and anti-American pacifists, while, on the other hand, they worry about the fate of Slovene identity in the process of globalization, claiming that the ruling coalition wants to throw Slovenia into the global whirlpool, not worrying about the Slovene national identity. Ironically, the new emerging socio-ideological order these nationalist conservatives are bemoaning reads like the old New Left description of the "repressive tolerance" and capitalist freedom as the mode of appearance of unfreedom. Here, the example of Italy is crucial, with Berlusconi as prime minister: the staunchest supporter of the US AND the agent of the TV-idiotizing of the public opinion, turning politics into a media show and running a large advertisement and media company. Where, then, do we stand with reasons pro et contra? Abstract pacifism is intellectually stupid and morally wrong - one has to stand up against a threat. Of course the fall of Saddam would have been a relief to a large majority of the Iraqi people. Even more, of course the militant Islam is a horrifying anti-feminist etc. ideology. Of course there is something of a hypocrisy in all the reasons against: the revolt should come from Iraqi people themselves; we should not impose our values on them; war is never a solution; etc. BUT, although all this is true, the attack is wrong - it is WHO DOES IT that makes it wrong. The reproach is: WHO ARE YOU TO DO THIS? It is not war or peace, it is the correct "gut feeling" that there is something terribly wrong with THIS war, that something will irretrievably change with it. One of Jacques Lacan's outrageous statements is that, even if what a jealous husband claims about his wife (that she sleeps around with other men) is all true, his jealousy is still pathological; along the same lines, one could say that, even of most of the Nazi claims about the Jews were true (they exploit Germans, they seduce German girls...), their anti-Semitism would still be (and was) pathological - because it represses the true reason WHY the Nazis NEEDED anti-Semitism in order to sustain their ideological position. And the same should be said today, apropos of the US claim "Saddam has weapons of mass destruction!" - even if this claim is true (and it probably is, at least to some degree), it is still false with regard to the position from which it is enunciated. Everyone fears the catastrophic outcome of the US attack on Iraq: an ecological catastrophe of gigantic proportions, high US casualties, a terrorist attack in the West... In this way, we already accept the US standpoint - and it is easy to imagine how, if the war will be over soon, in a kind of repetition of the 1990 Gulf War, if Saddam's regime will disintegrate fast, there will be a universal sigh of relief even among many present critics of the US policy. One is even tempted to consider the hypothesis that the US are on purpose fomenting this fear of an impending catastrophe, counting on the universal relief when the catastrophe will NOT occur... This, however, is arguably the greatest true danger. That is to say, one should gather the courage to proclaim the opposite: perhaps, the bad military turn for the US would be the best thing that can happen, a sobering piece of bad news which would compel all the participants to rethink their position. On 9/11 2001, the Twin Towers were hit; twelve years earlier, on 11/9 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. 11/9 announced the "happy 90s," the Francis Fukuyama dream of the "end of history," the belief that liberal democracy has in principle won, that the search is over, that the advent of a global liberal world community lurks round the corner, that the obstacles to this ultra-Hollywood happy ending are just empirical and contingent, local pockets of resistance where the leaders did not yet grasp that their time is over; in contrast to it, 9/11 is the main symbol of the end of the Clintonite happy 90s, of the forthcoming era in which new walls are emerging everywhere, between Israel and the West Bank, around the European Union, on the US-Mexican border. The prospect of a new global crisis is looming: economic collapses, military and other catastrophes, emergency states... And when politicians start to directly justify their decisions in ethical terms, one can be sure that ethics is mobilized to cover up such dark threatening horizons. It is the very inflation of abstract ethical rhetorics in George W. Bush's recent public statements (of the "Does the world have the courage to act against the Evil or not?" type) which manifests the utter ETHICAL misery of the US position - the function of ethical reference is here purely mystifying, it merely serves to mask the true political stakes, which are not difficult to discern. In their recent The War Over Iraq, William Kristol and Lawrence F. Kaplan wrote: "The mission begins in Baghdad, but it does not end there. /.../ We stand at the cusp of a new historical era. /.../ This is a decisive moment. /.../ It is so clearly about more than Iraq. It is about more even than the future of the Middle East and the war on terror. It is about what sort of role the United States intends to play in the twenty-first century." One cannot but agree with it: it is effectively the future of international community which is at stake now - the new rules which will regulate it, what the new world order will be. What is going on now is the next logical step of the US dismissal of the Hague court. The first permanent global war crimes court started to work on July 1, 2002 in The Hague, with the power to tackle genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Anyone, from a head of state to an ordinary citizen, will be liable to ICC prosecution for human rights violations, including systematic murder, torture, rape and sexual slavery, or, as Kofi Annan put it: "There must be a recognition that we are all members of one human family. We have to create new institutions. This is one of them. This is another step forward in humanity's slow march toward civilization." However, while human rights groups have hailed the court's creation as the biggest milestone for international justice since top Nazis were tried by an international military tribunal in Nuremberg after World War Two, the court faces stiff opposition from the United States, Russia and China. The United States says the court would infringe on national sovereignty and could lead to politically motivated prosecutions of its officials or soldiers working outside U.S. borders, and the U.S. Congress is even weighing legislation authorizing U.S. forces to invade The Hague where the court will be based, in the event prosecutors grab a U.S. national. The noteworthy paradox here is that the US thus rejected the jurisdiction of a tribunal which was constituted with the full support (and votes) of the US themselves! Why, then, should Milosevic, who now sits in the Hague, not be given the right to claim that, since the US reject the legality of the international jurisdiction of the Hague tribunal, the same argumentation should hold also for him? And the same goes for Croatia: the US are now exerting tremendous pressure onto the Croat government to deliver to the Hague court a couple of its generals accused of war crimes during the struggles in Bosnia - the reaction is, of course, how can they ask this of US when THEY do not recognize the legitimacy of the Hague court? Or are the US citizens effectively "more equal than others"? If one simply universalizes the underlying principles of the Bush-doctrine, does India not have a full right to attack Pakistan? It does directly support and harbor anti-Indian terror in Kashmir, and it possesses (nuclear) weapons of mass destruction. Not to mention the right of China to attack Taiwan, and so on, with unpredictable consequences... Are we aware that we are in the midst of a "silent revolution," in the course of which the unwritten rules which determine the most elementary international logic are changing? The US scold Gerhardt Schroeder, a democratically elected leader, for maintaining a stance supported by a large majority of the population, plus, according to the polls in the mid-February, around 59% of the US population itself (who oppose strike against Iraq without the UN support). In Turkey, according to opinion polls, 94% of the people are opposed to allowing the US troops' presence for the war against Iraq - where is democracy here? Every old Leftist remembers Marx's reply, in The Communist Manifesto, to the critics who reproached the Communists that they aim at undermining family, property, etc.: it is the capitalist order itself whose economic dynamics is destroying the traditional family order (incidentally, a fact more true today than in Marx's time), as well as expropriating the large majority of the population. In the same vein, is it not that precisely those who pose today as global defenders of democracy are effectively undermining it? In a perverse rhetorical twist, when the pro-war leaders are confronted with the brutal fact that their politics is out of tune with the majority of their population, they take recourse to the commonplace wisdom that "a true leader leads, he does not follow" - and this from leaders otherwise obsessed with opinion polls... The true dangers are the long-term ones. In what resides perhaps the greatest danger of the prospect of the American occupation of Iraq? The present regime in Iraq is ultimately a secular nationalist one, out of touch with the Muslim fundamentalist populism - it is obvious that Saddam only superficially flirts with the pan-Arab Muslim sentiment. As his past clearly demonstrates, he is a pragmatic ruler striving for power, and shifting alliances when it fits his purposes - first against Iran to grab their oil fields, then against Kuwait for the same reason, bringing against himself a pan-Arab coalition allied to the US - what Saddam is not is a fundamentalist obsessed with the "big Satan," ready to blow the world apart just to get him. However, what can emerge as the result of the US occupation is precisely a truly fundamentalist Muslim anti-American movement, directly linked to such movements in other Arab countries or countries with Muslim presence. One can surmise that the US are well aware that the era of Saddam and his non-fundamentalist regime is coming to an end in Iraq, and that the attack on Iraq is probably conceived as a much more radical preemptive strike - not against Saddam, but against the main contender for Saddam's political successor, a truly fundamentalist Islamic regime. Yes in this way, the vicious cycle of the American intervention gets only more complex: the danger is that the very American intervention will contribute to the emergence of what America most fears, a large united anti-American Muslim front. It is the first case of the direct American occupation of a large and key Arab country - how could this not generate universal hatred in reaction? One can already imagine thousands of young people dreaming of becoming suicide bombers, and how that will force the US government to impose a permanent high alert emergency state... However, at this point, one cannot resist a slightly paranoid temptation: what if the people around Bush KNOW this, what if this "collateral damage" is the true aim of the entire operation? What if the TRUE target of the "war on terror" is the American society itself, i.e., the disciplining of its emancipatory excesses? On March 5 2003, on "Buchanan & Press" news show on NBC, they showed on the TV screen the photo of the recently captured Khalid Shakh Mohammed, the "third man of al-Qaeda" - a mean face with moustaches, in an unspecified nightgown prison-dress, half opened and with something like bruises half-discernible (hints that he was already tortured?) -, while Pat Buchanan's fast voice was asking: "Should this man who knows all the names all the detailed plans for the future terrorist attacks on the US, be tortured, so that we get all this out of him?" The horror of it was that the photo, with its details, already suggested the answer - no wonder the response of other commentators and viewers' calls was an overwhelming "Yes!" - which makes one nostalgic of the good old days of the colonial war in Algeria when the torture practiced by the French Army was a dirty secret... Effectively, was this not a pretty close realization of what Orwell imagined in 1984, in his vision of "hate sessions," where the citizens are shown photos of the traitors and supposed to boo and yell at them. And the story goes on: a day later, on another Fox TV show, a commentator claimed that one is allowed to do with this prisoner whatever, not only deprive him of sleep, but break his fingers, etc.etc., because he is "a piece of human garbage with no rights whatsoever." THIS is the true catastrophe: that such public statements are today possible. We should therefore be very attentive not to fight false battles: the debates on how bad Saddam is, even on how much the war will cost, etc., are false debates. The focus should be on what effectively goes on in our societies, on what kind of society is emerging HERE as the result of the "war on terror." Instead of talking about hidden conspirative agendas, one should shift the focus onto what is going on, onto what kind of changes are taking place here and now. The ultimate result of the war will be a change in OUR political order. The true danger can be best exemplified by the actual role of the populist Right in Europe: to introduce certain topics (the foreign threat, the necessity to limit immigration, etc.) which were then silently taken over not only by the conservative parties, but even by the de facto politics of the "Socialist" governments. Today, the need to "regulate" the status of immigrants, etc., is part of the mainstream consensus: as the story goes, le Pen did address and exploit real problems which bother people. One is almost tempted to say that, if there were no le Pen in France, he should have been invented: he is a perfect person whom one loves to hate, the hatred for whom guarantees the wide liberal "democratic pact," the pathetic identification with democratic values of tolerance and respect for diversity - however, after shouting "Horrible! How dark and uncivilized! Wholly unacceptable! A threat to our basic democratic values!", the outraged liberals proceed to act like "le Pen with a human face," to do the same thing in a more "civilized" way, along the lines of "But the racist populists are manipulating legitimate worries of ordinary people, so we do have to take some measures!"... We do have here a kind of perverted Hegelian "negation of negation": in a first negation, the populist Right disturbs the aseptic liberal consensus by giving voice to passionate dissent, clearly arguing against the "foreign threat"; in a second negation, the "decent" democratic center, in the very gesture of pathetically rejecting this populist Right, integrates its message in a "civilized" way - in-between, the ENTIRE FIELD of background "unwritten rules" has already changed so much that no one even notices it and everyone is just relieved that the anti-democratic threat is over. And the true danger is that something similar will happen with the "war on terror": "extremists" like John Ashcroft will be discarded, but their legacy will remain, imperceptibly interwoven into the invisible ethical fabric of our societies. Their defeat will be their ultimate triumph: they will no longer be needed, since their message will be incorporated into the mainstream. From ravis at sarai.net Thu Apr 10 11:36:32 2003 From: ravis at sarai.net (Ravi Sundaram) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 11:36:32 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The fall of baghdad Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20030410113034.022ba4d8@pop3.norton.antivirus> Yesterday was television's mythic moment, marines in Baghdad, the live toppling of Saddam’s statue, recalling so many similar moments: the departure of the US from Saigon in 1975, the end of the Berlin wall .There is so much you see and so much you don’t .This is one of the better print stories of that day, showing the complexities of that day R The toppling of Saddam - an end to 30 years of brutal rule: The toppling of Saddam Suzanne Goldenberg Thursday April 10, 2003 The Guardian It was a slow collapse. The statue of Saddam Hussein, huge and commanding, resisted the crowds tugging on the noose around its neck for two hours. Right arm held steady above their heads, pointing towards the horizon. At last, metal legs buckled at the knee, forcing Saddam to bow before his people, and the statue snapped in two, revealing a hollow core. It was the end, or one sort of ending. Thirty years of brutality and lies were coming to a close - not decisively, not in full measure, not without deep fears for the future or resentment at this deliverance by a foreign army - but on a day of stunning changes. Iraqis had begun drifting towards the statue on Firdouz Square, on the eastern bank of the Tigris, in the late afternoon, when the noisy grinding of gears announced the arrival of the American tanks. This was the real heart of Baghdad - not the conglomeration of security buildings and palaces that were the preserve of the regime on the opposite shore and had been bombed for three weeks by the US military. The crowds seemed to know what was expected of them. A man went up to one of the marines, whose tanks now controlled the circle and both sides of Sadoon Road, a main artery in east Baghdad, and asked for permission to destroy the statue. But it was still too heady an idea. "You, you shoot it," the Iraqi pleaded. The marine replied, with no apparent irony for the days of killing that preceded their arrival in Baghdad: "No, no, I cannot shoot. There are too many innocent people around." So it was left to the Iraqis themselves. A scrawny man tore down the brass plate on the plinth; others set off to find a rope to pull the statue down. A marine threw the Stars and Stripes on top of Saddam's head, before thinking better of it; within minutes an Iraqi flag was in its place. It was the old flag, without the inscription in Saddam's own handwriting of Allahu Akbar (God is most great) that had been added to the gaps between the stars after the last Gulf war. The symbols of his legacy were becoming undone. But the process was halting and hesitant, with Iraqis waiting until the last possible moment to assert even the tiniest freedoms. At the Palestine Hotel, where foreign journalists have been stabled, the system functioned right until the very end. At 9am, as the marines were trundling into the southern suburbs of Baghdad, the minders from the information ministry who spy on journalists, were lined up for duty at the table in the lobby, dictating where, and where not, it was possible to travel. Outside, the streets were still and almost monochrome, coated with the thick dust of a persistent sandstorm. The crude sandbag posts for the Iraqi militia men were empty. For two miles there was no sign of the fighters who had tried to slow the American onslaught on Baghdad, until at last one man came into view beneath a highway overpass, slumped in the dirt, cradling a rocket launcher in his arms. Further down the road, a desperate exodus was under way from the north-eastern neighbourhoods of Baghdad. They were entirely male and of fighting age, and they were travelling on foot, carrying bedrolls and belongings. They would not stop to talk. A few more cars came into view - the white pick-up trucks with the red chevrons used by the Iraqi security forces. Yesterday, the drivers were all in civilian clothes, and they had rolled-up mattresses in the back. The minder who accompanied us pointed to a branch office of Iraqi Airways, which was improbably open, and where employees were waiting for their pay. A hair salon next door was open as well. "You see, everything is normal," he said. We crossed the river to the western bank of the Tigris, keeping a distance from the enclave around Saddam's Republican Palace, the staging ground for American troops. Off to the side about 10 fighters, many wearing red keffiyehs, sat on the grass with their guns and rocket launchers. They did not appear to be Iraqis, but from among the Arab recruits to Saddam's cause who have been killed in such appalling numbers in the war against America. As we approached, an Iraqi handler barked an order, and the men ran into an abandoned house. We drove on through Mansour, one of the richest residential areas of Baghdad, and were flagged down by yet another minder, who had been trying for hours to hail a taxi and report for duty at the Palestine Hotel. "Did you listen to the statement from the information minister yesterday?" he said. "He gave a very accurate picture. He said that the Ameri cans had been in west Baghdad and that the Iraqis had driven them out." A few days ago, the US military disgorged four bunker-busting bombs on one of the side streets, targeting, the Pentagon said, one of the last hideaways of Saddam and his sons. On the main road, shop owners swept up shards of glass, and attempted to prise open metal shutters. The minders were distracted; a chemist motioned to come inside. "This is the price of freedom, between you and me," he said. "This son of a bitch destroyed us. Ariel Sharon - all the dictators in the world - become angels beside him." It was not an entirely unexpected confession. The last days of the war had brought increasing moments of candour from Iraqis, trained over the years to suppress all critical thoughts of the regime. The self-repression was infectious. During 11 weeks in Iraq, I rarely referred to Saddam by name even in hotel rooms, which are bugged. He became Puff Daddy. But as the end grew near, the lies became more intolerable. Acquaintances tugged me aside and blurted out that their cousins and brothers had been killed by Saddam for various offences. Drivers, who are vetted by the information ministry, reacted with excitement and smiles when the American army made its first foray into southern Baghdad at the weekend. And the minder, never viewed as especially solid by his colleagues at the information ministry, boarded the bus for the ritual tour of the city one morning, describing with great excitement the report on the BBC that Saddam airport had fallen. "Very optimistic news," he said. Then he remembered. It was the same yesterday. After unburdening himself of his hatred for Saddam, the chemist begged me not to reveal his name, or his shop's location. "I wish the coalition forces would come here," he said. "I would guide them to all the Iraqi positions. But if the coalition forces stay longer in Iraq, I think it is going to be a disaster." They already had arrived. We deposited the minder at the hotel and headed back across the river for Saddam City, that dumping ground for the dispossessed and secretly disaffected Shias that had become notorious over the years. The tanks had been and gone, and a carnival of looting was under way. Teenagers, laughing recklessly, rolled away swivel chairs from government buildings. At an electrical supply depot, grown men piled whatever they could carry on to forklifts and wheeled out to their homes. An Epson printer lay abandoned in the road. "Have we got rid of that criminal Saddam?" asked one man, carting off a red space heater and an ancient adding machine. "Until when?" But it wasn't all celebration. As the looters streamed by a bearded engineer erupted in anger. "This is the freedom that America brings to us," he said. "They destroyed our country. They are thieves. They stole our oil and killed many people. Here are the results." A battered red Saab drove by with six tractor tyres on the roof and the boot, and two tied down on the bonnet. A teenager turned up with a rifle in each hand, freshly stolen from a shop, twitching convulsively at each trigger. "Bush, Bush," he screamed. "Zain" (very good). Two more youths pushed a small Suzuki jeep along. There was no sign of police, or the militias from the ruling Ba'ath party, those in khaki uniform who had kept an iron grip for years on Saddam City. Viewed with suspicion by the regime and dread by its better-off countrymen, Saddam City was in the grip of the very nightmare Iraqis had envisaged for the ending of this war: rioting and lawlessness. Smoke billowed from a government store on the edge of the neighbourhood. Beneath a highway overpass, young men tried to cart away the field guns abandoned by the Iraqi fighters when they fled. Meanwhile, US marines had moved into the north of Baghdad, taking control of the last bridges across the Tigris. The circle of territory still under the nominal charge of Saddam was shrinking. Back at the Palestine Hotel, it was not yet immediately apparent that the regime had entered its final day. True, the most senior officials from the information ministry had decamped, either in the dead of night or secretly in the morning. None had said goodbye. But a few journalists still hovered forlornly in the drive way, waiting for their minders. Shots were fired from the nearby education ministry at vehicles marked TV. In the south of the city, a few bands of fighters were making their last stand. A trail of burned-out cars, one with a corpse at the steering wheel, led to sounds of gunfire from residential neighbourhoods. A few men stood outside their homes, waving whatever pieces of white cloth came to hand. A column of US tanks was lumbering into view in the distance, but it was too early to think of anything but survival. A statue of Saddam had been destroyed at the main turn-off, but it had been chopped in half at the waist by an American tank shell, not rebellious Iraqis. Here, and in other pockets of the city, the diehards of the regime were making their last stand. One US marine, asked yesterday what had sustained the ragtag and woefully underarmed groups of fighters for so long, said: "Adrenaline." By nightfall yesterday, the rush was beginning to wear off. The crackle of gunfire in the distance - met by the boom of American tank shells - tapered off. A few Iraqis, watching the chaotic and emotionally charged scenes at Firdouz Square, and the ritualised toppling of the statue of Saddam, grew silent, and edged away from the crowd. "Can you believe it?" said one man, holding his four-year-old son close to his side. It was impossible to read the emotions flickering across his face. "People are happy. I am not sure." He sighed, and nudged his chin in the direction of the American tanks. "Shit, all of these problems because of Saddam. They are going to stay forever, these Americans." From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Thu Apr 10 12:36:59 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 10 Apr 2003 07:06:59 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Zizek and the "Fall of Baghdad" Message-ID: <20030410070659.6184.qmail@webmail31.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030410/b8019415/attachment.pl From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Thu Apr 10 12:38:54 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 10 Apr 2003 07:08:54 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Zizek and the "Fall of Baghdad" Message-ID: <20030410070854.30970.qmail@webmail5.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030410/28a6e635/attachment.pl From tbyfield at panix.com Thu Apr 10 13:25:23 2003 From: tbyfield at panix.com (t byfield) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 03:55:23 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] The fall of baghdad In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.2.20030410113034.022ba4d8@pop3.norton.antivirus> References: <5.0.2.1.2.20030410113034.022ba4d8@pop3.norton.antivirus> Message-ID: <20030410075523.GA8342@panix.com> ravis at sarai.net (Thu 04/10/03 at 11:36 AM +0530): > Yesterday was television's mythic moment, marines in Baghdad, the live > toppling of Saddam's statue, recalling so many similar moments: the so far, it seems as though the main axis -- in the US, at least -- of debate about this war has been the immediate versus the historical. and what's been most upsetting for me is watching the fast transition in which those who seemed so short-sighted (the bush league) seem, in a few days, to become magisterially far-sighted; while those who seemed so far-sighted (the antiwar movement) seem, in the same time, to be- come so nearsighted. i'm not endorsing any position: i like freedom and i like peace, and i won't pretend to know the best way to recon- cile the two. but i'm inclined to think that the euphoria attending the fall of bagh- dad may prove to be much more myopic than the naysaying about the re- sistance in um-qasr and basra. supreme commander tommy franks himself said he couldn't accomplish what's been asked of him with less than another 100,000 soldiers and another 10 years. of course, the pentagon will always err on the side of caution when it comes to publicly ac- countable promises and franks's demand was just rhetorical. but, still, the question remains as to what the goals are. and if the goal is a 'free iraq' in the sense of a durably socialized and equitably politi- cized nation, i'm skeptical that this euphoria is justified in the long term. in the short term, it isn't my business to question the feelings of people who've been screwed for decades: if they smile, i smile -- even if it hurts because it seems to vindicate bush. the problems bush will confront as his victory winds down are numerous. the US as a global economic totem is crumbling, maybe fatally enough to result in the euro replacing the dollar as the preeminent denomina- tion of worldwide investment. internally, the US economy has already collapsed to such a degree that no postwar boost can fix. he had com- mitted himself to an ongoing program of tax cuts that will only deepen the mess. the tactical meneuvers of the international order cannot dis- guise the deepening fear among nations that they cannot trust a coun- try capable of electing a government dedicated to new heights in brinks- manship. despots around the world have taken advantage of the war to torment dissidents. this war has set back a very promising transition in iran in the form of a rising generation that is worldly, secular, and committed to openness. it has convinced north korea that the only way to deal with the US is through threatening the world order. and there are many other areas and countries, where a more delicate hand could have played a pivotal role in establishing the basis for some kind of desperately needed rapproachement. and, then, of course, there is the question of iraq in the upcoming weeks and months and years. bush has a well-established history of promising the world but deli- vering nothing. tanks are very exciting for a day, but when it comes to months, food is more satisfying. the danger, which the bush league has already amde clear, is that this administration will choose not to resolve the situation in iraq well but, instead, to move on to another war against __________. i don't know what to say about that. but we shall see. i'd be very happy to be wrong. cheers, t From lehar_hind at yahoo.com Thu Apr 10 16:59:34 2003 From: lehar_hind at yahoo.com (Lehar ..) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 04:29:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] can we have one too please? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030410112934.68561.qmail@web20912.mail.yahoo.com> lovely. we live in enlightened times.long live the fuhrer. --- Rana Dasgupta wrote: > george bush's prescriptions for a post-war > government in Iraq sound so good! > > i wonder if we can all get a government like that. > > the comments about oil are particularly astonishing. > > "The oil of Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people" says > Colin Powell. > > treasury secretary john snow says: "This effort will > ensure that the assets > and funds belonging to the Iraqi people are > dedicated to the wellbeing and > benefit of their nation." > > Bush has repeatedly said that it is time to remove > the evil leadership of > Iraq so that the Iraqi people can live in peace and > liberty and benefit from > the oil wealth that is their own. > > one can only imagine that in the light of a truly > miraculous conversion of > this sort that Bush will act, with a convert's zeal, > to nationalise > Exxon-Mobil, Amoco, Unocal etc. > > he will find it tough. but he has never been one to > be cowed by the > irrational prejudices of the unwashed masses. > > R > > _________________________________________ > 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!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com From lehar_hind at yahoo.com Thu Apr 10 17:23:57 2003 From: lehar_hind at yahoo.com (Lehar ..) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 04:53:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] all the perfumes of arabia.. Message-ID: <20030410115357.13613.qmail@web20908.mail.yahoo.com> dear george and tony hope you have enjoyed the blood spilt victory in the ancient 'barabaric' land of babylonians and the mesopotamians who invented handwriting. we hope you realise that you are mass murderers and the most 'honest' terrorists to stalk the earth. at least you bomb hotels and hospitals in full view of the planet. hope the oil you've looted and the buildings you've bombed.. beating osama and his gang by a margin of a couple of thousand human deaths, help your economy and your 'free market'.( sources say: it will need approx. 200 9/11s to equate the iraqi deaths since your Daddy bombed 'em in 1991 continuing till your marines' genocide till last night) please tell us whether we should try you in the international court for crimes against humanity and whether your definition of 'terrorism' includes only brown, black and yellow people. you may be gloating in your 'victory' and have all the looted oil to clean your blood stained hands. look upon your hands and keep trying..to wipe off the blood. but remember, all the perfumes of arabia will not sweeten your little hand. and all the oil of babylon will not feed your land. --- TO qoute the Bard of Avon, Britain's greatest poet: Lady MAcbeth: Out, damned spot! out, I say!�One: two: why, then �tis time to do �t.�Hell is murky!�Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?�Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? Here�s the smell of the blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!Wash your hands, put on your nightgown; look not so pale.�I tell you yet again, Banquo�s buried; he cannot come out on �s grave.. Doct. Foul whisp�rings are abroad; unnatural deeds Do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more http://tax.yahoo.com From jhuns at vt.edu Fri Apr 11 05:04:57 2003 From: jhuns at vt.edu (jeremy hunsinger) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 19:34:57 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] did the internet just change? In-Reply-To: <200304110006.h3B06dX03258@bbs.thing.net> Message-ID: <0A53FBFB-6BAD-11D7-AFA4-0003934CE812@vt.edu> CNET: Standards group beats back patent foes http://news.com.com/2100-1013-996351.html?tag=fd_top so who here wants to allow the privatization of internet standards? I wonder how many Indians participated in this decision.... Jeremy Hunsinger Center for Digital Discourse and Culture From eye at ranadasgupta.com Fri Apr 11 12:33:23 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 12:33:23 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Iraqi euphoria: Robert Fisk etc Message-ID: Response of much alternative/critical media today is that yesterday's pictures heavily staged. see fisk's article below and also: Was the statue incident stage-managed? It now appears that the toppling of Saddam's statue in Baghdad was simply a media circus, organized the the U.S. government to help promote its war. Two wide-angle photos of the square in which the statue stood belie the message of a large Iraqi crowd. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2838.htm http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2842.htm US says flag incident was a 'coincidence' http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=396043 R Robert Fisk: Baghdad: the day after Arson, anarchy, fear, hatred, hysteria, looting, revenge, savagery, suspicion and a suicide bombing 11 April 2003 http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=396051 It was the day of the looter. They trashed the German embassy and hurled the ambassador's desk into the yard. I rescued the European Union flag – flung into a puddle of water outside the visa section – as a mob of middle-aged men, women in chadors and screaming children rifled through the consul's office and hurled Mozart records and German history books from an upper window. The Slovakian embassy was broken into a few hours later. At the headquarters of Unicef, which has been trying to save and improve the lives of millions of Iraqi children since the 1980s, an army of thieves stormed the building, throwing brand new photocopiers on top of each other and sending cascades of UN files on child diseases, pregnancy death rates and nutrition across the floors. The Americans may think they have "liberated" Baghdad but the tens of thousands of thieves – they came in families and cruised the city in trucks and cars searching for booty – seem to have a different idea what liberation means. American control of the city is, at best, tenuous – a fact underlined after several marines were killed last night by a suicide bomber close to the square where a statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down on Wednesday, in the most staged photo-opportunity since Iwo Jima. Throughout the day, American forces had fought gun battles with Saddam loyalists, said to be fighters from other Arab countries. And, for more than four hours, marines were in firefights at the Imam al-Adham mosque in the Aadhamiya district of central Baghdad after rumours, later proved untrue, that Saddam Hussein and senior members of his regime had taken flight there. As the occupying power, America is responsible for protecting embassies and UN offices in their area of control but, yesterday, its troops were driving past the German embassy even as looters carted desks and chairs out of the front gate. It is a scandal, a kind of disease, a mass form of kleptomania that American troops are blithely ignoring. At one intersection of the city, I saw US Marine snipers on the rooftops of high-rise building, scanning the streets for possible suicide bombers while a traffic jam of looters – two of them driving stolen double-decker buses crammed with refrigerators – blocked the highway beneath. Outside the UN offices, a car slowed down beside me and one of the unshaven, sweating men inside told me in Arabic that it wasn't worth visiting because "we've already taken everything". Understandably, the poor and the oppressed took their revenge on the homes of the men of Saddam's regime who have impoverished and destroyed their lives, sometimes quite literally, for more than two decades. I watched whole families search through the Tigris-bank home of Ibrahim al-Hassan, Saddam's half-brother and a former minister of interior, of a former defence minister, of Saadun Shakr, one of Saddam's closest security advisers, of Ali Hussein Majid – "Chemical" Ali who gassed the Kurds and was killed last week in Basra – and of Abed Moud, Saddam's private secretary. They came with lorries, container trucks, buses and carts pulled by ill-fed donkeys to make off with the contents of these massive villas. It also provided a glimpse of the shocking taste in furnishings that senior Baath party members obviously aspired to; cheap pink sofas and richly embroidered chairs, plastic drinks trolleys and priceless Iranian carpets so heavy it took three muscular thieves to carry them. Outside the gutted home of one former minister of interior, a fat man was parading in a stolen top hat, a Dickensian figure who tried to direct the traffic jam of looters outside. On the Saddam bridge over the Tigris, a thief had driven his lorry of stolen goods at such speed he had crashed into the central concrete reservation and still lay dead at the wheel. But there seemed to be a kind of looter's law. Once a thief had placed his hand on a chair or a chandelier or a door-frame, it belonged to him. I saw no arguments, no fist-fights. The dozens of thieves in the German embassy worked in silence, assisted by an army of small children. Wives pointed out the furnishings they wanted, husbands carried them down the stairs while children were used to unscrew door hinges and – in the UN offices – to remove light fittings. One even stood on the ambassador's desk to take a light bulb from its socket in the ceiling. On the other side of the Saddam bridge, an even more surreal sight could be observed. A truck loaded down with chairs also had the two white hunting dogs that belonged to Saddam's son Qusay tethered by two white ropes, galloping along beside the vehicle. Across the city, I caught a glimpse of four of Saddam's horses – including the white stallion he had used in some presidential portraits – being loaded on to a trailer. Tariq Aziz's villa was also looted, right down to the books in his library. Every government ministry in the city has now been denuded of its files, computers, reference books, furnishings and cars. To all this, the Americans have turned a blind eye, indeed stated specifically that they had no intention of preventing the "liberation" of this property. One can hardly be moralistic about the spoils of Saddam's henchmen but how is the government of America's so-called "New Iraq" supposed to operate now that the state's property has been so comprehensively looted? And what is one to make of the scene on the Hillah road yesterday where I found the owner of a grain silo and factory ordering his armed guards to fire on the looters who were trying to steal his lorries. This desperate and armed attempt to preserve the very basis of Baghdad's bread supply was being observed from just 100 metres away by eight soldiers of the US 3rd Infantry Division, who were sitting on their tanks – doing nothing. The UN offices that were looted downtown are 200 metres from a US Marine checkpoint. And already America's army of "liberation" is beginning to seem an army of occupation. I watched hundreds of Iraqi civilians queuing to cross a motorway bridge at Daura yesterday morning, each man ordered by US soldiers to raise his shirt and lower his trousers – in front of other civilians, including women – to prove they were not suicide bombers. After a gun battle in the Adamiya area during the morning, an American Marine sniper sitting atop the palace gate wounded three civilians, including a little girl, in a car that failed to halt – then shot and killed a man who had walked on to his balcony to discover the source of the firing. Within minutes, the sniper also shot dead the driver of another car and wounded two more passengers in that vehicle, including a young woman. A crew from Channel 4 Television was present when the killings took place. Meanwhile, in the suburb of Daura, bodies of Iraqi civilians – many of them killed by US troops in battle earlier in the week – lay rotting in their still-smouldering cars. And yesterday was just Day Two of the "liberation" of Baghdad. From eye at ranadasgupta.com Fri Apr 11 12:48:07 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 12:48:07 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] FW: Signs from God Message-ID: make of this what you will. R -----Original Message----- From: The last Judgement [mailto:Caramba538 at compuserve.de] Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2003 11:18 PM To: eye at ranadasgupta.com Subject: Signs from God Signs from God. The Messiah comes. We have the end of the World Signs from God. The Messiah comes. We have the end of the World and already 3th World war. The Mankind faces the Doom and as well the biggest ever experienced Holocaust. Each second Humanbeing ends up in the Pond of Fire. If the Messiah is not coming now (Jesus Christ, Son of God, King of the Jews), God will come as Devil-and Germany brought the entire Mankind into Hell. Owing to the Brandenburger Nazigate in Berlin every Human will be punished as hard as Adolf Hitler. That means Hell forever:Final Solution (Endloesung) Everyone who doesn't call Mankind into Paradise has got at least the same much Guilt and Dirt at putting like Adolf Hitler an will be punished just as hard. The USA was sworn in to the Bible and is liable with the Final Solution (Endloesung) Death on the Cross forever- The one who supports Wholesole murderers and Traitors- like especially the USA and other Countries did towards Germany-will be executed as Wholesale murderers and Traitors and sent to the Pond of Fire. Laughing Third Persons are even hardest punished by God. Since the USA bombed the Cradle of Mankind (The Gulf-War USA and Irak),is the entire Mankind condemned to Hell.When God`s Children are getting bombed,pays the Mankind with the Eternal Penalty. That includes also the USA. The Iraq is the Cradle of Mankind, Tigris Euphrat the Beginning of the Bible. Adam and Eve. The one who`s the Worldpower Number 1- as it happens to the USA-has got the Main Responsibility for the whole Mankind and is liable now even with the Final Solution. Death at the Cross- Hell forever. If the USA belief that they could make War on their own account- then they have to count with the eternal Punishment. The USA bombed once before the Cradle of Mankind (1991 Irak) and is already condemned to Hell. But for to make a War needs the USA the Permission of God himself. Which will never be granted. The Brandenburger Nazigate in Berlin is the Hellgate of Mankind and must be pulled down immediately Germany turned with the Brandenburger Nazigate Got to Devil-Germany is therefore Nation of Kain and High Treason and brought the entire Mankind into Doom. Germany has got the Worldpower to bring the entire Mankind into Hell if the Brandenburger Nazigate in Berlin is not pulled down immediately and if there will hot be atoned for the second Worldwar. The USA must be careful that they don't come into Hell completely in because the reunion of Nazi-Germany. Who Protects Wholesale murderers and High Traitors like the USA did for Decades, will be executed as Wholesale murderer and as one guilty of High Treason and ends up in the Pond of Fire. The USA raised Nazi-Germany and is liable now for the reunited Nazi-Germany. Germany made an Oath to God and the Leader of the Nazis. That means everything what Germany does falls back to God-Germany caused with that its own Sentence. Which is Death on the Cross and Hell forever. That is now reputed even for entire Mankind. If it would be up to Germany the Mankind would be in Hell already and lost forever. Hence The Mankind must be called now into Paradise. Before a War even takes Place. Anything else means Wholesale murder and High Treason. The condemnation for that is Hell forever. The USA have got now the Main responsibility for the entire Mankind, and with it also for Germany. The one with the biggest Power must also account for it to God. So the USA is liable for the Final Solution Death on the Cross Hell forever.Jesus Christ is a Diamond,is our Redeemer-can release us from the Guilt and save entire Mankind from Downfall. Sign from God is no Advertising,but a Message and is reputed for entire Mankind. http://www.zevo.de From lacfadio at yahoo.co.uk Thu Apr 10 17:35:37 2003 From: lacfadio at yahoo.co.uk (Joshua Craze) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 13:05:37 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] JubileeIraq Message-ID: <006301c2ff59$81d223c0$dbe030d5@ox.ac.uk> CANCEL IRAQ'S DEBT! http://www.jubileeiraq.org A group of people have been working on a project called Jubilee Iraq for the last few weeks. The idea is simple. Since the focus of the world is currently on Iraq and its 'liberation' by Coalition forces, lets try to hold them to their word. Ask them to cancel the massive Iraqi debt, which, after all, was accrued under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Either they expose their complete hypocrisy and refuse to cancel the debt (in which case thousands of people start thinking about issues of global justice for the first time), or they cancel the debt and we can say 'and now what about Indonesia? and South Africa? and Chile?...' Either way this is a win-win situation. Either way we catapult the issue of debt and global justice back into the public eye. In order for this campaign to work we need massive amounts of help. The first thing you can do is visit the website at www.jubileeiraq.org and sign the petition. If you think the campaign is a good idea, please spread the word through any organisations and networks you may belong to. We don't have any funding, and so this method is the only one we can use to inform people of the idea. If you are really keen, please feel free to get in touch with us with offers of help! We are especially keen to gain endorsements from prominent figures and organisations...the bigger the profile of the campaign, the more chance that it will be noticed and become an issue on the national (and international) stage. Please consider devoting a little of your time to this issue. It may be the best opportunity for years to highlight the blatant injustices of the current global system. Help us seize it. Yours, Joshua Craze, Oxford -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030410/de0a3347/attachment.html From competitiva14 at videobrasil.org.br Fri Apr 11 00:23:43 2003 From: competitiva14 at videobrasil.org.br (Mostra Competitiva) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2003 15:53:43 -0300 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] 14TH INTERNATIONAL ELECTRONIC ART FESTIVAL / VIDEOBRASIL Message-ID: 14TH INTERNATIONAL ELECTRONIC ART FESTIVAL / VIDEOBRASIL The 14th International Electronic Art Festival - Videobrasil, organized by Associação Cultural Videobrasil and SESC, takes place in São Paulo, Brazil from September 22 to October 19, 2003. Submissions are already open for the Southern Competitive Show. Open for Portuguese-speaking artists as well as artists from Africa, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Middle East, Oceania and Southeast Asia, the show eliminates, for prize matters, the distinction between works in video and new mediums (web, CD-ROM). Besides the three awards in money established by the jury, there will be a special prize granted by the French General Consulate in partnership with Le Fresnoy - Studio National Des Arts Contemporains, in France. To read the rules for the 14th edition and make your on-line submission, access www.videobrasil.org.br. For further information about the Festival, e-mail us at competitiva14 at videobrasil.org.br. FINAL DATE FOR SUBMISSIONS: MAY 1, 2003 _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From eye at ranadasgupta.com Fri Apr 11 17:16:19 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 17:16:19 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Egoyan's film on Armenian 1915 genocide Message-ID: Journey into genocide By Richard Wolfson FT.com site; Mar 21, 2003 Richard Wolfson talks to one of the world's leading directors and finds that while he has a casual approach, he's not afraid to tackle the serious issues. It is easy to imagine why there might be a terrible and widespread misunderstanding about the films of Atom Egoyan. The director's name, exotic and portentous, seems to suggest those three-hour epics whose origin might lie somewhere to the east of Europe, probably extremely worthy, definitely subtitled, perhaps with long pauses and certainly of little entertainment value. That would be a sad error indeed. The films are some of the most racy, spooky, compelling, perverse and even downright weird inventions you will ever encounter. They also happen to originate in English-speaking Canada. Egoyan's name might derive from his Armenian parents, who moved to Victoria in western Canada from Egypt when Atom was a small child, but he is a native-born English-speaking Canadian, if one who has remained fascinated by his Armenian roots. A second mistake, having seen the films, is to expect the director to be one of those grand old men of the cinema, pushing 70, full of guttural wisdom. He turns out to be a frighteningly boyish just 40-something who made his first films in his early 20s. Those early films are quite something. Made on next to no budget, with minimal support from the Canadian Arts Council, they tackle complex questions of identity, messed up family relationships and ritualised mechanisms of denial, all themes that have remained central to Egoyan's films. In Next of Kin from 1984, a disenchanted young man passes himself off as the long lost son of an Armenian family, who years before had given up their son for adoption. In Family Viewing, which appeared in 1987, another disaffected youth becomes attached to his grandmother, who has been placed in a home; he fakes her death, swapping her with the body of the woman who has died in the next bed, so he is able to abduct her into his care. In later films the budget grew and the scenarios became stranger, with the biscuit being taken by the cataclysmically odd The Adjuster, about an insurance investigator who beds his clients while pretending to sort out their claims. Best known though, and no less weird, is Exotica. Set in a kinky Toronto nightclub, the male protagonist is locked into a bizarre relationship with an exotic dancer who dresses as a schoolgirl as he tries to come to terms with the murder of his daughter. All the films are shot with hallucinatory conviction, with plots that employ the clockwork precision of an Almodóvar and the spooked out mysteriousness of a David Lynch. None of this would quite prepare one, though, for Egoyan's latest film, the epic and controversial Ararat. When I met him in his office in Toronto, Egoyan was still recoiling from some of the flak. "I've had threats, and thousands of emails were sent to Miramax in an attempt to prevent the distribution of the film. There was a point at which it looked as though it could be denounced as a piece of hate literature, which is serious in Canada." The trouble derives from the Turkish community, who are not at all happy that the film deals with the Turkish massacre of its Armenian minority in 1915. The genocide is well documented, but denied to this day by the Turkish government. "I have often met Turkish individuals who haven't heard about it," says Egoyan. "It does raise the thorny issue - can someone be accused of denial about something they don't know about? Also it's a bit sad because you are talking about millions of people in Turkey who don't have access to their own history." Ararat is no simple propaganda film, however. Its labyrinthine plot has all the elements one associates with an Egoyan film - a sexual relationship between a stepdaughter and stepson, which while not exactly incestuous (they have no blood relations in common) is slightly disturbing; countless difficult relationships between fathers and sons, daughters and mothers; and characters all on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The plot centres around the making of a film within a film, which stages historical scenes from the siege of Van, when Armenian volunteers defended the town against impossible odds. It is a strange process watching this film. Often one is sucked into the historical sections and then yanked back out into its "real life", as when the Turkish actor playing the role of a fascistic Turkish officer steps out of his role to ask whether this really happened. Is this a classic Brechtian distancing device, showing the audience how the film is constructed and leaving them to make up their own mind? "That's absolutely right!" says Egoyan with evident relief. "I wanted to create a situation where you are completely torn between your emotional surrendering to these scenes of atrocity and your sense of suspicion as to why you don't know about it. Part of the film is about the mechanics of denial, in the face of overwhelming evidence." You get the feeling that Egoyan can't see what all the fuss is about. "When I speak to Armenians they say it was very brave of me to make this film, but I don't see it that way. It's just an extension of the work I've been doing. The issues that are in the film - about denial and how we negotiate our way through this image laden society, and how we try and find origins and roots of emotion - that's been in my work for a long time, so this just seemed a natural step. But I think a lot of Armenians are astonished that the film has been made, because it's true that up till now this has not been dealt with cinematically." Perhaps this is what attracted eminent Armenians into the cast, such as Charles Aznavour who plays the imaginary film's director, and Eric Bogosian in the role of his assistant. All the cast is fabulous, including Egoyan's long term collaborator and wife, Arsinée Khanjian, Christopher Plummer and newcomer David Aplay. Aplay is sensational as the naive and troubled young man who travels to Armenia to collect footage for the film and returns to Toronto with something suspicious in his sealed film canisters. It may be evident from the many layers of Ararat that Egoyan's films sometimes seem to be bursting at the seams, as if they might jump out of the frame and even spill out of the movie theatre. His work has already moved into opera houses, where he's an in-demand director, and into galleries where his installations have won critical acclaim. A recent installation, Close, forces the audience into an 18-inch gap between a wall and a back projected film screen. There is something vaguely pornographic on the screen, but you are forced so close to the image you cannot make out what it is. Another piece, this time in Montreal, involved thousands of fragments of reel to reel tape found in attics and dustbins. Does he feel trapped by the format of the conventional feature film? "There is something very orthodox about the cinema screen which is very reassuring, but also oppressive in a way. It's set there, and you see this white canvas and you know that's where you are going to see the projection, and there's a degree of anticipation and confirmation. And I've always felt if there was some way to challenge that, to project images elsewhere, then that would be much more satisfying." Despite the unfortunate limitation of a single screen Egoyan's films do use an installational approach to image and soundtrack, particularly through the work of his long-term collaborator, the composer Mychael Danna. Danna's music is a succulent oriental beast that sometimes snakes its way into the most inappropriate scenes. The music from the club in Exotica finds its way into other parts of that film, haunting melodies that challenge the audience's sense of location. Egoyan likes creating this state of doubt, even if he aims to resolve it eventually. "The kind of work that excites me most is when I feel lost - when I feel that I may not be able to get it, that I may be floating, but when I have to trust the artist. And there's that sense of resolution at the end, that we have arrived at a point." Another factor that sets Egoyan apart from other directors of his generation is his history in avant-garde formalist film. When he first arrived in Toronto in the early 1980s he joined a group called The Funnel and became a long-term fan of avant-garde film makers such as Michael Snow and Stan Brackhage. One friend even glues frames from super-8 film onto 16mm stock for projection, another "film within a film" idea. Egoyan says he finds it hard discussing these concerns with the press, who are usually on the lookout for more salacious material. He's happy to be part of this do-it-yourself Toronto film community, and claims that if the big budgets ran out he'd return to no-budget avant-garde film making. Walking around the theatre district in Toronto I noticed that Egoyan's colleague, the director David Cronenberg, along with other Canadian celebrities, has a star embedded in the concrete. As yet Egoyan does not have one, but it's probably only a matter of time. He claims he's in no hurry. "One of the things about living in Toronto is that we don't mythologise our own, and that the stars on the sidewalk are vaguely ridiculous because we are not a culture which creates star systems. There's a casualness." Perhaps this casualness has enabled Egoyan to stroll into the role of one of the world's leading and most exciting directors. Since I talked with Egoyan in Toronto things have moved on, particularly in relation to Ararat. A courageous Turkish distributor is negotiating to bring the film to Turkey, which for Egoyan would be nothing short of mir- aculous. Perhaps it brings forward the day the Armenian diaspora looks forward to, when the Turkish authorities and all the countries of the world are finally able to acknowledge the history of the Armenian and Turkish peoples. MIGHTY ATOM Egoyan has participated in one of the most unusual prize swapping events in film history. In 1987 German director Wim Winders won the prize at Montreal's Festival of New Cinema, for his film 'Wings of Desire'. He surprised everybody by handing over the prize to Atom Egoyan, whose 'Family Veiwing' was also showing in the festival. In 1991 Egoyan repeated the gesture. The Festival of Festivals awarded him the prize for his film 'The Adjuster'. Egoyan promptly handed it over to an almost unknown Canadian newcomer, John Pozer, for his first feature 'The Grocer's Wife'. From avinash332 at rediffmail.com Fri Apr 11 21:49:48 2003 From: avinash332 at rediffmail.com (avinash kumar) Date: 11 Apr 2003 16:19:48 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) Message-ID: <20030411161948.4263.qmail@webmail35.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030411/448f4220/attachment.pl From eye at ranadasgupta.com Sat Apr 12 10:40:29 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 10:40:29 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] India wants piece of pre-emptive action Message-ID: 1149 GMT - Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes on April 11 told a group of retired military officers in Jodhpur that "there are enough reasons to launch such (pre-emptive) strikes against Pakistan, but I cannot make public statements on whatever action that may be taken." http://www.stratfor.com/corporate/SituationReports.neo?showSitReps=1 From eye at ranadasgupta.com Sat Apr 12 12:16:55 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 12:16:55 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Donald Rumsfeld turns anarchist Message-ID: In another amazing departure from US domestic policy, the US cabinet, in the person of Donald Rumsfeld, has told the world that rape, murder and the destruction of key public infrastructure is just part of freedom. In response to criticism by the world's press that the destruction of official records and systems and the ransacking of crucial medical equipment will make it impossible to effectively deliver supplies and a peaceful environment to Iraqi cities he says, "Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2941559.stm He criticises the media for focussing on the negative when their duty is to celebrate the new exhuberant freedom of the Iraqi people. R From eye at ranadasgupta.com Sat Apr 12 12:49:10 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 12:49:10 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fareed Zakaria on the world's excess of democracy Message-ID: I think one's instinctive antipathy to these arguments is the most interesting thing about them. He is writing in the realm of the unthinkable. R 'The Future of Freedom': Overdoing Democracy By NIALL FERGUSON http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/13/books/review/13FERGUST.html?8bu=&pagewante d=print&position=top ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- THE FUTURE OF FREEDOM Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad. By Fareed Zakaria. 286 pp. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. $24.95. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- It is evident to all alike that a great democratic revolution is going on among us,'' the great French liberal thinker Alexis de Tocqueville declared in ''Democracy in America,'' published in 1835. It was, he continued, an ''irresistible revolution, which has advanced for centuries in spite of every obstacle and which is still advancing in the midst of the ruins it has caused.'' Tocqueville had visited the United States, seen the future and decided that it worked. Today he stands vindicated. Something like 62 percent of the world's countries are now democracies. To be sure, Tocqueville was not blind to the defects and potential hazards of American democracy. Political parties were ''an inherent evil of free governments.'' The press was prone to gratuitous muckraking. The electorate tended to vote mediocrities into high office. Above all, there was the danger of the ''tyranny of the majority.'' But that risk, he believed, was held in check by the vitality of some distinctively American institutions that tended to preserve individual freedom: the decentralization of government, the power of the courts, the strength of associational life and the vigor of the country's churches. The big question was whether similar safeguards would operate in Europe when democracy made its inevitable advance there. By the time he published ''The Old Regime and the Revolution'' in 1856, Tocqueville had grown deeply pessimistic. In France, despite several attempts, it had proved impossible to introduce democracy without an intolerable diminution of freedom. The aristocracy and the church -- against which the revolutionaries of 1789 had directed their energies -- had, he argued, been bastions of liberty. Once these had been swept away there was nothing to check the twin processes of centralization and social leveling, which Tocqueville had come to see as the sinister confederates of the democratic revolution. Under French democracy, bureaucracy and equality trumped liberty. The result was a new Napoleonic despotism. In his brave and ambitious book, Fareed Zakaria has updated Tocqueville. ''The Future of Freedom'' is brave because its central conclusion -- that liberty is threatened by an excess of democracy -- is deeply unfashionable and easily misrepresented. (''So, Mr. Zakaria, you say that America needs less democracy. Doesn't that make you some kind of fascist?'') It is ambitious because Zakaria seeks to apply the Tocquevillian critique not just to modern America but to the whole world. In some ways, the book is a magazine article that just grew. In 1997 Zakaria -- now the editor of Newsweek International -- published a brilliant article in Foreign Affairs entitled ''The Rise of Illiberal Democracy.'' His argument was that the ''wave'' of democracy that had swept the world in the 1980's and 1990's had a shadow side. Many of the new democracies -- Russia under Yeltsin and Putin, Venezuela under Chavez -- are routinely,'' as he puts it in ''The Future of Freedom,'' ''ignoring constitutional limits on their power and depriving their citizens of basic rights.'' Just holding elections did not make them free. He develops this point further in the book by adding some background history: why England prospered under aristocratic rather than democratic institutions, why democracy failed in interwar Germany. He also draws on the extensive literature on the relationship between democracy and economic growth, buying -- perhaps rather uncritically -- the deterministic argument that democratic institutions are likely to succeed only in countries with per capita income of more than $6,000. Many poor countries that democratized prematurely in the era of decolonization, the argument goes, ended up lapsing into dictatorship and deeper poverty. Conversely, it is no coincidence that ''the best-consolidated democracies in Latin America and East Asia -- Chile, South Korea and Taiwan -- were for a long while ruled by military juntas.'' The moral of the story is simple: first get rich (thereby acquiring a middle class, civil society and the rule of law), then democratize. Memo to the Arab world: getting rich on rents from natural resources doesn't count. There are a few oddities here. It will strike some readers as surprising that an Indian-born author should have such harsh words to say about his own country's democracy and such kind words to say about the benign despotism of Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, to say nothing of Gen. Pervez Musharraf's less than benign rule in Pakistan. Still, the range of Zakaria's knowledge is impressive. His chapter on the failure of democracy in the Arab world is superb. And I could not agree more that whenever the United States intervenes to overthrow ''rogue regimes,'' at least ''a five-year period of transition . . . should precede national multiparty elections.'' (Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that his call for a ''serious, long-term project of nation-building'' in Iraq will be heeded.) Which brings us to the short time horizon of American politics, one of a number of weaknesses Zakaria detects in the biggest of the Western democracies. Is the United States imperceptibly becoming an illiberal -- or at least a dysfunctional -- democracy? The argument is that the Madisonian system of republican government, which Tocqueville so admired, has been hollowed out in the name of ''more democracy'': ''America is increasingly embracing a simple-minded populism that values popularity and openness as the key measures of legitimacy. . . . The result is a deep imbalance in the American system, more democracy but less liberty.'' Since the 1960's, as Zakaria shows, legislatures, parties and other administrative agencies have sought to make their workings more transparent and responsive to the popular will. Yet the unintended consequence of this ''democratization of democracy'' is that all these institutions have become prey to the activities of professional lobbyists. Open committee meetings in Congress; primary elections to select delegates to national political conventions; changes to the system of campaign funding; the rise of referendums in state and municipal politics -- together, these well-intentioned innovations have tended to debase the political process. Nor has the process of ''overdemocratization'' been confined to the realm of politics. In finance, the law and even religion, the power of the masses has grown at the expense of the elites who once ruled the United States. Tocqueville based his confidence in American democracy on the existence of a professional ''aristocracy'' dividing its time between private work and public service. Zakaria convincingly shows how deregulation has undermined the old American elites, enslaving C.E.O.'s, law partners and evangelical ministers alike to the tyranny of the mass market. Our best hope, he concludes, is to delegate more power to impartial experts, insulated from the democratic fray. Today's independent central banks provide a possible template. Zakaria would like to see a chunk of federal fiscal policy handed to an equivalent of the Federal Reserve -- an autonomous I.R.S. that sets rather than merely collects taxes. A book so wide in its scope is bound to have its flaws. Zakaria follows Mancur Olson and others in embracing a cartoon version of British political development that Herbert Butterfield long ago dismissed as the ''Whig interpretation of history.'' There is also a strangely sketchy quality to Zakaria's political thought. After all, the aristocratic critique of democracy was not Tocqueville's invention. It is one of the central notions of classical political philosophy and history. In Book 3 of his Histories, for example, Herodotus set out the case against democracy in terms remarkably similar to Zakaria's: ''In a democracy, malpractices are bound to occur . . . corrupt dealings in government services lead . . . to close personal associations, the men responsible for them putting their heads together and mutually supporting one another. And so it goes on, until somebody or other comes forward as the people's champion and breaks up the cliques which are out for their own interests. This wins him the admiration of the mob, and as a result he soon finds himself entrusted with absolute power.'' Zakaria's critics will doubtless denounce him for looking backward. Indeed he is -- but not just to the 1950's, or even the 1850's. This is a book that looks back as far as 450 B.C. Whether, in our hyperdemocratic age, there is a market for such a classical defense of aristocratic rule must be doubtful. (Indeed, it would rather undermine Zakaria's own thesis if ''The Future of Freedom'' were to be a runaway best seller.) Yet it deserves a wide readership. Those who fear that while seeking to impose its will on far-flung countries the American republic may unwittingly follow Rome down the path to imperial perdition will read it with a mixture of admiration and unease. Niall Ferguson is the Herzog professor of financial history at the Stern School of Business, New York University. His latest book is ''Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power.'' From lachlan at london.com Sat Apr 12 15:36:07 2003 From: lachlan at london.com (Lachlan Brown) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 10:06:07 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] did the internet just change? Message-ID: <20030412100607.85180.qmail@iname.com> Re: [Reader-list] did the internet just change? Yes, There have been so many changes during the past year it is difficult to collate them all. Most I would say for the better. Perhaps the way to characterise what's happening now, with changes being implemented seemingly suddenly as the market picks up is to say that Internet has moved froman IT subculture led agenda, a technology development agenda, to a media and communications led agenda, a usership, market, cultures set of agendas. This is more or less to be expected for around this time 2002-3 as electronic publishing becomes a reasonable percentage of overall media publishing output. The degree to which Indians were or were not consulted over this and other changes is very much a question about whether or not Internet at this change in state represents the present growth in usership. The public and private sectors in the West would be foolish to overlook the opinion and e-media of India. -- __________________________________________________________ Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup From ranita at sarai.net Fri Apr 11 19:17:52 2003 From: ranita at sarai.net (ranita) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 19:17:52 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Fwd: call for videos and digital media works Message-ID: <200304111917.52541.ranita@sarai.net> ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Hello everyone, This is an OPEN CALL for video and digital media works with the MAXIMUM length of 10 minutes. This call is on behalf of the Apeejay Media Gallery, New Delhi, which is a forum for showcasing experimental new media art. We hope to put together a show of short pieces in the beginning of next year. There is no fixed date for its completion. Please send us your work on VHS or CD’s, by 30th of May 2003. The video pieces will ultimately be presented on VHS/CD/VCD/DVD. Please do not send us the only copies of your work. We will be unable to return the tape or CD unless accompanied with pre-paid, self-addressed envelope. Please feel free to forward this email to whoever that you may think will be interested. If you have any further questions or need more info. please write to monicabhasin at yahoo.com . To Submit Video/Digital Media Include: Standard VHS tape/CD of your film Your Name Contact Info (address, phone number, email address if you have one) Film Title Length of Film Format of Original (DV, Mini DV, Umatic, Beta, Digital Media) Color/B&W, Sound/Silent Brief Summary of Film Artists Statement Artists Resume` >Send To: Pooja Sood, Curator, Apeejay Media Gallery Apeejay Surendra Group Apeejay House/Pragati Bhavan 1 Jaisingh Road New Delhi-110001 Tel: 91-11-23361193/4 __________________________________________________ Yahoo! Plus For a better Internet experience http://www.yahoo.co.uk/btoffer ------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From eye at ranadasgupta.com Sat Apr 12 20:26:00 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 20:26:00 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Is there some element in the US military that wants to take out journalists? Message-ID: 9 April 2003 The Independent.co.uk Robert Fisk: Is there some element in the US military that wants to take out journalists? http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=395412 First the Americans killed the correspondent of al-Jazeera yesterday and wounded his cameraman. Then, within four hours, they attacked the Reuters television bureau in Baghdad, killing one of its cameramen and a cameraman for Spain's Tele 5 channel and wounding four other members of the Reuters staff. Was it possible to believe this was an accident? Or was it possible that the right word for these killings ­ the first with a jet aircraft, the second with an M1A1 Abrams tank ­ was murder? These were not, of course, the first journalists to die in the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Terry Lloyd of ITV was shot dead by American troops in southern Iraq, who apparently mistook his car for an Iraqi vehicle. His crew are still missing. Michael Kelly of The Washington Post tragically drowned in a canal. Two journalists have died in Kurdistan. Two journalists ­ a German and a Spaniard ­ were killed on Monday night at a US base in Baghdad, with two Americans, when an Iraqi missile exploded amid them. And we should not forget the Iraqi civilians who are being killed and maimed by the hundred and who ­ unlike their journalist guests ­ cannot leave the war and fly home. So the facts of yesterday should speak for themselves. Unfortunately for the Americans, they make it look very like murder. The US jet turned to rocket al-Jazeera's office on the banks of the Tigris at 7.45am local time yesterday. The television station's chief correspondent in Baghdad, Tariq Ayoub, a Jordanian-Palestinian, was on the roof with his second cameraman, an Iraqi called Zuheir, reporting a pitched battle near the bureau between American and Iraqi troops. Mr Ayoub's colleague Maher Abdullah recalled afterwards that both men saw the plane fire the rocket as it swooped toward their building, which is close to the Jumhuriya Bridge upon which two American tanks had just appeared. "On the screen, there was this battle and we could see bullets flying and then we heard the aircraft," Mr Abdullah said. "The plane was flying so low that those of us downstairs thought it would land on the roof ­ that's how close it was. We actually heard the rocket being launched. It was a direct hit ­ the missile actually exploded against our electrical generator. Tariq died almost at once. Zuheir was injured." Now for America's problems in explaining this little saga. Back in 2001, the United States fired a cruise missile at al-Jazeera's office in Kabul ­ from which tapes of Osama bin Laden had been broadcast around the world. No explanation was ever given for this extraordinary attack on the night before the city's "liberation"; the Kabul correspondent, Taiseer Alouni, was unhurt. By the strange coincidence of journalism, Mr Alouni was in the Baghdad office yesterday to endure the USAF's second attack on al-Jazeera. Far more disturbing, however, is the fact that the al-Jazeera network ­ the freest Arab television station, which has incurred the fury of both the Americans and the Iraqi authorities for its live coverage of the war ­ gave the Pentagon the co-ordinates of its Baghdad office two months ago and received assurances that the bureau would not be attacked. Then on Monday, the US State Department's spokesman in Doha, an Arab-American called Nabil Khouri, visited al-Jazeera's offices in the city and, according to a source within the Qatari satellite channel, repeated the Pentagon's assurances. Within 24 hours, the Americans had fired their missile into the Baghdad office. The next assault, on Reuters, came just before midday when an Abrams tank on the Jamhuriya Bridge suddenly pointed its gun barrel towards the Palestine Hotel where more than 200 foreign journalists are staying to cover the war from the Iraqi side. Sky Television's David Chater noticed the barrel moving. The French television channel France 3 had a crew in a neighbouring room and videotaped the tank on the bridge. The tape shows a bubble of fire emerging from the barrel, the sound of a detonation and then pieces of paintwork falling past the camera as it vibrates with the impact. In the Reuters bureau on the 15th floor, the shell exploded amid the staff. It mortally wounded a Ukrainian cameraman, Taras Protsyuk, who was also filming the tanks, and seriously wounded another member of the staff, Paul Pasquale from Britain, and two other journalists, including Reuters' Lebanese-Palestinian reporter Samia Nakhoul. On the next floor, Tele 5's cameraman Jose Couso was badly hurt. Mr Protsyuk died shortly afterwards. His camera and its tripod were left in the office, which was swamped with the crew's blood. Mr Couso had a leg amputated but he died half an hour after the operation. The Americans responded with what all the evidence proves to be a straightforward lie. General Buford Blount of the US 3rd Infantry Division ­ whose tanks were on the bridge ­ announced that his vehicles had come under rocket and rifle fire from snipers in the Palestine Hotel, that his tank had fired a single round at the hotel and that the gunfire had then ceased. The general's statement, however, was untrue. I was driving on a road between the tanks and the hotel at the moment the shell was fired ­ and heard no shooting. The French videotape of the attack runs for more than four minutes and records absolute silence before the tank's armament is fired. And there were no snipers in the building. Indeed, the dozens of journalists and crews living there ­ myself included ­ have watched like hawks to make sure that no armed men should ever use the hotel as an assault point. This is, one should add, the same General Blount who boasted just over a month ago that his crews would be using depleted uranium munitions ­ the kind many believe to be responsible for an explosion of cancers after the 1991 Gulf War ­ in their tanks. For General Blount to suggest, as he clearly does, that the Reuters camera crew was in some way involved in shooting at Americans merely turns a meretricious statement into a libellous one. Again, we should remember that three dead and five wounded journalists do not constitute a massacre ­ let alone the equivalence of the hundreds of civilians being maimed by the invasion force. And it is a truth that needs to be remembered that the Iraqi regime has killed a few journalists of its own over the years, with tens of thousands of its own people. But something very dangerous appeared to be getting loose yesterday. General Blount's explanation was the kind employed by the Israelis after they have killed the innocent. Is there therefore some message that we reporters are supposed to learn from all this? Is there some element in the American military that has come to hate the press and wants to take out journalists based in Baghdad, to hurt those whom our Home Secretary, David Blunkett, has maliciously claimed to be working "behind enemy lines". Could it be that this claim ­ that international correspondents are in effect collaborating with Mr Blunkett's enemy (most Britons having never supported this war in the first place) ­ is turning into some kind of a death sentence? I knew Mr Ayoub. I have broadcast during the war from the rooftop on which he died. I told him then how easy a target his Baghdad office would make if the Americans wanted to destroy its coverage ­ seen across the Arab world ­ of civilian victims of the bombing. Mr Protsyuk of Reuters often shared the Palestine Hotel's elevator with me. Samia Nakhoul, who is 42, has been a friend and colleague since the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war. She is married to the Financial Times correspondent David Gardner. Yesterday afternoon, she lay covered in blood in a Baghdad hospital. And General Blount dared to imply that this innocent woman and her brave colleagues were snipers. What, I wonder, does this tell us about the war in Iraq? 'The American forces knew exactly what this hotel is' The Sky News correspondent David Chater was in the Palestine Hotel when the hotel was hit by American tank fire. This is his account of what happened. "I was about to go out on to the balcony when there was a huge explosion, then shouts and screams from people along our corridor. They were shouting, 'Somebody's been hit. Can somebody find a doctor?' They were saying they could see blood and bone. "There were a lot of French journalists screaming, 'Get a doctor, get a doctor'. There was a great sense of panic because these walls are very thin. "We saw the tanks up on the bridge. They started firing across the bank. The shells were landing either side of us at what we thought were military targets. Then we were hit. We are in the middle of a tank battle. "I don't understand why they were doing that. There was no fire coming out of this hotel ­ everyone knows it's full of journalists. "Everybody is putting on flak jackets. Everybody is running for cover. We now feel extremely vulnerable and we are now going to say goodbye to you." The line was cut but minutes later Chater resumed his report, saying journalists had been watching American forces from their balconies and the troops had surely been aware of their presence. "They knew exactly what this hotel is. They know the press corps is here. I don't know why they are trying to target journalists. There are awful scenes around me. There's a Reuters tent just a few yards away from me where people are in tears. It makes you realise how vulnerable you are. What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to carry on if American shells are targeting Western journalists?" From menso at r4k.net Sun Apr 13 06:47:55 2003 From: menso at r4k.net (Menso Heus) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2003 03:17:55 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Dutch news on Iraq Message-ID: <20030413011755.GA97194@r4k.net> Some items from Dutch news programs: NOVA -Images from Bagdhad turned into anarchy: Brief interview with US soldiers who were asked why they were not preventing the massive looting that is taking place in the city. The soldiers replied stating that they aren't allowed to interfere because then they will be playing the role of police officers and that's tricky because people then might not respect the local police anymore. Meanwhile, the local police is nowhere to be seen and the Iraqi's are looting shops, offices, hospitals and the Iraqi TV headquarters, most of them taking stuff they obviously don't even know what to do with. People in the street stamping their feet on an iraqi money bill which has the portrait of Saddam Hussein on it. One man in the crowd explains why Saddam was so bad: he turned brothers against brothers, children against their parents, he tore up entire families, thus he said. The crowd around him confirms. One man in the crowd however, steps forward when the other man is done talking. 'They are all hypocrits,' he says. He explains that all the people that the camera crew is filming now were all in favor of Saddam before the war started and that they are all members of the Bhaat party. 'These same people that are saying this now went into Kuwait and plundered there, and they are now plundering here!' NOVA - Images on board of a US aircraft carrier: A 20 year old kid, err, sorry, soldier, is being interviewed as he opens a package his family back home sent him. The box contains a lot of chewing gum. 'You can't that on board the ship,' he explains, 'so it's a rather hot item.' He also says that he can't wait to get back home. He expects people will treat him like a hero. The interviewer asks if he thinks having been in the war gives him a special status back home. 'Ofcourse, they're gonna love it. How many people can say they've been to war?' Shots of Americans watching the media spectacle of the breaking down of the Saddam statue. 'I feel happy' one soldier explains. 'This proves that the people were really oppressed.' Another soldier is looking puzzled at the images of the Iraqi's hitting the fallen statue with their shoes: 'What is up with these people and shoes?' he asks. RTL 4 NEWS - Images of Bagdhad turned into anarchy: Demonstrations of Iraqi's in front of the temporary US headquarters in the city. With fear on their faces the US soldiers are trying to keep control of a crowd of demonstrators that gathered in front of their headquaters. 'We want peace!' the crowd yells. One woman is screaming 'Murderers!' right into a soldiers face. What struck me most is the huge contrast between the 20 year old on the aircraft carrier thinking himself a hero and the Iraqi woman yelling 'murderers!' to the US soldiers down in Bagdhad... footage I strongly doubt will ever be broadcasted in the home of the free. Menso -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- And the price we paid was the price men have always paid for achieving a paradise in this life--we went soft, we lost our edge. - "Muad'Dib: Conversations" by the Princess Irulan -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From aiindex at mnet.fr Sun Apr 13 09:24:46 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2003 04:54:46 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] P. SAINATH on War, media, propaganda and language Message-ID: The Hindu / Magazine | Sunday, Apr 13, 2003 http://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/mag/mag/2003/04/13/stories/2003041300100100.htm War, media, propaganda and language: Coalition of the Killing `Coalition of the willing', `precision bombing', `surgical strikes', `decapitating the regime', `friendly fire' ... the list of terms could go on. In an analysis of the propaganda war in Iraq, and placing it in a historical context, award-winning journalist P. SAINATH looks at how the language in war journalism has become debased. "IT looks like it's a bombing of a city, but it isn't," Donald Rumsfeld told admiring media hacks. The bombardment was truly precise, he said. The altitude and angles were calculated to minimise harm to civilians. This, as 2,000 and 5,000-pound bombs and hundreds of missiles pulverised Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. Those were the early days of the war. There was nothing new in that sort of humbug, though. It happened with Hiroshima, too. Brigadier General Thomas Farrell - a scientist - sold the media similar moonshine about Little Boy and Fat Man. The atomic bombs, he told his captive hacks in Tokyo in 1945, were exploded at a "specifically calculated altitude" to "exclude any possibility of residual radiation." You couldn't get more humane than that. A team of American reporters visited Hiroshima nearly a month after the atomic blasts. On winding up their military-guided tour, these investigative journalists did more than just sell Farrell's line. They "expressed satisfaction with the complete destruction of the city," as the committee compiling materials on the A-blasts would later record. A few days after the touring hacks had done their bit in 1945, The New York Times chipped in with its own. It carried a story asserting: "No radioactivity in the ruins of Hiroshima." And just days later, the U.S. government, cheered by such embedded loyalty, went further. It denied officially that radiation was harmful. Little that's new happens in war propaganda. It just happens in different places. The media, though, do invent new ways of using language. Or, to borrow a phrase currently hip in Pentagonese, new ways of "degrading" the language. In 1965, when the Americans used deadly gas against the Vietnamese - civilian and military - Time magazine praised this as "non-lethal gas warfare". So did much of the other corporate media crowd. That warfare is by definition lethal didn't matter. The magazine lashed out at those making the "noisiest and hysterical protests." Time concluded that compared to weapons like napalm, "these temporarily disabling gases seem more humane than horrible". Napalm, by the way, was also used by the Americans against Vietnamese civilians. But Time did not dwell on that in its report. In the early part of the 20th Century, when classic colonialism held sway and barbarians knew their place, the British were more honest about these things. "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes," Winston Churchill said. "The moral effect should be good ... and it would spread a lively terror ...." He was commenting on the British use of poison gas against the Iraqis after World War I. Today the BBC paints British soldiers around Basra as so many Marine Mother Teresas. In a world of more democratic pressures, it's hard for Blair to be truly Churchillian. Lying comes easier to him. In our time, propaganda has to show that poison gas, far from creating a lively terror, is good for the Iraqis. In due course, they will thank us for it. The media are the means by which that line has to be sold. In the United States, when the corporate-owned media sense profits, they strain at the leash to sell the line better. General Electric, one of the planet's largest military contractors, owns the NBC television network. Other armament companies own, or are closely linked to a slew of other media outlets. The military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned of is now a military-media-industrial complex. That such media will serve their bosses as best as they can should not surprise us. In Bush's Coalition, they are the Most Willing. The emphasis now is on suggesting that "Coalition" control of Baghdad, and "regime change" when that happens, ends the conflict. Really? A glance at Afghanistan, where Kabul "fell" a long time ago, argues otherwise. And the media now covering Iraq know it. "President" Hamid Karzai has to be guarded by Americans. No Afghan can be trusted not to gun him down. The bloody deaths of civilians goes on and on. There too, "precision" was, and is, on vivid display. By generating wrong GPS coordinates, the Americans nearly blew away Karzai, their own man, during the war. U.S. missiles hit villages in Pakistan. And wedding parties have been blown to bits by U.S. aircraft. "Coalition," by the way is another term "degraded" in the present war. This coalition includes the likes of Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Estonia among others. The "weapons of mass destruction" that British troops in Iraq fear the most are those in the hands of Blair's U.S. buddies. The BBC did a moving, solemn production number on the return home of the first nine British war dead. They did not emphasise, though, that most of these unfortunate men had been slaughtered by Americans. "Friendly fire" is now too sickening a term to even make fun of, anymore. Indeed, in Pappy Bush's Gulf War of 1991, the Americans killed more British troops than the Iraqis did. But their "surgical strikes", didn't spare their own, either. As journalist Michael Moran points out: "Friendly fire by American forces killed one quarter of all the U.S. troops who died in that war." Thirty-five of the 146 Americans killed in the (1991) Gulf War were slain by their own side. The latest burst of friendly fire in this war has killed 18 Kurdish soldiers - U.S. allies - and some U.S. Special Forces men with them. If that's what the precise surgical strikes did to their own side, it's frightening to imagine what is happening now to Iraqi civilians. In the first two weeks of this war, those incredibly precise missiles landed in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and killed Syrians on that country's border with Iraq. A convoy evacuating the Russian Ambassador and other diplomats from Baghdad (who had sought and been guaranteed protection) was bombed by the Americans. In Iraq, they had killed hundreds of civilians in just the first two weeks. Maybe far, far more. The Iraqis too, had an interest in lying about the actual scale of death for fear of public demoralisation. Yet, even when many civilian deaths are confirmed, the lies continue: The Iraqis did it themselves. So what if the bomb that hit the market left behind an identifiable serial number? The Iraqis must have planted that piece of metal. It's engaging how the myths of "precision bombing" and "surgical strikes" linger despite having been discredited many times in the past. The idea, of course, is that technology in the hands of caring American and British soldiers, helps avoid civilian casualties. For audiences fed on western journalism's instant history of the last week, it might seem novel. Not so. In 1986, a U.S. "surgical strike" on Libya reduced the French Embassy in Tripoli to rubble. The Americans also succeeded in killing Gaddafi's three-year-old daughter - apparently a dangerous terrorist. Then as now, the U.S. struck to "decapitate the regime". In this war, an astonishing amount of firepower has been directed at everything Iraqi. But most civilians killed become "paramilitary" or soldiers "disguised as civilians". Any residential area flattened was really harbouring the Iraqi military. No one can count the number of "command and control" structures the Coalition of the Killing have taken out. It's as if every Iraqi phone booth destroyed becomes, posthumously, a "command and control structure". Yet, even after the first two weeks of this war, we saw the embedded press corps mostly parroting on. They still spoke of the "incredibly precise" nature of the bombing though, of course, a "few mistakes will be made". The repeated whines of some BBC reporters that the British were trying to send in "humanitarian aid" into Basra even while declaring it a "legitimate military target/objective" were nauseating. A people have to be bombed and butchered into accepting humanitarian aid. Their water and food supply has to be destroyed so they might be helped. Many - not embedded with the military - have pointed out that this aid could be delivered by air-dropping food and water instead of bombs. But the embedded ones did not - or were not allowed to - raise this question. Three weeks into the invasion, we still do not have a picture of the actual numbers of civilians who have died. But we do know that many more will die long after the bombing stops. Their resources destroyed, their water supply devastated, their hospitals bombed, overstrained and collapsing. The International Committee of the Red Cross puts it simply: Casualties in Baghdad are now so high that hospitals have stopped counting the number of people treated. No one has the time to keep statistics. Already the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations has warned that Iraq's winter grain harvest - and the spring planting - could be devastated. That it faces a huge food crisis. (One that will doubtless be met by dumping on a defenceless population GM foods in the name of "food aid"). But for the embedded ones, these are not the issues. Saddam was dead. His televised appearances had been recorded much earlier. (The debates were not about what he said, but whether it was indeed him.) The man on TV was really an actor resembling the Iraqi dictator. (The tabloids dug out a woman in Greece claiming to be an ex-mistress of Saddam to back this charge.) There were no U.S. prisoners in Iraqi hands. Several reporters "discovered" chemical "facilities" at Najaf. All these stories swiftly collapsed. (Though, of course, a smoking gun will soon be "found".) But the propaganda offensive kept on. A captured Iraqi "general" turned out, BBC admitted, to be "an officer of much lower rank" (maybe a sergeant?). "Scuds" that landed in Kuwait were all the rage in the first week. But the story was quietly denied by the Pentagon itself a little later. Umm Qasr, as veteran journalist Robert Fisk points out, had "fallen", was "captured", then "secured", and "finally under control". All in some 48 hours. But the embedded ones were undaunted. Their job was to wage the psychological war. Even by the sleazy standards of war journalism, they've plumbed new depths. Yet, the structures and principles of such deceit are quite old. The occasional embarrassment is inevitable. But the mainstream corporate media are far from being a hindrance to Bush's war effort. They are vital to its success. However unique some of the features of the war in Iraq might be, it is not "totally unprecedented". At least, not in propaganda terms. Many of the techniques used to "report" the war have a long and disgraceful history. As always, there are a few, valiant individual journalists doing their best. Those rare Robert Fisks of the world today. The Wilfred Burchetts of the Hiroshima era. The global corporate media conglomerates that have a vested interest - often a direct financial one - in this war are, however, the main "psy-ops" troops. Media weapons of mass destruction. Do fake stories coming unstuck mean the eternally embedded media haven't served their side well? Not really. Their role is too important and effective to ignore, especially within the U.S. The much-touted 70 per cent support for the war in the U.S. is based on startling untruths. Lies the American media have either left unchallenged or actively promoted. At least one New York Times/CBS News survey reflects this: As many as 42 per cent of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center. And, an ABC News poll shows, 55 per cent believe the Iraqi dictator directly supports Al-Qaeda. That these fictions are believed nowhere in the planet except in the United States is a tribute to the capacity of U.S. corporate media to manipulate their public. So, even as their image takes a beating, don't underestimate their ability to sell war and death. They've been doing it - with some success - for decades. -- From aiindex at mnet.fr Sun Apr 13 09:25:21 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2003 04:55:21 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Muzamil Jaleel : The politics of condemnation Message-ID: The Indian Express 9 April 2003 http://www.expressindia.com/kashmir/full_story.php?content_id=21667 The politics of condemnation Muzamil Jaleel Two gory incidents shattered Kashmir's calm last month and pushed the state back to the brink. The massacre of 24 Kashmiri Pandits in Nadimarg where unidentified assassins arrived in the night, dragged men, women, even infants and sprayed bullets. Even a physically challenged girl was not spared. Two days later, gunmen swooped on another village called Panihad in Poonch. They barged into two houses, collecting men, women and children. They beat them up and later chopped off the noses of six. The victims included the wife and children of a local Muslim priest. Both incidents were shockingly brutal. In both cases, the victims were ordinary Kashmiris. But the way the country, especially the top leadership, reacted to these two incidents points to the genesis of the Kashmir problem. Nadimarg was strongly condemned and rightly so. J&K Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was summoned to New Delhi and categorically asked to review his healing touch policy. He was not only asked to act tough on militancy but the massacre provoked a review of the entire counter-insurgency grid in the state. A senior Union home ministry official was tipped to co-ordinate the counter-insurgency operations. Senior leaders from Deputy PM L.K. Advani to Congress president Sonia Gandhi rushed to Nadimarg to show solidarity with the survivors. Advani told the Pandits who still live in Kashmir that the Centre would make all possible arrangements if they wished to migrate. Meanwhile, he promised that his government will do everything to provide adequate security to them, though he forgot to acknowledge the way the Muslims had come out to show solidarity with their Hindu neighbours in Nadimarg. Sonia Gandhi was equally concerned, but again she forgot that it was essential for her to compliment the Muslim neighbours in Nadimarg and around Kashmir who had come out to register their protest, especially as she had come as the chief of a party that claims to be the custodian of the country's composite culture and secular ethos. Ghulam Nabi Azad made two trips to Nadimarg, accompanied by all the senior Congress ministers in the Mufti government. The media camped in the otherwise godforsaken village for days. But the six villagers of Panihad - whose noses were chopped off and faces disfigured because they were suspected of helping the security forces - mourned alone. This is not new to Kashmir. Tragedies have always been compartmentalised here. The Panihad villagers don't form part of Advani's or Sonia Gandhi's constituency. If the victims were sympathisers of the militants or were killed by security forces like in the Gowkadal, Khanyar, Bijbehara or Sopore massacres, the absence of a reaction may have been understandable. But when Muslims are killed in the name of India, it exposes a pattern of selective condemnation, where the religion of the victim influences reaction to the tragedy. Such examples lie scattered from Kupwara to Surankote. One night a few years ago, a group of unidentified gunmen descended on Sheikhpora village at Ganderbal. Fourteen men were massacred leaving behind 30 orphans. Ghulam Mohammad Sheikh's family lost all its men, so did many among his neighbours. Reason: several of the village men had been actively involved in the counter-insurgency operations of the security forces. Nobody from South Block ever came rushing here with even a cosmetic condemnation. The Kashmir problem is more complex than the twin narratives of militant violence and security force atrocity would have us believe. It is bigger than the failure of democratic process and the rigging of elections. Its epicentre is perhaps in the people's sense of belonging to the country and its power structures. If the Panihad villagers or the widows of Sheikhpora fail to relate to India, the situation doesn't call for a POTA. The problem lies elsewhere. From tbyfield at panix.com Sun Apr 13 08:34:55 2003 From: tbyfield at panix.com (t byfield) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 23:04:55 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] questions about sri lanka Message-ID: <20030413030455.GB4692@panix.com> hi, saraians -- it seems that i'll be traveling to sri lanka for a few weeks, starting saturday 19 april: some time around colombo, then around the northern area. this is a research trip for a project i may do there, in the con- text of the peace process. the main focus of my research is community networking, but that qucikly opens up into many other aspects of life -- so my mandate is very open, which should be fun. i'm wondering if this group has any recommendations: people or organi- zations i should look up, phenomena or trends to keep an eye out for, possibilities you think are worth exploring, or any other suggestions, general or specific, would be an enormous help and greatly appreciated. cheers, t From aiindex at mnet.fr Sun Apr 13 11:06:27 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2003 06:36:27 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] questions about sri lanka In-Reply-To: <20030413030455.GB4692@panix.com> References: <20030413030455.GB4692@panix.com> Message-ID: I would recommend you meet up with people at the following groups: Women and Media Collective The Social Scientists Association Center for Policy Alternatives ICES National Peace Council MWRAF The Dept of Pol. Science at the University of Colombo cheers Harsh At 11:04 PM -0400 12/4/03, t byfield wrote: >hi, saraians -- > >it seems that i'll be traveling to sri lanka for a few weeks, starting >saturday 19 april: some time around colombo, then around the northern >area. this is a research trip for a project i may do there, in the con- >text of the peace process. the main focus of my research is community >networking, but that qucikly opens up into many other aspects of life >-- so my mandate is very open, which should be fun. > >i'm wondering if this group has any recommendations: people or organi- >zations i should look up, phenomena or trends to keep an eye out for, >possibilities you think are worth exploring, or any other suggestions, >general or specific, would be an enormous help and greatly appreciated. > >cheers, >t > >_________________________________________ >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 smitashu at vsnl.com Sun Apr 13 16:55:06 2003 From: smitashu at vsnl.com (s.choudhary) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2003 16:55:06 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Saddam & CIA Message-ID: <017001c301b3$d7d462e0$18ea41db@n4r8e2> http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2849.htm Exclusive: Saddam Was key in early CIA plot 04/11/03 UPI:By Richard Sale U.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their instrument for more than 40 years, according to former U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials. United Press International has interviewed almost a dozen former U.S. diplomats, British scholars and former U.S. intelligence officials to piece together the following account. The CIA declined to comment on the report. While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim. In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy in what one former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be identified, described as "a horrible orgy of bloodshed." According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. For example, in the mid-1950s, Iraq was quick to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact which was to defend the region and whose members included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan. Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to withdraw from the pact in 1959, an act that "freaked everybody out" according to a former senior U.S. State Department official. Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions of "real power," according to this official. The domestic instability of the country prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say publicly that Iraq was "the most dangerous spot in the world." In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative, told UPI the CIA had enjoyed "close ties" with Qasim's ruling Baath Party, just as it had close connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian leader Gamel Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement, Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist Baath Party "as its instrument." According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According to this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim's office in Iraq's Ministry of Defense, to observe Qasim's movements. Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy Babylon," said the move was done "with full knowledge of the CIA," and that Saddam's CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S. officials separately confirmed Darwish's account. Darwish said that Saddam's paymaster was Capt. Abdel Maquid Farid, the assistant military attaché at the Egyptian Embassy who paid for the apartment from his own personal account. Three former senior U.S. officials have confirmed that this is accurate. The assassination was set for Oct. 7, 1959, but it was completely botched. Accounts differ. One former CIA official said that the 22-year-old Saddam lost his nerve and began firing too soon, killing Qasim's driver and only wounding Qasim in the shoulder and arm. Darwish told UPI that one of the assassins had bullets that did not fit his gun and that another had a hand grenade that got stuck in the lining of his coat. "It bordered on farce," a former senior U.S. intelligence official said. But Qasim, hiding on the floor of his car, escaped death, and Saddam, whose calf had been grazed by a fellow would-be assassin, escaped to Tikrit, thanks to CIA and Egyptian intelligence agents, several U.S. government officials said. Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred by Egyptian intelligence agents to Beirut, according to Darwish and former senior CIA officials. While Saddam was in Beirut, the CIA paid for Saddam's apartment and put him through a brief training course, former CIA officials said. The agency then helped him get to Cairo, they said. One former U.S. government official, who knew Saddam at the time, said that even then Saddam "was known as having no class. He was a thug -- a cutthroat." In Cairo, Saddam was installed in an apartment in the upper class neighborhood of Dukki and spent his time playing dominos in the Indiana Café, watched over by CIA and Egyptian intelligence operatives, according to Darwish and former U.S. intelligence officials. One former senior U.S. government official said: "In Cairo, I often went to Groppie Café at Emad Eldine Pasha Street, which was very posh, very upper class. Saddam would not have fit in there. The Indiana was your basic dive." But during this time Saddam was making frequent visits to the American Embassy where CIA specialists such as Miles Copeland and CIA station chief Jim Eichelberger were in residence and knew Saddam, former U.S. intelligence officials said. Saddam's U.S. handlers even pushed Saddam to get his Egyptian handlers to raise his monthly allowance, a gesture not appreciated by Egyptian officials since they knew of Saddam's American connection, according to Darwish. His assertion was confirmed by former U.S. diplomat in Egypt at the time. In February 1963 Qasim was killed in a Baath Party coup. Morris claimed recently that the CIA was behind the coup, which was sanctioned by President John F. Kennedy, but a former very senior CIA official strongly denied this. "We were absolutely stunned. We had guys running around asking what the hell had happened," this official said. But the agency quickly moved into action. Noting that the Baath Party was hunting down Iraq's communist, the CIA provided the submachine gun-toting Iraqi National Guardsmen with lists of suspected communists who were then jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down, according to former U.S. intelligence officials with intimate knowledge of the executions. Many suspected communists were killed outright, these sources said. Darwish told UPI that the mass killings, presided over by Saddam, took place at Qasr al-Nehayat, literally, the Palace of the End. A former senior U.S. State Department official told UPI: "We were frankly glad to be rid of them. You ask that they get a fair trial? You have to get kidding. This was serious business." A former senior CIA official said: "It was a bit like the mysterious killings of Iran's communists just after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979. All 4,000 of his communists suddenly got killed." British scholar Con Coughlin, author of "Saddam: King of Terror," quotes Jim Critchfield, then a senior Middle East agency official, as saying the killing of Qasim and the communists was regarded "as a great victory." A former long-time covert U.S. intelligence operative and friend of Critchfield said: "Jim was an old Middle East hand. He wasn't sorry to see the communists go at all. Hey, we were playing for keeps." Saddam, in the meantime, became head of al-Jihaz a-Khas, the secret intelligence apparatus of the Baath Party. The CIA/Defense Intelligence Agency relation with Saddam intensified after the start of the Iran-Iraq war in September of 1980. During the war, the CIA regularly sent a team to Saddam to deliver battlefield intelligence obtained from Saudi AWACS surveillance aircraft to aid the effectiveness of Iraq's armed forces, according to a former DIA official, part of a U.S. interagency intelligence group. This former official said that he personally had signed off on a document that shared U.S. satellite intelligence with both Iraq and Iran in an attempt to produce a military stalemate. "When I signed it, I thought I was losing my mind," the former official told UPI. A former CIA official said that Saddam had assigned a top team of three senior officers from the Estikhbarat, Iraq's military intelligence, to meet with the Americans. According to Darwish, the CIA and DIA provided military assistance to Saddam's ferocious February 1988 assault on Iranian positions in the al-Fao peninsula by blinding Iranian radars for three days. The Saddam-U.S. intelligence alliance of convenience came to an end at 2 a.m. Aug. 2, 1990, when 100,000 Iraqi troops, backed by 300 tanks, invaded its neighbor, Kuwait. America's one-time ally had become its bitterest enemy. UPI: Richard Sale __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more http://tax.yahoo.com From smitashu at vsnl.com Sun Apr 13 18:05:01 2003 From: smitashu at vsnl.com (s.choudhary) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2003 18:05:01 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fw: Outlining the beast Message-ID: <027c01c301ba$f93ee7a0$18ea41db@n4r8e2> > > > > The Outline Of the Beast > > An Interview With Arundhati Roy > > Socialist Worker > > April 08, 2003 > > Arnove: The Corporate media ask the question over and over again: > > What can be done about Saddam Hussein? What's your response? > > > The question is disingenuous. Let's turn it around and ask instead: > > What do we do with George Bush and Tony Blair? Should we just stand > > by and watch while they bomb and kill and annihilate people? Saddam > > Hussein is a killer, and in the past, the U.S. and the UK governments > > have supported many of his worst excesses. > > The U.S. and UK have bombed Iraq's infrastructure, fired depleted > > uranium into Iraq's farmlands, blocked vaccines and hospital > > equipment, contributing to hundreds of thousands of deaths of > > children under five. Denis Halliday, the former UN humanitarian > > coordinator in Iraq, has called the sanctions a form of genocide. > > If you lifted the sanctions, Iraqi society might have gained the > > strength to overthrow their dictator (just like the people of > > Indonesia, Serbia, Romania overthrew theirs). > > And if it's repression, sectarianism and human rights abuses we're > > concerned about, let's also turn our attention to Colombia, Turkey, > > Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Central Asian Republics, Israel, Russia, > > China, India, Pakistan, Burma and, of course, America...Shall we pre- > > empt Saddam and bomb them all? Then he won't have anyone left to > > kill. > > The greatest threat to the world today is not Saddam Hussein, it's > > George Bush (joined at the hip to his new foreign secretary, Tony > > Blair). > > > Bush says that he's leading an "international coalition" against > > Iraq. What's your reaction to that? > > > The international Coalition of the Bullied and the Bought is what > > that coalition is more commonly called. > > The important thing to keep in mind is that it is governments that > > have been coerced, one way or another. Even the major "shareholders" > > in the coalition--governments of countries like Spain and Australia-- > > don't have the support of the majority of their people. > > There have been some interesting studies showing the nature of the > > regimes of some of the countries in this "coalition." Many of them > > are high up on the list of human rights violators--and have no > > business to criticize Saddam Hussein given their own reputations. > > Bush also says that this war is "defensive," and that it would > > be "suicidal" not to attack Iraq. > > That's like an elephant taking a long run-up to smash an ant to death- > > -and then saying that it was "defensive," and that to let the ant > > remain alive would have been suicidal. It would be fair to call the > > elephant paranoid and unstable. > > Oh, and that doesn't include the business of using the UN to disarm > > the ant before the elephant attacks. Apart from calling it paranoid > > and unstable, you could also call it a coward and a cheat. > > > In an interview on the Pacifica Radio program "Democracy Now!" you > > spoke about the "murder of language." Can you elaborate on that? > > > Freedom means mass murder now. In the U.S., it means fried potatoes > > (freedom fries). Liberation means invasion and occupation. When you > > hear the words "humanitarian aid," it's advisable to look around for > > induced starvation. We all know what collateral damage means. > > Of course, none of this is new. When the U.S. invaded South Vietnam > > and bombed the countryside, killing thousands of people and forcing > > thousands to flee to cities where they were held in refugee camps, > > Samuel Huntington called this a process of "urbanization." > > > The New York Times Magazine recently ran a cover that read "The New > > American Empire: Get Used to It." How is that message playing in > > India and elsewhere outside the United States? > > > In India, there is a dissonance between what people think of the war > > and the American Empire, and the deliberately ambiguous position of > > the Indian government. This war against Iraq has fuelled a lot of > > anger among a majority of people, but there are the opportunists, > > among the elite in particular, who are rather stupidly hoping to be > > thrown some crumbs in the "reconstruction" era. They're like hyenas. > > Vultures. > > No one's going to "get used" to the American Empire--no one can. This > > is because that empire can only survive and hold its position if it > > continues with its agenda of mass murder and mass dispossession. > > These are not things people get used to, however hard they try. You > > can expect to be killed, but you can't get used to the idea. > > It will be a bloody battle, this battle for the establishment and > > perpetuation of hegemony. The world is not a static place. It's wild > > and unpredictable. The American Empire isn't going to have all that > > easy a ride. The people of the world will not be lining the streets > > raining roses on the emperor. > > > More than 10 million people demonstrated around the world on February > > 15, including millions in the countries leading the war on Iraq. Why > > do you think we are seeing such large protests? > > > I think that there's only one reason. America has been stripped of > > its mask. Its secret history of brutal interventions and unforgivable > > manipulations is street talk. The dots have been joined, and the > > outline of the beast has emerged. > > > > Shubhranshu Choudhary > 312, Patrakar Parisar > Vasundhara sector 5 > Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India > Ph - 0091 120 288 3351 > mobile - 0091 98110 66749 > e mail -smitashu at vsnl.com > From smitashu at vsnl.com Sun Apr 13 18:05:30 2003 From: smitashu at vsnl.com (s.choudhary) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2003 18:05:30 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fw: Saddam & CIA Message-ID: <027d01c301ba$fa424de0$18ea41db@n4r8e2> > > > http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2849.htm > Exclusive: Saddam Was key in early CIA plot > > 04/11/03 > UPI:By Richard Sale > > U.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and low for Iraqi > dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past Saddam was seen by U.S. > intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as > their instrument for more than 40 years, according to former U.S. > intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials. > > United Press International has interviewed almost a dozen former U.S. > diplomats, British scholars and former U.S. intelligence officials to > piece together the following account. The CIA declined to comment on the > report. > > While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. > intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, > his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part > of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi > Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim. > > In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy in what one former > U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be identified, described as "a horrible > orgy of bloodshed." > > According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of > anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset in > the Cold War with the Soviet Union. For example, in the mid-1950s, Iraq > was quick to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact which was to defend the > region and whose members included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan. > > Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and conspiratorial regime > until his sudden decision to withdraw from the pact in 1959, an act that > "freaked everybody out" according to a former senior U.S. State Department > official. > > Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the > Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions > of "real power," according to this official. The domestic instability of > the country prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say publicly that Iraq > was "the most dangerous spot in the world." > > In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative, told UPI the > CIA had enjoyed "close ties" with Qasim's ruling Baath Party, just as it > had close connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian leader > Gamel Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement, Roger Morris, a former > National Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, > saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist Baath > Party "as its instrument." > > According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, > while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of > Qasim. According to this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in > Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim's office in Iraq's > Ministry of Defense, to observe Qasim's movements. > > Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy Babylon," said the > move was done "with full knowledge of the CIA," and that Saddam's CIA > handler was an Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. > U.S. officials separately confirmed Darwish's account. > > Darwish said that Saddam's paymaster was Capt. Abdel Maquid Farid, the > assistant military attaché at the Egyptian Embassy who paid for the > apartment from his own personal account. Three former senior U.S. > officials have confirmed that this is accurate. > > The assassination was set for Oct. 7, 1959, but it was completely botched. > Accounts differ. One former CIA official said that the 22-year-old Saddam > lost his nerve and began firing too soon, killing Qasim's driver and only > wounding Qasim in the shoulder and arm. Darwish told UPI that one of the > assassins had bullets that did not fit his gun and that another had a hand > grenade that got stuck in the lining of his coat. > > "It bordered on farce," a former senior U.S. intelligence official said. > But Qasim, hiding on the floor of his car, escaped death, and Saddam, > whose calf had been grazed by a fellow would-be assassin, escaped to > Tikrit, thanks to CIA and Egyptian intelligence agents, several U.S. > government officials said. > > Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred by Egyptian > intelligence agents to Beirut, according to Darwish and former senior CIA > officials. While Saddam was in Beirut, the CIA paid for Saddam's apartment > and put him through a brief training course, former CIA officials said. > The agency then helped him get to Cairo, they said. > > One former U.S. government official, who knew Saddam at the time, said > that even then Saddam "was known as having no class. He was a thug -- a > cutthroat." > > In Cairo, Saddam was installed in an apartment in the upper class > neighborhood of Dukki and spent his time playing dominos in the Indiana > Café, watched over by CIA and Egyptian intelligence operatives, according > to Darwish and former U.S. intelligence officials. > > One former senior U.S. government official said: "In Cairo, I often went > to Groppie Café at Emad Eldine Pasha Street, which was very posh, very > upper class. Saddam would not have fit in there. The Indiana was your > basic dive." > > But during this time Saddam was making frequent visits to the American > Embassy where CIA specialists such as Miles Copeland and CIA station chief > Jim Eichelberger were in residence and knew Saddam, former U.S. > intelligence officials said. > > Saddam's U.S. handlers even pushed Saddam to get his Egyptian handlers to > raise his monthly allowance, a gesture not appreciated by Egyptian > officials since they knew of Saddam's American connection, according to > Darwish. His assertion was confirmed by former U.S. diplomat in Egypt at > the time. > > In February 1963 Qasim was killed in a Baath Party coup. Morris claimed > recently that the CIA was behind the coup, which was sanctioned by > President John F. Kennedy, but a former very senior CIA official strongly > denied this. > > "We were absolutely stunned. We had guys running around asking what the > hell had happened," this official said. > > But the agency quickly moved into action. Noting that the Baath Party was > hunting down Iraq's communist, the CIA provided the submachine gun-toting > Iraqi National Guardsmen with lists of suspected communists who were then > jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down, according to former U.S. > intelligence officials with intimate knowledge of the executions. > > Many suspected communists were killed outright, these sources said. > Darwish told UPI that the mass killings, presided over by Saddam, took > place at Qasr al-Nehayat, literally, the Palace of the End. > > A former senior U.S. State Department official told UPI: "We were frankly > glad to be rid of them. You ask that they get a fair trial? You have to > get kidding. This was serious business." > > A former senior CIA official said: "It was a bit like the mysterious > killings of Iran's communists just after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power > in 1979. All 4,000 of his communists suddenly got killed." > > British scholar Con Coughlin, author of "Saddam: King of Terror," quotes > Jim Critchfield, then a senior Middle East agency official, as saying the > killing of Qasim and the communists was regarded "as a great victory." A > former long-time covert U.S. intelligence operative and friend of > Critchfield said: "Jim was an old Middle East hand. He wasn't sorry to see > the communists go at all. Hey, we were playing for keeps." > > Saddam, in the meantime, became head of al-Jihaz a-Khas, the secret > intelligence apparatus of the Baath Party. > > The CIA/Defense Intelligence Agency relation with Saddam intensified after > the start of the Iran-Iraq war in September of 1980. During the war, the > CIA regularly sent a team to Saddam to deliver battlefield intelligence > obtained from Saudi AWACS surveillance aircraft to aid the effectiveness > of Iraq's armed forces, according to a former DIA official, part of a U.S. > interagency intelligence group. > > This former official said that he personally had signed off on a document > that shared U.S. satellite intelligence with both Iraq and Iran in an > attempt to produce a military stalemate. "When I signed it, I thought I > was losing my mind," the former official told UPI. > > A former CIA official said that Saddam had assigned a top team of three > senior officers from the Estikhbarat, Iraq's military intelligence, to > meet with the Americans. > > According to Darwish, the CIA and DIA provided military assistance to > Saddam's ferocious February 1988 assault on Iranian positions in the > al-Fao peninsula by blinding Iranian radars for three days. > > The Saddam-U.S. intelligence alliance of convenience came to an end at 2 > a.m. Aug. 2, 1990, when 100,000 Iraqi troops, backed by 300 tanks, invaded > its neighbor, Kuwait. America's one-time ally had become its bitterest > enemy. > > > UPI: Richard Sale > > > __________________________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more > http://tax.yahoo.com > > > > > From aiindex at mnet.fr Sun Apr 13 19:22:24 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2003 14:52:24 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Film Review: Tareque Masud's 'Matirmoina' [The Clay Bird] Message-ID: http://www.matirmoina.com/ The New York Times Saturday, April 5, 2003 FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW | 'THE CLAY BIRD' A Child Copes With Dad's Zealotry By ELVIS MITCHELL This is probably an unusual — but perhaps apt — time for Tareque Masud's intelligent drama, "The Clay Bird," an offering of the New Directors/New Films series and easily one of the finest pictures of this year or any other. Masud's expansive fluidity is rapturous, inspired equally by the floating equanimity of Satyajit Ray and the work of the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, who deftly uses ritual behavior to provide social commentary. Set in Bangladesh in the 1960's, "The Clay Bird," showing tonight and tomorrow at noon, questions the nature of dedication to Islam. It doesn't attack fealty, but eventually rebukes zealotry by showing a boy's reaction to his father's recent total immersion. Anu (Nurul Islam Bablu) is sent off to a religious school by his father, Kazi (Jayanto Chattopadhyay). Kazi — who once "dressed as an Englishman," one of his friends says — doesn't want his son tainted by the outside world. His obedient though doubtful wife, Ayesha (Rokeya Prachy), quietly expresses through frowns her concern about Kazi's close-minded new seriousness. She gently reasons with her boy, and the bright Anu resigns himself to his new life. At the school, despite the rigorous discipline meted out by the teachers, there's the cliquishness and hierarchical behavior found among any group of young people. The boys initially ostracize the new kid but eventually accept him. Anu gravitates toward the one boy who will never be accepted: the oddball Rokon (Russell Farazi). Rokon can't suppress his enthusiasms, and he hasn't learned how to play up to the teachers by pretending to go along with the program, as the other boys have; they've already picked up the duplicity that adults often mistake for maturity. (They have to conceal much of themselves, since they're allowed to play only when practicing martial arts.) The loss of innocence is only one of the motifs here. Anu's sister becomes sick and suffers even more when Kazi refuses to let his wife give her antibiotics. He's wedded to homeopathy and prayer as treatment. Rokon is constantly rebuked by almost everyone. At one point, he's punished by a teacher for using his left hand to write; it's thought to be disrespectful. But Rokon keeps to his ways; his naturalness represents sacrifice, the biggest casualty of zealotry. He loves his imaginary friends and runs off to hiding places where he snacks on desserts that he claims to have received from a nonexistent playmate. The school does have one teacher not bound to rigid ideology: Ibrahim, who recognizes Anu's decency and takes as much interest in Rokon's well-being as he can under the circumstances. But it's hard when Rokon is plagued by a buzzing in his ears, occurring at the worst times, as when one of the instructors delivers a grim sermon on the conviction needed for Islam. Masud's sensitivity gives the film a pungent emotional clarity; he recognizes that naïveté isn't a province only of childhood. Kazi's a naif, too, and learns the hard way that following a path without independent thought is a fool's errand. He's ultimately devastated when he learns of the civil war and Muslims attacking other Muslims: the revolution is coming and it claims Kazi's way of life. His brother, the bespectacled, curious Milon, can smell change in the winds and waxes rhapsodic about it. (He slips the medicine for Anu's sister to Ayesha and gets scolded by Kazi for his love of "Hindu nonsense.") "The Clay Bird" is not without a sense of humor. Milon has his strongly held beliefs, too; he's devoted to Communism and its ideals. Such a need connects these men as brothers, and it's gently mocked: "Kazi's homeopathy and your Marx party, both came from Germany," one of Milon's pals says. It's also evident that Masud loves all his characters, even the small-minded ones — the sign of a real director. It's no small achievement to make a picture that extols the necessity for clear, free thought while dramatizing the barriers that challenge such a capacity. THE CLAY BIRD Directed by Tareque Masud; written (in Bengali, with English subtitles) by Mr. Masud and Catherine Masud; director of photography, Sudheer Palsane; edited and produced by Ms. Masud; music by Moushumi Bhowmik; art directors, Kazi Rakib and Sylvain Nahmias. Running time: 98 minutes. This film is not rated. Shown with a 10-minute short, Nilesh Patel's "Love Supreme," tonight at 9 p.m. and Sunday at noon at the MoMA Gramercy, 127 East 23rd Street, between Lexington and Third Avenues, as part of the 32nd New Directors/New Films series of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the department of film and media of the Museum of Modern Art. WITH: Nurul Islam Bablu (Anu), Russell Farazi (Rokon), Jayanto Chattopadhyay (Kazi) and Rokeya Prachy (Ayesha). "MATIR MOINA" (THE CLAY BIRD) PREMIERES IN NEW YORK “Matir Moina”(The Clay Bird), an autobiographical first feature from Bangladesh, had its New York premiere April 5th and 6th at the New Directors/New Films festival organized by the film society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art. The much acclaimed film, which won the International Critics’ Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002, was Bangladesh’s first ever official entry to the Academy Awards competition. Both shows of “Matir Moina” were sold out two weeks in advance of the screenings at the Gramercy Theatre in the heart of Manhattan. In his introductory address to the audience, director Tareque Masud expressed his happiness at being able to show the film in his “second home” New York City, where he and his wife Catherine lived for five years in the early 90’s. He received full applause from the audience when he added, “But this is also a very sad time to show this film, when so many innocents are being victimized by a war that is unnecessarily widening the divide between the West and the Muslim world.” In the Saturday April 5th issue of the New York Times, the film was praised in a review by well-known critic Elvis Mitchell, who called it “easily one of the finest films of this year or any other” and compared its “expansive fluidity” to the work of Satyajit Ray and Abbas Kiarostami. Mitchell also pointed out that that the film “doesn’t attack fealty, but eventually rebukes zealotry” by showing a boy’s reaction to his father’s new found religious fervor. The film screenings were followed by a lively and extended question and answer session with the audience. The main actress of the film, Rokeya Prachy, was also present on the occasion. From epk at xs4all.nl Mon Apr 14 03:31:22 2003 From: epk at xs4all.nl (EricKluitenberg) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 00:01:22 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] The Digital Commons & hybridisation Message-ID: Dear members of the Reader List, Since its beginnings I have been a lurker on this list, often impressed by the level of discussion in this forum. I am working on a text (that might still change shape significantly) around the theme of the Digital Commons. Since the excellent writings of the RAQS media collective and the work of Sarai introduced me to this concept and a whole new array of thinking about media and the city, I also want to distribute this work-in-progress here... The text collates ideas about the notion of the Digital Commons as introduced by the RAQS media collective from Delhi, with ideas we have been exploring with a number of Russian and Dutch artists in the urban / media project "Debates & Credits - Media Art in the Public Domain", initiated by Moscow based curator Tatiana Goryucheva. The latter project deals very much with urban intervention by means of electronic media, and cross-connecting physical / urban space with the placeless space of electronic media. (project web site: http://www.debates.nl) I am trying to figure out how to connect the discussion of the digital commons to the attempts to reclaim public space and turn it back into community space. I can see that the text as yet does not succeed fully in making that connection convincingly, and so I am collecting responses and criticism. The attempt does point towards something I consider crucial, however: strategies of hybridisation, i.e. direct connections between the open channels on the internet and the closed channels of mass media (radio, television, satellite), connections between electronic media space and public physcial space (the city), and finally connections between different disciplinary discourses that can each contribute important insights for this discussion. I hope some of you will find this material useful or interesting... kind regards, eric ---------------------------------- Constructing the Digital Commons A venture into hybridisation by Eric Kluitenberg March 2003 Democracy can be understood in two notably distinct ways. In the institutional view democracy is understood as the interplay of institutional actors that represent 'the people' and are held accountable through the plebiscite; public votes, polls and occasionally referenda. The second view on democracy is radically different in that it sees the extent to which people can freely assemble, discuss and share ideas about vital social issues, organise themselves around these issues, and can freely voice their opinions in public fora, as a measure for just how democratic a given society is. In the second view the state, as the suspect usual embodiment of institutional democracy is not necessarily ruled out. It is, however, clearly delimited in its role as the carrier of democracy. Rather, the state would be seen here as the unfortunately necessary institutional actor that should guarantee the space to exist where democracy as understood in the second view can unfold. We1 can put name tags on both views. We speak here about a shift from representational; democracy towards participatory democracy. Implied is also a secondary shift, away from the state and towards the by far no less problematic notion of community as an organising principle for democratic social ordering. Now, my purpose here is not to write an essay on political theory, but rather to prepare the grounds for a discussion of a concept that is closely aligned with these macro-political trends, and that has surfaced recently in a range of different discussions, and across a range of different disciplines and contexts: the notion of the "commons". Interestingly the concept of the commons has popped up quite persistently in discussions about the social dimension of communication and networking technology, and the shaping of an emerging network society. What all these discussions and projects share is a concern that the potential of digital networking to create an open and democratic knowledge and communication space is squandered in favour of narrow short term economic interests. Interests, however, that are promoted by some of the most powerful economic and political players on the globe today. That the figure of the commons pops up in this context may hardly come as a surprise. In societies saturated with media and communication technologies, social processes cannot be understood in isolation anymore, but only in relation to the interconnectedness of all social, political and cultural domains through the various systems of real-time mediation: television, radio, satellite communications, internet and digital networks, cell phones and third generation wireless media. Conversely the space of electronic communications cannot be separated from the real-life contexts it is interwoven with, the remnants of musings about a disembodied 'cyberspace' now lie dormant in dead websites as pre-historical remains, the vestiges of the virtual, much like the palaeontological study objects of the various extinct dinosaurs species.... Over the last few years the real-existing powers of vested interests have come into play quite dramatically in the on-line world. After the dotcom invasion and the general push for commodification of the information space, the powers of policing, surveillance and control moved prominently into the digital networked domain. The great experiment of an unfettered communication space that internet as a public medium seemed to provide now seems more like a historical and temporary window of opportunity. If we still care about a common space of knowledge, ideas and information, mediated world-wide by networked digital media we can no longer accept that as a given; i.e. as 'naturally' embodied in the Internet. Instead the space of interconnected digital networks should be seen as a new site for political controversy and struggle, where the open zones, the on-line gathering places, the shared resources should be safeguarded and protected from the powerful forces that threaten them. There is still a huge potential for the digital commons, but it requires the formulation of a political agenda that needs to be actively pursued. All this hints at the necessity for a new set of conceptual tools that can help us to understand the conditions under which these new social dynamics unfold. The first dynamic that should be grasped is that of hybridisation: hybridisation of media and communication modes, hybridisation of space, but also hybridisation of disciplines, and hence also hybridisation of discourses. Hybridity is a defining condition where the figure of the commons should to come into play. No clean cuts here, no hygienised or independent cyberspace, no virtualisation, but also no stable 'real' that puts our feet on the ground -not even on the battle field, even though people still die there... No escape from the dirt: the domain of hybridity is a messy place..... Defining 'The Commons' Main Entry: common Function: noun Date: 14th century 1) plural : the common people 2) plural but singular in construction : a dining hall 3) plural but singular or plural in construction, often capitalized a : the political group or estate comprising the commoners b : the parliamentary representatives of the commoners c : HOUSE OF COMMONS 4 : the legal right of taking a profit in another's land in common with the owner or others 5 : a piece of land subject to common use: as a : undivided land used especially for pasture b : a public open area in a municipality [Source: Webster on-line dictionary] The origin of the concept of the commons dates back to the 14th century and refers to the notion of "common land" as it emerged in England at that time. The idea was introduced together with protective measures to tackle the problem that walking paths, required to connect disparate villages and regions with each other, were continuously transformed into farming land, i.e. privatised, thus cutting of the connections between various communities. It turned out that for these paths to remain open they needed some form of public protection, and this protection had to be enforced for the greater good of the "commons". In their conversation on the digital commons by the members of the Raqs video collective, co-founders of the Sarai new media initiative in Delhi, Monica Narula recounts that particular history "I was told by a friend of the ramblers in England - who go on long walks for the wonderful pleasure of taking in "mountain, moor, heath and down" - that when they walk, they do so partly to keep public paths public. Many of these walking routes have emerged from being trod by countless people over countless years. By law, if they are not used by the public to walk on them, they will revert to private ownership." by Monica Narula, "Tales of the Commons Culture", in Mute Magazine, London July 2001. So there is an almost Witgensteinian formula here. For the paths to remain common land they have to be used, i.e. the common space is defined and constructed through use. It is not a given, it is a product of living social praxis (indeed like language), and it evolves over time. It is not permanent but can be maintained over many generations, just as long as the next generation actually cares enough about the commons to actually use them. Importantly the commons here is also not a passive principle, some kind of available resource that can be used, or not used, according to will. If no one takes responsibility for the commons (here for the common land of walking paths, the space of connection) then the commons disappear. It is organically interwoven with the very fabric of the communities who share this common space . The commons at first sight is close to the wider notion of public domain. In our FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) about the public domain, we, a group of writers from Amsterdam, defined the public domain as follows in '99: "The public domain is traditionally understood as a commonly shared space of ideas and memories, and the physical manifestations that embody them. The monument as a physical embodiment of community memory and history exemplifies this principle most clearly. Access, signification, disgust, and appropriation of the public monument are the traditional forms in which the political struggles over collective memory and history are carried out." Source: FAQ about the Public Domain - a.o. at: http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9901/msg00063.html The American writer and policy strategist David Bollier however points out that the wider concept of the public domain should be differentiated from that of the commons2. The public domain in his view implies a passive open space that can be shared by anyone and everyone, and thus belongs to everyone and none at the same time. The public domain invites the problem of responsibility. Since there is no boundary implied, nor any kind of ownership, neither private nor collective, nobody feels responsible for the resources that reside in the public domain.3 The concept of the commons on the contrary implies boundaries. The commons refers to a resource, to common land, to common means of production, knowledge or information, that are shared amongst a more or less well-defined community. There is ownership here, but the ownership is collective, rather than individual. Furthermore, the rules of how these common resources are shared, and amongst whom, are not necessarily fixed in intransmutable rules. In the case of a digital commons, the notion of the commons no longer refers only to a territory, i.e. to a geographically situated community, but can also refer to a group of people who share a common interest or set ideas, yet who may be distributed potentially world-wide. Here we see where the hybridity comes in: the commons is extended from a set of shared physical resources (common land) to an immaterial domain (ideas, knowledge, information), and secondly the commons is extended from something that is necessarily geographically situated (walking paths) to something that is shared across geographical divides, because it is electronically mediated via digital networks. But in all of these cases the commons are not entirely 'free'. There are rules and mechanism of access, and limitations on use that are defined by the shared values of the community sharing these resources. I do not wish to sketch a parochial image here, there is by no means a nostalgia for the traditional (village-) community. The commons communities can take a host of different forms, informal, permeable, professional, situated, dispersed, formal, or anarchic. But they share a set of common characteristics that move them away from the free-for-all notion so often attached to the early developmental stages of the internet as a public medium. Most importantly the concept of collective ownership implies responsibility, and the survival of common resources rely on the willingness of people to take responsibility for them. Often the commons take their vitality from their connectedness to real-life embodied needs and issues, not from their separation and disconnectedness from these earthly concerns - this fleshes out a further sharp distinction from the cyber-utopian discourses of the late 90s. It re-emphasises the need to explore the conditions of hybridisation that inform the digital commons and that require specific strategies to make them viable. Hybrid Media The first immediate strategy to engage this new terrain of hybridity is to no longer consider the networked media as separate from the rest of the media landscape. On the one hand there has been a much discussed technical convergence of media, where the means of production of traditional media have become increasingly digital and thus promote cross-connections between formerly separate media forms, disciplines, and fields of application. But more important and interesting is the paradox that while a plethora of new media forms emerged because of digitalisation of different media forms and because in the course of this development media production tools became radically simplified and cheaper, this trend at democratisation of the media on the level of its technical realisation has in no way threatened the dominant position of mainstream media in determining public discourse. So where is that dreamt of democratic media space? In fact enormous concentrations of media production facilities, companies and distribution lines in the hands of only a very few corporate media giants has pursued the digitalisation and convergence of media as much as it supposed democratisation. This move towards integration (horizontal and vertical, i.e. not only production but also distribution of media products) has seriously diminished the diversity of the mainstream media landscape. Standardisation of formats and one-sided programming choices are exported world-wide in a move towards unification rather than diversification. The alternative media have been left behind in a marginalised position, not able to communicate to a wider audience beyond their own constituency, often relegated to the ghetto of the Internet. The counter strategy here is hybridisation of the media themselves. Where the corporate mainstream embraces hybridisation as a way of extending its market share, the 'other' media seek to broaden their communication space. It is here where the lessons can be learned from the sovereign experiments that have been conducted throughout the late nineties by the artistic and subversive media producers: The successful mediator needs to be platform independent, must be able to switch between media forms, cross-connect and rewire all platforms to find new communication spaces. In this context we see where the experiments with web casting and cross connections to radio, television, cable and even satellite become extremely valuable - they become tools to break out of the marginalised ghetto of seldomly visited websites and unnoticeable live streams. All these cross connections can create a sovereign media space that is not defined by functional interests (power, money, market share), but orient themselves primarily on establishing a new kind of public communication space, no longer the exclusive domain of the professional media elite... Hybrid Space The second strategy is that of hybridising different spatial logics. The commons today exist primarily in the sphere of mediation, which by virtue of satellite and network connections have become potentially global. While places do still matter very much, if only because more than 80 percent of the worlds population is disconnected from the sphere of electronic and in particular digital mediation, social discourse and communication and thus ultimately the language of power itself is shaped in this sphere of electronic mediation. It has become a common place observation that in war the centres electronic mediation and communication, the relay points, have become the prime target of any attacking force. But this electronic mediation only makes sense if in the end it reconnects to embodied material reality. If we want to make the new sphere of power democratically accountable, and carve out the open spaces for unfettered public communication, we need to think about models that can address the hybridity of these spaces; the connections and disjunctures between the places in which people live and the sphere of electronic mediation that increasingly determines the conditions under which they live in those places. There are no simple formulas to describe how these different spheres actually relate to each other, the connections are manifold and often site specific, yet the complexity is to great to go by them on a case by case basis. So we should approach them with necessarily incomplete models and descriptions. What we can do is to explore the spatial logic and social dynamics of the physical public space and the mediated public communication spaces. Rather than theorising them it seems more productive to approach them by creating specific conditions of experiencing the differences and connections between these two spatial logics. This move from discourse to experience invariably brings us to the domain of the arts. reBoot In 1999 we, De Balie centre for culture and politics in Amsterdam and the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, organised an interesting experiment that very consciously explored the relationship of the physical public space, in transitory setting and where possible connected in real-time to the 'place-less' electronic media space. The project called reBoot - a floating media art experiment, put about 50 artists (German and Dutch) together on a big party boat for a week, which was transformed into a floating media laboratory and presentation and performance space. The boat moved between Cologne and Rotterdam and Amsterdam, and docked in the cities Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Emmerich,. Arnhem and Rotterdam (all on the river Rhine, and finally ended up in Amsterdam. reBoot website: http://www.khm.de/~reboot/ The interesting experience was first of all the fixity of the media location of the project, a web site with a fixed URL, some live streams with sound and video material and TV broadcasts mainly on Amsterdam cable television. During the week as much material as possible was released through these fixed media channels. The permanently changing position of the boat and the artistic experiments that were conducted on board in reference to the changing scenery and context the boat were in sharp contrast with the fixed media location. Suddenly the media location seemed to be much more of a stable point, a 'place', a reference point, than the physical space. It introduces us to a reversal of perception that will become increasingly strong over the coming years as we stand on the threshold of the wide adoption of a new generation of wireless media. Increasingly our physical location will become transient and fluid, whereas our media location becomes increasingly fixed. There seems to be a compelling need to always be connected, to have a fixed and continuously accessible media location, while at the same time there is a growing anxiety and desire for control over the new fluidity of the physical location. As wireless and mobile media become more sophisticated they increase the potential for physical mobility (since you can now be reached anywhere and you can work everywhere), but this mechanism only increases the anxiety about the loss of grip on the "other's" whereabouts. Today this is already exemplified in the continuous question by mobile phone users "Where are you?" to the person at the other end of the line. Urban Intervention Where before the social space was the town square, the parks, the halls of assembly, the sites of demonstrations and mass gatherings: the sites where social discourse was shaped, now electronic media introduce a new scale to human affairs and social relationships. This is nothing new. It is an on-going process since the invention of telecommunications, radio and television, and the many new communication technologies that followed them. Yet, the feeling remains that whoever controls the city space holds true power. The sway of control over public urban space projects a strong sense of power that also works in the media environment, perhaps as a sign of the lost 'real', who knows? If you want to have stake in shaping public discourse you need to create not only a hybridised presence in the media environment beyond the ghetto of the internet, but this presence should also manifest itself on the streets. It is in the interplay between these two spaces in particular, urban and mediated, that social discourse and communication takes shape. If these spaces should be opened up for alternative arguments, ideas and participants hybridised forms of intervention are required. I worked together with Moscow based curator Tania Goryucheva on the Russian / Dutch art and media project "Debates & Credits - Media Art in the Public Domain". For the project four artists and artist collectives from Russia and four from The Netherlands were invited to design interventionist media projects for the public urban space. These projects were finally executed in the Fall of 2002 in Amsterdam, Ekaterinburg and Moscow respectively. The project was triggered by the obvious crisis of the urban public space in Moscow. The city is completely overgrown with commercial advertising, a new form of propaganda. Driving around the city one is struck by the pervasiveness and aggressiveness of this new urban visuality. The advertisements have escalated into a completely over-dimensional scale. Billboards transform into giant kinetic sculptures, the original structure of the city lay-out at times disappears completely in a sea of billboard messages, competing for attention. At other times entire buildings are transformed into a corporate message, while elsewhere historical buildings and sites are re-branded as a monument for a mainstream brand of beer or a luxury car producer. The city space seems out of control, fallen into anarchy... But when we started to investigate how to place our artistic projects inside this public space we found out that this seemingly anarchic out of control space was in fact tightly regulated. So much so that some of the projects planned for the Moscow edition of the project had to be executed without any permission (and with significant risk), or cancelled or reframed. The project looked at public space deliberately as a combination of physical and media spaces. The artists also developed a wide range of different interventions that somehow played with this double character of social space, from small scale street performances (filmed and broadcast on television) to spectacular mobile projection actions in characteristic spaces in Amsterdam and Moscow, art works prepared specially for TV and in Ekaterinburg also for outdoor electronic screens in the city centre, projects for public transport sites, wall paintings, but also an internet forum on legality and illegality initially connected with street interventions These interventions, often poetic, at times confrontational, sometimes intimate, personal, sometimes spectacular, can be seen as attempts to develop models for opening up urban and media spaces for other forms of social communication that deviate from the main-stream norm. The estrangement of these spaces by the intrusion of alien elements in the main-stream public environment breaks the norm of these spaces and can (temporarily) open them up for a variety of alternative discourses, cultural forms, and ideas. Debates & Credits - A Dutch / Russian Art / Media Project: http://www.debates.nl http://www.balie.nl/d&c Hybrid Discourses Finally it is important to note that the figure of the commons has emerged across a wide variety of disciplinary contexts. This implies that the adoption of this concept by all these different disciplines gives rise to hybridisation of different disciplinary discourses. Besides the concept of the digital commons as put forward by the RAQs and Sarai group from Delhi, two other strong initiatives have emerged that embrace the notion of the commons in the struggle for a more open and democratic knowledge and information space. The Information Commons: http://www.info-commons.org The Information Commons is a project that stems from the American Library Association that see a big threat in the commodification of the digital information space and the imposition of ever stricter copyright rules and Intellectual Property Laws. They see this development as a mayor impediment to their appointment to make as many information and knowledge resources available to the wider public as somehow, anyhow, possible. Where technically the digital media hold an enormous potential for their mission, the new legal frameworks, most notably the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) pose increasing limitations on their ability to fulfil their mission. The Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org Similarly, the Creative Commons is another project that reacts to the stringent limitations imposed by new legal systems such as the DMCA on the digital world. But here the project is coming from the side of Information Law. Driven primarily by information law specialists Lawrence Lessig and James Boyle, the creative commons offers a set of licensing systems that enable people to release their intellectual products with various degrees of freedom. Lessig, Boyle, and many others are afraid that the ever stricter IPL frameworks stifle cultural and intellectual development, and in the end will kill-off the creative and innovative potential of digital networking. Cultural development has always relied intrinsically on the exchange of new ideas and innovations, and should be considered an incremental process. New forms and cultural concepts don't just drop out of the sky like some deus ex machina, they are created by dialogue, contention and disagreement. The question of 'ownership' here is in any case questionable, and in many cultures actually non-existent when it comes to cultural concepts, forms and ideas. Beyond the rethorics of innovation it is important to recognise that a democratic society and a democratic mode of social communication cannot exist without open access to information, knowledge, and ideas. Even more so it requires the possibility for citizens to get access to this variety of communication spaces I sketched here; physical, urban, and mediated. These resources and spaces are no natural givens, no passive entities, they need to be created, protected and maintained, they are the commons, that what is shared by a community of people who care enough to sustain them through actual use. 1 "We" should be understood to refer to a number of theorists who have circled around this conceptual shift. Most recently Naomi Klein critiqued the World Social Forum for loosing sight of this important political distinction (Klein, The Hijacking of the WSF, Jan. 20, 2003) 2 See david Bollier's website for further details: http://www.bollier.org/ 3 There is a further complication that outside of the Anglosaxonic cultural sphere the notion of public domain and its translations means a host of different things - the concept of "la domaine publique" in French for instance refers strictly to the domain of the state. The commons as a term remains by and large untranslatable since the notion of common land is not a transferable concept, but at least it does not give rise to erroneous cross-language interpretation... From aiindex at mnet.fr Mon Apr 14 07:46:15 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 03:16:15 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Welcome aboard the Iraqi gravy train Message-ID: http://www.observer.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,935649,00.html Welcome aboard the Iraqi gravy train Congratulations to all the winners of tickets to take part in the greatest rebuilding show on earth Terry Jones Sunday April 13, 2003 The Observer Well the war has been a huge success, and I guess it's time for congratulations all round. And wow! It's hard to know where to begin. First, I'd like to congratulate Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) and the Bechtel Corporation, which are the construction companies most likely to benefit from the reconstruction of Iraq. Contracts in the region of $1 billion should soon coming your way, chaps. Well done! And what with the US dropping 15,000 precision-guided munitions, 7,500 unguided bombs and 750 cruise missiles on Iraq so far and with more to come, there's going to be a lot of reconstruction. It looks like it could be a bonanza year. Of course, we all know that KBR is the construction side of Halliburton, and it has been doing big business with the military ever since the Second World War. Most recently, it got the plum job of constructing the prison compound for terrorists suspects at Guantanamo Bay. Could be a whole lot more deluxe chicken coops coming your way in the next few months, guys. Stick it to 'em. I'd also like to add congratulations to Dick Cheney, who was chief executive of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000, and who currently receives a cheque for $1 million a year from his old company. I guess he may find there's a little surprise bonus in there this year. Well done, Dick. Congratulations, too, to former Secretary of State, George Schultz. He's not only on the board of Bechtel, he's also chairman of the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a group with close ties to the White House committed to reconstructing the Iraqi economy through war. You're doing a grand job, George, and I'm sure material benefits will be coming your way, as sure as the Devil lives in Texas. Oh, before I forget, a big round of appreciation for Jack Sheehan, a retired general who sits on the Defence Policy Board which advises the Pentagon. He's a senior vice president at Bechtel and one of the many members of the Defence Policy Board with links to companies that make money out of defence contracts. When I say 'make money' I'm not joking. Their companies have benefited to the tune of $76bn just in the last year. Talk about a gravy train. Well, Jack, you and your colleagues can certainly look forward to a warm and joyous Christmas this year. It;s been estimated that rebuilding Iraq could cost anything from $25bn to $100bn and the great thing is that the Iraqis will be paying for it themselves out of their future oil revenues. What's more, President Bush will be able to say, with a straight face, that they're using the money from Iraqi oil to benefit the Iraqi people. 'We're going to use the assets of the people of Iraq, especially their oil assets, to benefit their people,' said Secretary of State Colin Powell, and he looked really sincere. Yessir. It's so neat it makes you want to run out and buy shares in Fluor. As one of the world's biggest procurement and construction companies, it recently hired Kenneth J. Oscar, who, as acting assistant secretary of the army, took care of the Pentagon's $35bn-a-year procurement budget. So there could also be some nice extra business coming its way soon. Bully for them. But every celebration has its serious side, and I should like to convey my condolences to all those who have suffered so grievously in this war. Particularly American Airlines, Qantas and Air Canada, and all other travel companies which have seen their customers dwindle, as fear of terrorist reprisals for what the US and Britain have done in Iraq begins to bite. My condolences also to all those British companies which have been disappointed in their bid to share in the bonanza that all this wonderful high-tech military firepower has created. I know it must be frustrating and disheartening for many of you, especially in the medical field, knowing there are all those severed limbs, all that burnt flesh, all those smashed skulls, broken bones, punctured spleens, ripped faces and mangled children just crying out for your products. You could be making a fortune out of the drugs, serums and surgical hardware, and yet you have to stand on the sidelines and watch as US drug companies make a killing. Well, Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian President, has some words of comfort for us all. As he recently pointed out, this adventure by Bush and Blair will have created such hatred throughout the Arab world, that 100 new bin Ladens will have been created. So all of us here in Britain, as well as in America, shouldn't lose heart. Once the Arab world starts to take its revenge, there should be enough reconstruction to do at home to keep business thriving for some years to come. From aiindex at mnet.fr Mon Apr 14 07:46:49 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 03:16:49 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Noam Chomsky Interview - April 13, 2003 Message-ID: ZNet | VisionStrategy Noam Chomsky Interviewed by Noam Chomsky and MIchael Albert; April 13, 2003 (1) Why did the U.S. invade Iraq, in your view? These are naturally speculations, and policy makers may have varying motives. But we can have a high degree of confidence about the answers given by Bush-Powell and the rest; these cannot possibly be taken seriously. They have gone out of their way to make sure we understand that, by a steady dose of self-contradiction ever since last September when the war drums began to beat. One day the "single question" is whether Iraq will disarm; in today's version (April 12): "We have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction -- that is what this war was about and is about." That was the pretext throughout the whole UN-disarmament farce, though it was never easy to take seriously; UNMOVIC was doing a good job in virtually disarming Iraq, and could have continued, if that were the goal. But there is no need to discuss it, because after stating solemnly that this is the "single question," they went on the next day to announce that it wasn't the goal at all: even if there isn't a pocket knife anywhere in Iraq, the US will invade anyway, because it is committed to "regime change." The next day we hear that there's nothing to that either; thus at the Azores summit, where Bush-Blair issued their ultimatum to the UN, they made it clear that they would invade even if Saddam and his gang left the country. So "regime change" is not enough. The next day we hear that the goal is "democracy" in the world. Pretexts range over the lot, depending on audience and circumstances, which means that no sane person can take the charade seriously. The one constant is that the US must end up in control of Iraq. Saddam Hussein was authorized to suppress, brutally, a 1991 uprising that might have overthrown him because "the best of all worlds" for Washington would be "an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein" (by then an embarrassment), which would rule the country with an "iron fist" as Saddam had done with US support and approval (NYT chief diplomatic correspondent Thomas Friedman). The uprising would have left the country in the hands of Iraqis who might not have subordinated themselves sufficiently to Washington. The murderous sanctions regime of the following years devastated the society, strengthened the tyrant, and compelled the population to rely for survival on his (highly efficient) system for distributing basic goods. The sanctions thus undercut the possibility of the kind of popular revolt that had overthrown an impressive series of other monsters who had been strongly supported by the current incumbents in Washington up to the very end of their bloody rule: Marcos, Duvalier, Ceausescu, Mobutu, Suharto, and a long list of others, some of them easily as tyrannical and barbaric as Saddam. Had it not been for the sanctions, Saddam probably would have gone the same way, as has been pointed out for years by the Westerners who know Iraq best, Denis Halliday and Hans van Sponeck (though one has to go to Canada, England, or elsewhere to find their writings). But overthrow of the regime from within would not be acceptable either, because it would leave Iraqis in charge. The Azores summit merely reiterated that stand. The question of who rules Iraq remains the prime issue of contention. The US-backed opposition demands that the UN play a vital role in post-war Iraq and rejects US control of reconstruction or government (Leith Kubba, one of the most respected secular voices in the West, connected with the National Endowment of Democracy). One of the leading Shi'ite opposition figures, Sayed Muhamed Baqer al-Hakim, who heads the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), just informed the press that "we understand this war to be about imposing US hegemony over Iraq," and perceive the US as "an occupying rather than a liberating force." He stressed that the UN must supervise elections, and called on "foreign troops to withdraw from Iraq" and leave Iraqis in charge. US policy-makers have a radically different conception. They must impose a client regime in Iraq, following the practice elsewhere in the region, and most significantly, in the regions that have been under US domination for a century, Central America and the Caribbean. That too is well-understood. Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser to Bush I, just repeated the obvious: "What's going to happen the first time we hold an election in Iraq and it turns out the radicals win? What do you do? We're surely not going to let them take over." The same holds throughout the region. Recent studies reveal that from Morocco to Lebanon to the Gulf, about 95% of the population want a greater role in government for Islamic religious figures, and the same percentage believe that the sole US interest in the region is to control its oil and strengthen Israel. Antagonism to Washington has reached unprecedented heights, and the idea that Washington would institute a radical change in policy and tolerate truly democratic elections, respecting the outcome, seems rather fanciful, to say the least. Turning to the question, one reason for the invasion, surely, is to gain control over the world's second largest oil reserves, which will place the US in an even more powerful position of global domination, maintaining "a stranglehold on the global economy," as Michael Klare describes the long-term objective, which he regards as the primary motive for war. However, this cannot explain the timing. Why now? The drumbeat for war began in September 2002, and the government-media propaganda campaign achieved a spectacular success. Very quickly, the majority of the population came to believe that Iraq posed an imminent threat to US security, even that Iraq was involved in 9-11 (up from 3% after 9-11) and was planning new attacks. Not surprisingly, these beliefs correlated closely with support for the planned war. The beliefs are unique to the US. Even in Kuwait and Iran, which were invaded by Saddam Hussein, he was not feared, though he was despised. They know perfectly well that Iraq was the weakest state in the region, and for years they had joined others in trying to reintegrate Iraq into the regional system, over strong US objections. But a highly effective propaganda assault drove the American population far off the spectrum of world opinion, a remarkable achievement. The September propaganda assault coincided with two important events. One was the opening of the mid-term election campaign. Karl Rove, the administration's campaign manager, had already pointed out that Republicans have to "go to the country" on the issue of national security, because voters "trust the Republican Party to do a better job of...protecting America." One didn't have to be a political genius to realize that if social and economic issues dominated the election, the Bush administration did not have a chance. Accordingly, it was necessary to concoct a huge threat to our survival, which the powerful leader will manage to overcome, miraculously. For the elections, the strategy barely worked. Polls reveal that voters maintained their preferences, but suppressed concerns over jobs, pensions, benefits, etc., in favor of security. Something similar will be needed for the presidential campaign. All of this is second nature for the current incumbents. They are mostly recycled from the more reactionary sectors of the Reagan-Bush administrations, and know that they were able to run the country for 12 years, carrying out domestic programs that the public largely opposed, by pushing the panic button regularly: Libyan attempting to "expel us from the world" (Reagan), an air base in Grenada from which the Russians would bomb us, Nicaragua only "two-days driving time from Harlingen Texas," waving their copies of Mein Kampf as they planned to take over the hemisphere, black criminals about to rape your sister (Willie Horton, the 1988 presidential campaign), Hispanic narcotraffickers about to destroy us, and on and on. To maintain political power is an extremely important matter if the narrow sectors of power represented by the Bush administration hope to carry out their reactionary domestic program over strong popular opposition, if possible even to institutionalize them, so it will be hard to reconstruct what is being dismantled. Something else happened in September 2002: the administration released its National Security Strategy, sending many shudders around the world, including the US foreign policy elite. The Strategy has many precedents, but does break new ground: for the first time in the post-war world, a powerful state announced, loud and clear, that it intends to rule the world by force, forever, crushing any potential challenge it might perceive. This is often called in the press a doctrine of "pre-emptive war." That is crucially wrong; it goes vastly beyond pre-emption. Sometimes it is called more accurately a doctrine of "preventive war." That too understates the doctrine. No military threat, however remote, need be "prevented"; challenges can be concocted at will, and may not involve any threat other than "defiance"; those who pay attention to history know that "successful defiance" has often been taken to be justification for resort to force in the past. When a doctrine is announced, some action must be taken to demonstrate that it is seriously intended, so that it can become a new "norm in international relations," as commentators will soberly explain. What is needed is a war with an "exemplary quality," Harvard Middle East historian Roger Owen pointed out, discussing the reasons for the attack on Iraq. The exemplary action teaches a lesson that others must heed, or else. Why Iraq? The experimental subject must have several important qualities. It must be defenseless, and it must be important; there's no point illustrating the doctrine by invading Burundi. Iraq qualified perfectly in both respects. The importance is obvious, and so is the required weakness. Iraq was not much of a military force to begin with, and had been largely disarmed through the 1990s while much of the society was driven to the edge of survival. Its military expenditures and economy were about one-third those of Kuwait, with 10% of its population, far below others in the region, and of course the regional superpower, Israel, by now virtually an offshore military base of the US. The invading force not only had utterly overwhelming military power, but also extensive information to guide its actions from satellite observation and overflights for many years, and more recently U-2 flights on the pretext of disarmament, surely sending data directly back to Washington. Iraq was therefore a perfect choice for an "exemplary action" to establish the new doctrine of global rule by force as a "norm of international relations." A high official involved in drafting the National Security Strategy informed the press that its publication "was the signal that Iraq would be the first test, but not the last." "Iraq became the petri dish in which this experiment in pre-emptive policy grew," the New York Times reported -- misstating the policy in the usual way, but otherwise accurate. All of these factors gave good reasons for war. And they also help explain why the planned war was so overwhelmingly opposed by the public worldwide (including the US, particularly when we extract the factor of fear, unique to the US). And also strongly opposed by a substantial part of economic and foreign policy elites, a very unusual development. They rightly fear that the adventurist posture may prove very costly to their own interests, even to survival. It is well-understood that these policies are driving others to develop a deterrent, which could be weapons of mass destruction, or credible threats of serious terror, or even conventional weapons, as in the case of North Korea, with artillery massed to destroy Seoul. With any remnants of some functioning system of world order torn to shreds, the Bush administration is instructing the world that nothing matters but force -- and they hold the mailed fist, though others are not likely to tolerate that for long. Including, one hopes, the American people, who are in by far the best position to counter and reverse these extremely ominous trends. (2) There is some cheering in the streets of Iraqi cities. Does this retrospectively undercut the logic of antiwar opposition? I'm surprised that it was so limited and so long delayed. Every sensible person should welcome the overthrow of the tyrant, and the ending of the devastating sanctions, most certainly Iraqis. But the antiwar opposition, at least the part of it I know anything about, was always in favor of these ends. That's why it opposed the sanctions that were destroying the country and undermining the possibility of an internal revolt that would send Saddam the way of the other brutal killers supported by the present incumbents in Washington. The antiwar movement insisted that Iraqis, not the US government, must run the country. And it still does -- or should; it can have a substantial impact in this regard. Opponents of the war were also rightly appalled by the utter lack of concern for the possible humanitarian consequences of the attack, and by the ominous strategy for which it was the "test case." The basic issues remain: (1) Who will run Iraq, Iraqis or a clique in Crawford Texas? (2) Will the American people permit the narrow reactionary sectors that barely hold on to political power to implement their domestic and international agendas? (3) There have been no wmd found. Does this retrospectively undercutBush's rationales for war? Only if one takes the rationale seriously. The leadership still pretends to, as Fleischer's current remarks illustrate. If they can find something, which is not unlikely, that will be trumpeted as justification for the war. If they can't, the whole issue will be "disappeared" in the usual fashion. (4) If wmd are now found, and verified, would that retrospecitvely undercut antiwar opposition? That's a logical impossibility. Policies and opinions about them are determined by what is known or plausibly believed, not by what is discovered afterwards. That should be elementary. (5) Will there be democracy in Iraq, as a result of this invasion? Depends on what one means by "democracy." I presume the Bush PR team will want to put into place some kind of formal democracy, as long as it has no substance. But it's hard to imagine that they would allow a real voice to the Shi'ite majority, which is likely to join the rest of the region in trying to establish closer relations with Iran, the last thing the Bushites want. Or that they would allow a real voice to the next largest component of the population, the Kurds, who are likely to seek some kind of autonomy within a federal structure that would be anathema to Turkey, a major base for US power in the region. One should not be misled by the recent hysterical reaction to the crime of the Turkish government in adopting the position of 95% of its population, another indication of the passionate hatred of democracy in elite circles here, and another reason why no sensible person can take the rhetoric seriously. Same throughout the region. Functioning democracy would have outcomes that are inconsistent with the goal of US hegemony, just as in our own "backyard" over a century. (6) What message has been received by governments around the world, with what likely broad implications? The message is that the Bush administration intends its National Security Strategy to be taken seriously, as the "test case" illustrates. It intends to dominate the world by force, the one dimension in which it rules supreme, and to do so permanently. A more specific message, illustrated dramatically by the Iraq-North Korea case, is that if you want to fend off a US attack, you had better have a credible deterrent. It's widely assumed in elite circles that the likely consequence is proliferation of WMD and terror, in various forms, based on fear and loathing for the US administration, which was regarded as the greatest threat to world peace even before the invasion. That's no small matter these days. Questions of peace shade quickly into questions of survival for the species, given the case of means of violence. (7) What was the role of the American media establishment in paving the way for this war, and then rationalizing it, narrowing the terms of discussion, etc.? The media uncritically relayed government propaganda about the threat to US security posed by Iraq, its involvement in 9-11 and other terror, etc. Some amplified the message on their own. Others simply relayed it. The effects in the polls were striking, as often before. Discussion was, as usual, restricted to "pragmatic grounds": will the US government get away with its plans at a cost acceptable at home. Once the war began it became a shameful exercise of cheering for the home team, appalling much of the world. (8) What is next on the agenda, broadly, for Bush and Co., if they are able to pursue their preferred agendas? They have publicly announced that the next targets could be Syria and Iran -- which would require a strong military base in Iraq, presumably; another reason why any meaningful democracy is unlikely. It has been reliably reported for some time that the US and its allies (Turkey, Israel, and some others) have been taking steps towards dismemberment of Iran. But there are other possible targets too. The Andean region qualifies. It has very substantial resources, including oil. It is in turmoil, with dangerous independent popular movements that are not under control. It is by now surrounded by US military bases with US forces already on the ground. And one can think of others. (9) What obstacles now stand in the way of Bush and Co.'s doing as they prefer, and what obstacles might arise? The prime obstacle is domestic. But that's up to us. (10) What has been your impression of antiwar opposition and what ought to be its agenda now? Antiwar opposition here has been completely without precedent in scale and commitment, something we've discussed before, and that is certainly obvious to anyone who has had any experience in these matters here for the past 40 years. Its agenda right now, I think, should be to work to ensure that Iraq is run by Iraqis, that the US provide massive reparations for what it has done to Iraq for 20 years (by supporting Saddam Hussein, by wars, by brutal sanctions which probably caused a great deal more damage and deaths than the wars); and if that is too much honesty to expect, then at last massive aid, to be used by Iraqis, as they decide, which well be something other than US taxpayer subsidies to Halliburton and Bechtel. Also high on the agenda should be putting a brake on the extremely dangerous policies announced in the Security Strategy, and carried out in the "petri dish." And related to that, there should be serious efforts to block the bonanza of arms sales that is happily anticipated as a consequence of the war, which will also contribute to making the world a more awful and dangerous place. But that's only the beginning. The antiwar movement is indissolubly linked to the global justice movements, which have much more far-reaching goals, properly. (11) What do you think is the relationship between the invasion of Iraq and corporate glboalization, and what should be the relation between the anticorproate globalization movement, and the peace movement? The invasion of Iraq was strongly opposed by the main centers of corporate globalization. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, opposition was so strong that Powell was practically shouted down when he tried to present a case for the war -- announcing, pretty clearly, that the US would "lead" even if no one followed, except for the pathetic Blair. The global justice and peace movements are so closely linked in their objectives that there is nothing much to say. We should, however, recall that the planners do draw these links, as we should too, in our own different way. They predict that their version of "globalization" will proceed on course, leading to "chronic financial volatility" (meaning still slower growth, harming mostly the poor) "and a widening economic divide" (meaning less globalization in the technical sense of convergence). They predict further that "deepening economic stagnation, political instability, and cultural alienation will foster ethnic, ideological and religious extremism, along with violence," much of it directed against the US -- that is, more terror. Military planners make the same assumptions. That is a good part of the rationale for rapidly increasing military spending, including the plans for militarization of space that the entire world is trying to block, without much hope as long as the matter is kept from the sight of Americans, who have the prime responsibility to stop it. I presume that is why some of the major events of last October were not even reported, among them the US vote at the UN, alone (with Israel), against a resolution calling for reaffirmation of a 1925 Geneva convention banning biological weapons and another resolution strengthening the 1967 Outer Space Treaty to ban use of space for military purposes, including offensive weapons that may well do us all in. The agenda, as always, begins with trying to find out what is happening in the world, and then doing something about it, as we can, better than anyone else. Few share our privilege, power, and freedom -- hence responsibility. That should be another truism. ------------------- From eye at ranadasgupta.com Mon Apr 14 11:27:34 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 11:27:34 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Sell your dollars Message-ID: this is condensed version of article in newsweek about american debt and the dollar. there has been an argument floating around that the US is interested in fighting iraq mainly in order to ensure that it does not decide to switch its oil economy over to the euro and so threaten the delicate balance by which the issue of the US' massive debt is kept at bay - and as a warning to others (eg Iran, Syria) who have spoken of doing the same. this argument is also used to explain why the eurozone countries are so against the war. britain and australia of course are not euro countries. this argument is outlined here: http://www.pressurepoint.org/pp_iraq_why_now.html this article gives slightly more nuanced account. the problem is massive for america - but the cost of war is equally problematic... R The Unmighty Dollar A costly war could drive more foreign investors away from the United States, hurting living standards and our influence abroad By Clyde V. Prestowitz Jr. NEWSWEEK March 24 issue As America prepares for war, all eyes are fixed on the capabilities of its troops and high-tech weapons. Less noticed is an Achilles’ heel that is likely to be made a lot more tender by the war, with important negative implications for future U.S. living standards - and influence. WHILE THE UNITED States is the greatest power the world has ever seen, it is also the greatest debtor, living beyond its means and heavily dependent on foreign lenders. For years America has been importing more than it exports. These current account deficits have now reached an annual rate of $500 billion, or about 5 percent of GDP and 50 percent more than the United States spends on defense. America has been paying for the difference by borrowing. In this case, the money has to come from foreign lenders because the buying that generates the deficits is done abroad. The debt America owes abroad has now reached about $2 trillion, or about 20 percent of GDP. At its current growth rate, total U.S. foreign debt could easily top 65 percent of GDP by 2010. Even with interest rates of only 3 percent, it would take nearly $200 billion annually for the United States simply to finance the debt. The deficit ultimately arises because America saves far less than other countries, and the war is about to make that situation a lot worse. Economist Martin Wolf has conservatively estimated the cost of the war and of rebuilding Iraq over a 10-year period at $156 billion to $755 billion. Other estimates have run as high as $3 trillion. In the 1991 gulf war, most of the cost was paid by other countries. This time, the United States will have to bear most of the burden itself. Without new taxes, this will greatly increase the U.S. budget deficit. For a long time it has been relatively easy to get the foreign funds as overseas investors have rushed to buy U.S. stocks, bonds, real estate and companies. During the tech bubble of the 1990s America became the location of choice for investors from countries with large international reserves, such as China, Taiwan, Japan and Western Europe. The flood of money buoyed the dollar and stocks, allowing Americans to live beyond their means by consuming more than they produced. More recently, however, there has been a significant change in the flow of the foreign funds that is as critical to U.S. economic health as the flow of oil. Over the past year, private foreign investment in the United States has fallen dramatically. It has been partially offset by increased buying of U.S. Treasury notes by Asian governments. But, at the same time, some governments like Russia have also begun to shift some of their reserve currency holdings from dollars to euros. As a result, we have seen the dollar fall in value against the euro by about 25 percent. That kind of a decline occurs when foreigners decide to put their money someplace other than the United States. U.S. international debt is getting so large, foreigners become nervous about their holdings and cut back on buying. Thus, the biggest casualty of the upcoming war with Iraq may be the U.S. economy. A dramatic increase in debt could result in a fall of the dollar that would reduce U.S. living standards while significantly increasing the cost of projecting U.S. power abroad. The only way to avoid this scenario is by raising taxes, something that will also reduce living standards. Another option is to become more dependent on lenders like China and Saudi Arabia. Either way, U.S. power may not loom nearly so large as many now imagine. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Prestowitz is president of the Economic Strategy Institute and author of the forthcoming book "Rogue Nation." From ravik_rk at hotmail.com Sat Apr 12 21:23:33 2003 From: ravik_rk at hotmail.com (Ravi Kumar) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 21:23:33 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Discussion Message-ID: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MARXIST STUDIES (DELHI CHAPTER) E-Mail: iims_delhi at hotmail.com A DISCUSSION ON Education and the Process of Fascization in India FACILITATOR: DR. AVIJIT PATHAK (Associate Professor, JNU) The RSS with varieties of organisations having similar ideological and organisational make-up has been active since pre-independence days, continuing its task of preparing grounds for the evolution of consensus regarding its politics. It is this groundwork that has made the task of organizing masses difficult in opposition because of the nature of ideologico-political hegemony generated through the activities of these forces. The political strategy of these formations made them target specifically education as an instrument of consensus creation or hegemonisation. Apart from drawing people through activities apparently 'social and cultural' they began their work in hinterlands as well as urban centres in education, drawing a well thought out plan. Their "innovative" Ekal Vidyalayas, Saraswati Shishu Mandirs etc. feeding on and shaping the traditional pedagogical symbols go hand in hand with their continuous efforts to impose their own epistemological framework in higher and specialised disciplines. Because of this groundwork perhaps the BJP now is being able to carry forward the institutional changes so overtly and without hindrance excepting a few reactive voices from the progressives. They have been able to engage both "rural and urban-type intellectuals", preachers of moralism and technicalism in their hegemonic build-up, producing a peculiar Janus-headed "reactionary modernism". The counter-hegemonic endeavours perhaps have failed to evolve partly due to the co-opting 'eclectic' nature of the polity, which evolved after the Independence. The fallacious understanding of the character of the RSS, BJP and all their cohorts and their relationship with the dynamic politico-economic needs of capital and its agencies in the Indian society have failed the enduring subjective preparation needed to curb the system which sustains the fascist tendencies. This same fallacious understanding allows the cooption of potential oppositional forces and in turn gets reproduced further in the process. Hence, the rapid spread of fascistic tendencies, their incorporation in our day-to-day life, gradual dominance of everyday symbols evoked by them in form of manipulated figures of leaders and sants etc., as well as overwhelming presence of a new lexicon in our daily life constitute the present conjuncture. Education and pedagogy are essential instruments that have effectively put forward the agenda of the right reaction. As a counter offensive the experiments carried out on educational front have either been co-opted in the mainstream framework of status quo which turns to soft hindutva (as in case of Madhya Pradesh) and seeks to redefine and get an edge over the RSS family over the issue of Hindutva or they have failed to enter into any form of effective dialogue with people which led to popular indifference towards fascization of education culminating in cosmopolitan protests of a few. What can be possible counter-culture against this - a strategy that bases itself on dialogicity/criticality with the masses so as to reach and read those embedded mental structures and evolve a consensus over the perils of fascization? There is an urgent need to engage in dialogue over such pertinent issues of relationship of fascism and education as well as the possibilities of intervention. GANDHI PEACE FOUNDATION (NEAR ITO) Deen Dayal Upadhayay Marg 3.00-6.00 PM, 13TH APRIL 2003 (Sunday) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030412/5a6860d0/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 96 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030412/5a6860d0/attachment.gif From vidya at breakthrough.tv Fri Apr 11 16:39:45 2003 From: vidya at breakthrough.tv (vidya shah) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 16:39:45 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fw: brilliant and hopeful from Michael Moore Message-ID: <000401c3018b$2a37fca0$41eb41db@abc> FW: brilliant and hopeful from Michael Moore My Oscar "Backlash": "Stupid White Men"Back At #1, "Bowling" Breaks New Records April 7, 2003 Dear friends, It appears that the Bush administration will have succeeded in colonizing Iraq sometime in the next few days. This is a blunder of such magnitude -- and we will pay for it for years to come. It was not worth the life of one single American kid in uniform, let alone the thousands of Iraqis who have died, and my condolences and prayers go out to all of them. So, where are all those weapons of mass destruction that were the pretense for this war? Ha! There is so much to say about all this, but I will save it for later. What I am most concerned about right now is that all of you -- the majority of Americans who did not support this war in the first place -- not go silent or be intimidated by what will be touted as some great military victory. Now, more than ever, the voices of peace and truth must be heard. I have received a lot of mail from people who are feeling a profound sense of despair and believe that their voices have been drowned out by the drums and bombs of false patriotism. Some are afraid of retaliation at work or at school or in their neighborhoods because they have been vocal proponents of peace. They have been told over and over that it is not "appropriate" to protest once the country is at war, and that your only duty now is to "support the troops." Can I share with you what it's been like for me since I used my time on the Oscar stage two weeks ago to speak out against Bush and this war? I hope that, in reading what I'm about to tell you, you'll feel a bit more emboldened to make your voice heard in whatever way or forum that is open to you. When "Bowling for Columbine" was announced as the Oscar winner for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards, the audience rose to its feet. It was a great moment, one that I will always cherish. They were standing and cheering for a film that says we Americans are a uniquely violent people, using our massive stash of guns to kill each other and to use them against many countries around the world. They were applauding a film that shows George W. Bush using fictitious fears to frighten the public into giving him whatever he wants. And they were honoring a film that states the following: The first Gulf War was an attempt to reinstall the dictator of Kuwait; Saddam Hussein was armed with weapons from the United States; and the American government is responsible for the deaths of a half-million children in Iraq over the past decade through its sanctions and bombing. That was the movie they were cheering, that was the movie they voted for, and so I decided that is what I should acknowledge in my speech. And, thus, I said the following from the Oscar stage: "On behalf of our producers Kathleen Glynn and Michael Donovan (from Canada), I would like to thank the Academy for this award. I have invited the other Documentary nominees on stage with me. They are here in solidarity because we like non-fiction. We like non-fiction because we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where fictitious election results give us a fictitious president. We are now fighting a war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fiction of duct tape or the fictitious 'Orange Alerts,' we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you. And, whenever you've got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, you're time is up. Halfway through my remarks, some in the audience started to cheer. That immediately set off a group of people in the balcony who started to boo. Then those supporting my remarks started to shout down the booers. The L. A. Times reported that the director of the show started screaming at the orchestra "Music! Music!" in order to cut me off, so the band dutifully struck up a tune and my time was up. (For more on why I said what I said, you can read the op-ed I wrote for the L.A. Times, plus other reaction from around the country at my website "http://www.michaelmoore.com The next day -- and in the two weeks since -- the right-wing pundits and radio shock jocks have been calling for my head. So, has all this ruckus hurt me? Have they succeeded in "silencing" me? Well, take a look at my Oscar "backlash": -- On the day after I criticized Bush and the war at the Academy Awards, attendance at "Bowling for Columbine" in theaters around the country went up 110% (source: Daily Variety/BoxOfficeMojo.com). The following weekend, the box office gross was up a whopping 73% (Variety). It is now the longest-running consecutive commercial release in America, 26 weeks in a row and still thriving. The number of theaters showing the film since the Oscars has INCREASED, and it has now bested the previous box office record for a documentary by nearly 300%. -- Yesterday (April 6), "Stupid White Men" shot back to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. This is my book's 50th week on the list, 8 of them at number one, and this marks its fourth return to the top position, something that virtually never happens. -- In the week after the Oscars, my website was getting 10-20 million hits A DAY (one day we even got more hits than the White House!). The mail has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive (and the hate mail has been hilarious!). -- In the two days following the Oscars, more people pre-ordered the video for "Bowling for Columbine" on Amazon.com than the video for the Oscar winner for Best Picture, "Chicago". -- In the past week, I have obtained funding for my next documentary, and I have been offered a slot back on television to do an updated version of "TV Nation"/ "The Awful Truth." I tell you all of this because I want to counteract a message that is told to us all the time -- that, if you take a chance to speak out politically, you will live to regret it. It will hurt you in some way, usually financially. You could lose your job. Others may not hire you. You will lose friends. And on and on and on. Take the Dixie Chicks. I'm sure you've all heard by now that, because their lead singer mentioned how she was ashamed that Bush was from her home state of Texas, their record sales have "plummeted" and country stations are boycotting their music. The truth is that their sales are NOT down. This week, after all the attacks, their album is still at #1 on the Billboard country charts and, according to Entertainment Weekly, on the pop charts during all the brouhaha, they ROSE from #6 to #4. In the New York Times, Frank Rich reports that he tried to find a ticket to ANY of the Dixie Chicks' upcoming concerts but he couldn't because they were all sold out. (To read Rich's column from yesterday's Times, "Bowling for eKnnebunkport," go here: http://www.michaelmoore.com/articles/index.php?article=20030406-nytimes He does a pretty good job of laying it all out and talks about my next film and the impact it could potentially have.) Their song, "Travelin' Soldier" (a beautiful anti-war ballad) was the most requested song on the internet last week. They have not been hurt at all -- but that is not what the media would have you believe. Why is that? Because there is nothing more important now than to keep the voices of dissent -- and those who would dare to ask a question -- SILENT. And what better way than to try and take a few well-known entertainers down with a pack of lies so that the average Joe or Jane gets the message loud and clear: "Wow, if they would do that to the Dixie Chicks or Michael Moore, what would they do to little ol' me?" In other words, shut the f--- up. And that, my friends, is the real point of this film that I just got an Oscar for -- how those in charge use FEAR to manipulate the public into doing whatever they are told. Well, the good news -- if there can be any good news this week -- is that not only have neither I nor others been silenced, we have been joined by millions of Americans who think the same way we do. Don't let the false patriots intimidate you by setting the agenda or the terms of the debate. Don't be defeated by polls that show 70% of the public in favor of the war. Remember that these Americans being polled are the same Americans whose kids (or neighbor's kids) have been sent over to Iraq. They are scared for the troops and they are being cowed into supporting a war they did not want -- and they want even less to see their friends, family, and neighbors come home dead. Everyone supports the troops returning home alive and all of us need to reach out and let their families know that. Unfortunately, Bush and Co. are not through yet. This invasion and conquest will encourage them to do it again elsewhere. The real purpose of this war was to say to the rest of the world, "Don't Mess with Texas - If You Got What We Want, We're Coming to Get It!" This is not the time for the majority of us who believe in a peaceful America to be quiet. Make your voices heard. Despite what they have pulled off, it is still our country. Yours, Michael Moore Please FORWARD to Everyone -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Susana T. Fried Gender and Human Rights Consultant e-mail: sufried at hotmail.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* ------ End of Forwarded Message -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030411/312d070f/attachment.html From mitra28 at yahoo.com Mon Apr 14 02:57:50 2003 From: mitra28 at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?q?mitra=20gusheh?=) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2003 22:27:50 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Introduction : mitra and the digital divide In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030413212750.24956.qmail@web10408.mail.yahoo.com> Dear Sarai, I am currently a fourth year design student in the process of doing my dissertation and final year design project. Last year I developed a partnership project between our university and UNESCO where three students (including myself) spent third year working on an internet project in Nepal. This project attempted to tackle the issue of the digital divide through community education and the integration of media (namely the integration of internet with community radio and community television). This project was based on the pilot project that took place at Kothmale Community Radio Station - Sri Lanka, which many of you may be familiar with. To say the least I was very much affected by this experience and so, have decided to base my final year project on the issue of the digital divide. It is a big topic ... I know.... As a means of finding ground and also learning from the amazing minds that exist out there... I have set up a web site... http://www.pol-bridgingthedivide.com Loosely based on the idea of a blog .. the web side diarises the processing of my research... but it will hopefully act as a space for sharing resources and ideas. I would really appreciate it any contributions and feedback mitra --------------------------------- Yahoo! Plus - For a better Internet experience -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030413/6e0208c5/attachment.html From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in Mon Apr 14 22:46:50 2003 From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 18:16:50 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Edward Said's ORIENTALISM: The Silver Jubilee, 4/16, NYC In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030414171650.19580.qmail@web8001.mail.in.yahoo.com> i thought some of you might be interested... _______________________________________________________ >Columbia University Celebrates > >Edward Said's ORIENTALISM: >The Silver Jubilee > >Wednesday 16 April 2003 >Casa Italiana >Columbia University > > >PROGRAM > >8:30-9:30 Breakfast Reception > >9:30-9:45 Welcoming Remarks (Hamid Dabashi) > >9:45-10:00 Opening Remarks (Provost Jonathan Cole) > >10:00-12:00 PANEL ONE: > > Chair: Jonathan Arac > Discussant: Andrew Rubin > > Panelists: Catherine Hall > Abdirahman Hussein > Mary Lousie Pratt > > 12:00-2:00 Luncheon Reception > > 2:00-4:00 PANEL TWO > > Chair: Nicholas Dirks > Discussant: Elias Khoury > > Panelists: Ping-hui Liao > Gyan Prakash > Fawwaz Traboulsi > > 4:00-5:00 COFFEE AND TEA BREAK > > 5:00-7:00 PANEL THREE > > Chair: Gil Anidjar > Discussant Joseph Massad > > > Panelists: Emily Apter > Pascale Casanova > Stathis Gourgouris > > > 7:00-7:30 Closing Remarks (Edward W. Said) > >(For further information contact Linda Sayed at ls2168 at columbia.edu) ________________________________________________________________________ Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV. visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com From fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com Tue Apr 15 02:45:55 2003 From: fatimazehrarizvi at hotmail.com (zehra rizvi) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 17:15:55 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] syria: prophecies and policies Message-ID: in the moore article that is covering every list at the moment, he said now is NOT the time to be silent. people are asking me why im still protesting the war that has happenend and is almost over. this is the reason why. otherwise, it will just continue happening. z.rizvi. ------------ >2 articles: > >1. Bush tells Syria to give up Iraqis >2. Syria could be next, warns Washington > > >--- >Mr Rumsfeld said "They're associating with the wrong people and the effect >of that hurts the >Syrian people." > >'There will have to be change in Syria, plainly,' said Wolfowitz. > >Speaking to reporters outside the White House, the president also repeated >his belief that Syria possessed chemical weapons. "I think that we believe >there are chemical weapons in Syria, for example," he said. >--- > >what is there left to say... > > > >---------------------------------- >Bush tells Syria to give up Iraqis > >Julian Borger in Washington and Nicholas Watt >Monday April 14, 2003 >The Guardian > >George Bush called on Syria yesterday to hand over the Iraqi leaders his >government believes it is sheltering. > >Speaking to reporters outside the White House, the president also repeated >his belief that Syria possessed chemical weapons. "I think that we believe >there are chemical weapons in Syria, for example," he said. > >He did not explicitly threaten military action against the Damascus >government, saying that "each situation will require a different response", >but nor did he rule it out. > >"First things first. We're in Iraq now," he said. > >"Syria just needs to cooperate with the United States and our coalition >partners, not harbour any Ba'athists, any military officials, any people >who need to be held to account." > >The Syrian deputy ambassador in Washington, Imad Moustapha, denied that his >country was harbouring escaped Iraqis. He said it was the responsibility of >US troops to monitor Iraq's border with Syria. > >The Pentagon's allegation that Saddam Hussein's lieutenants had been >offered a haven by Damascus met with scepticism from some US intelligence >officials last week. One said there was no "validated intelligence" for >such a claim. > >But the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said there was "no question" >that Syria was harbouring senior Iraqi officials. > >Asked how Washington would respond if Saddam were found being sheltered >there, he said: "The last thing I would do would be to discuss that." But >he said Damascus was "making a lot of bad mistakes, a lot of bad judgments >in my view". > >Diplomats in Washington said they were certain the White House was not >planning military action against Syria or Iran, which it has accused of >lending support to Saddam. > >"You have to understand how much exhaustion there is over Iraq, and now >they have the job of running Iraq. There is no stomach for any more," one >said. > >And on BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend George Bush Sr's secretary of >state, Lawrence Eagleburger, said if the president were to order an attack >on Syria or Iran, "even I would feel he ought to be impeached". > >Washington has told London that for the time being it is its job to secure >Syrian and Iranian cooperation, and the Foreign Office minister Mike >O'Brien has been sent to Damascus and Tehran. > >Mr Rumsfeld said "busloads" of fighters had been crossing from Syria into >Iraq to attack US troops. > >"Some were stopped, the ones we could find we sent them back. Some we [put >in] prisoner of war camps. And others are getting killed." One bus was >carrying $650,000 and leaflets offering rewards for killing Americans, the >Pentagon said. > >Mr Rumsfeld said Syria was already suffering the economic consequences of >supporting Iraq. "I mean, who in the world would want to invest in Syria? >Who would want to go in tourism in Syria? > >"They're associating with the wrong people and the effect of that hurts the >Syrian people." > > >_______________________________________________ > >Syria could be next, warns Washington > >Ed Vulliamy in Washington >Sunday April 13, 2003 >The Observer > >The United States has pledged to tackle the Syrian-backed Hizbollah group >in the next phase of its 'war on terror' in a move which could threaten >military action against President Bashar Assad's regime in Damascus. > >The move is part of Washington's efforts to persuade Israel to support a >new peace settlement with the Palestinians. Washington has promised Israel >that it will take 'all effective action' to cut off Syria's support for >Hizbollah - implying a military strike if necessary, sources in the Bush >administration have told The Observer . > >Hizbollah is a Shia Muslim organisation based in Lebanon, whose fighters >have attacked northern Israeli settlements and harassed occupying Israeli >troops to the point of forcing an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon >three years ago. > >The new US undertaking to Israel to deal with Hizbollah via its Syrian >sponsors has been made over recent days during meetings between >administration officials and Israeli diplomats in Washington, and Americans >talking to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem. It would be >part of a deal designed to entice Israel into the so-called road map to >peace package that would involve the Jewish state pulling out of the >Palestinian West Bank, occupied since 1967. > >Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has so far rejected the road map initiative - >charted by the US with its ally, Britain - which also calls for mutual >recognition between Israel and a new Palestinian state, structured >according to US-backed reforms. The American guarantee would be to take >armed action if necessary to cut off Syrian support for Hizbollah, and stop >further sponsorship for the group by Iran. > >'If you control Iraq, you can affect the Syrian and Iranian sponsorship of >Hizbollah, both geographically and politically,' says Ivo Daalder of the >Brookings Institution think-tank in Washington. > >'The United States will make it very clear, quietly and publicly, that >Baathist Syria may come to an end if it does not stop its support of >Hizbollah.' > >The undertaking dovetails conveniently into 'phase three' of what President >George Bush calls the 'war on terror' and his pledge to go after all >countries accused of harbouring terrorists. > >It also fits into calls by hawks inside and aligned to the administration >who believe that war in Iraq was first stage in a wider war for American >control of the region. Threats against Syria come daily out of Washington. > >Hawks in and close to the Bush White House have prepared the ground for an >attack on Syria, raising the spectre of Hizbollah, of alleged Syrian plans >to wel come refugees from Saddam Hussein's fallen regime, and of what the >administration insists is Syrian support for Iraq during the war. > >Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz - regarded as the real architect of >the Iraqi war and its aftermath - said on Thursday that 'the Syrians have >been shipping killers into Iraq to try and kill Americans', adding: 'We >need to think about what our policy is towards a country that harbours >terrorists or harbours war criminals. > >'There will have to be change in Syria, plainly,' said Wolfowitz. > >Washingtom intelligence sources claim that weapons of mass destruction that >Saddam was alleged to have possessed were shipped to Syria after inspectors >were sent by the United Nations to find them. > >One of the chief ideologists behind the war, Richard Perle, yesterday >warned that the US would be compelled to act against Syria if it emerged >that weapons of mass destruction had been moved there by Saddam's fallen >Iraqi regime. _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus From aiindex at mnet.fr Tue Apr 15 05:44:37 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 01:14:37 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Ballad of the soldier's wife: War and the widow by Amitava Kumar Message-ID: Himal April 2003 REFLECTIONS Ballad of the soldier's wife: War and the widow by Amitava Kumar BBC Baghdad is bombed, 20 March 2003. The news on the television is of the bombing in Baghdad. I came out of the bedroom this morning and saw my wife watching the news with tears in her eyes. My wife is five months pregnant and, in ways that I can only imagine, she is aware of just how much life is precious and also vulnerable. And yet, I know that she and I, sitting in a suburban house in America, are shielded from the real news of the war that is being waged in our name. There was a retired colonel of the US Marine Corps on CNN last night; he smiled, and even chuckled, as he described the bombs falling on Iraq. A brave woman called in - the show was Larry King Live - and said that she found the colonel's behaviour obscene. We are watching the bared fangs of the killers. Not one of the reports have described what has happened so far to the innocent men and women and children who deserved neither Saddam Hussein nor George W Bush. There is much that is hidden from us, and it makes us feel isolated and helpless. I would like to see the Iraqi women on television. We should know what a pregnant woman in Baghdad was feeling when the bombs were dropping around her. That must have been the thought, I decided for myself, that was making my wife cry. Once I started thinking of that, it occurred to me that I would like to know what the thoughts were of the wives and girlfriends of the American and British soldiers who have died. I have no experience of war but I have met many widows. Today, as I watch the strangely disembodied spectacle of war on my screen, smoke rising in surreal shades in a landscape devoid of all human presence, I return to the memories of my meetings. News In a village called Kukurwar, about three hours' drive from my hometown Patna, I met Munni Devi, the widow of Sepoy Hardeo Prasad who was killed in Batalik during the Kargil war. Hardeo was a soldier in the 1 Bihar Regiment and his wife showed me his large, framed picture taken when he was a part of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Somalia. He was a tall, well-built man with dark skin and a light moustache, and in the photograph he wore the blue UN cap and a blue turtleneck under his camouflage jacket. Behind him was the Somalian photo studio's painted backdrop. It showed a garden and a house with a TV aerial and, further in the distance, a row of mountain peaks on which the artist had added a layer of white snow. Next to this picture was another glass frame with a one dollar bill pasted inside it. Hardeo had brought the dollar note back with him from Somalia in 1994. Women would comment that she had got a house and a television after her husband died Munni and I were sitting in the small brick house that was built with the compensation money that the government had given her. The room was not very large, it had just enough space for four chairs. There was a doorway to my right and we could hear Hindi songs being played on a loudspeaker in the distance. Now and then, I could glimpse a hen walking outside with five or six tiny chicks that had been coloured a bright green by the owner. It was a winter morning and Munni, slight and barefoot, with only a thick shawl wrapped over her sari, continued to shiver as she spoke to me. When her hand shook, I would look away, concentrating my gaze at the picture of a smiling child in the Magadh Automobile calendar hanging on the wall behind her head. Munni was 28 years old. She had three children, two daughters and a little son who was six months old when his father died. Her education had stopped at high school. At my request, Munni began to tell me about the different places where her husband had served with the army. First it was northeast India, mostly Assam, and then Somalia, before he was sent to Kashmir from where he had returned with some saffron and dreamed of trading in it. (Hardeo had begun to say to Munni, "Money is the only VIP". Munni looked up at me when she used the English term 'VIP'.) Hardeo left home for Kargil on 21 May 1999 at the conclusion of a two-month leave. He was dead less than a month later. While he had been home, Munni said, he did not do much. She said, "He would listen to the radio". I suddenly remembered that the 1 Bihar Regiment had been involved in the war from the start: the first army casualty on the Indian side had been Major Saravanan who had been killed on 29 May at Point 4268 - and his body was among the last to be recovered in the war when his regiment captured the hill, on the night of 6 July, where he had died months earlier. While Munni and I talked, Hardeo's old father came and sat in the room. He did not say anything to me, and several minutes later, when I looked at him, I could not decide if his eyes were old and watery or indeed he was crying. Munni said that they would listen to the radio all the time to get news of the war going on in Kargil, and it was through the news bulletin that they first heard of Hardeo's death. There was some confusion, however, because the radio had mentioned the wrong village, even though it had got the name and the regiment right. Then, the sub-divisional magistrate came and gave her the news in person. Munni had been sitting outside her hut. The brick house, she reminded me, had not yet been built. The officer said, "Is this Hardeo Prasad's house? He has been martyred". Munni said, "I had been unhappy for the previous day or two. I had been crying for an hour. I was not surprised when the man came. I did not move from where I had been sitting outside the house". At night, at two in the morning, soldiers in an army truck brought Hardeo's body wrapped in the national flag. The body, Munni said, had turned completely black, and, as if putting a half-question to me, she said, "The enemy had used some poisonous substance, perhaps". Munni said that the district officials had said to her that they would have to wait till Bihar's chief minister, Rabri Devi, came to the funeral with her husband. The dignitaries arrived by helicopter and the chief minister offered a few words of support to Munni. She also gave her a cheque. Months later, Munni said, women in the village would comment that she had got a house and a television after her husband died. This hurt her, Munni said. She would rather have her husband back. I asked Munni if she knew how her husband was killed. He was hiding near a hill with an officer, she said. They were being shot at and he was hurt in the right arm. The officer said to him that they should get medical aid but Hardeo said that he was okay. Munni said, "After two-three hours, he began to suffer a bit". Four men from his regiment carried Hardeo to the place where medical aid was available. He asked for a drink of water. He told them about his family and then he said that he would not live. Correspondents When Munni had finished speaking, I stayed silent. She had kept her head bent and hardly ever looked at me when she spoke. I had noticed that the parting in her hair was bare. As is customary for a widow, there was no sindoor in the parting. When I asked her what was it that Hardeo wrote most often to her in his letters, she quietly got up and walked out of the room. When she came back, she had a few letters in her hand. The first letter I read was actually written not by Hardeo but by Munni herself. It was in broken Hindi, and began "My dear husband ..." The other two letters had been written by Hardeo and they were dated about eight-nine months before his death. They inquired about Munni's health and then instructed her to take care of the children. Both were addressed "Dear mother of Manisha ...". Manisha was their elder daughter. Hardeo signed his name in English with some flourish. That signature and the address were the only words he wrote in English. I reopened Munni's letter. I was embarrassed to read it in front of her, but I went ahead anyway. I thought that her way of addressing Hardeo was much more playful. "Priya Patiji, Namaste, Namaste". (Dear Husband, my greetings, my greetings.) Her letter mentioned that Hardeo had been a more regular correspondent; she had simply not had the time to write to him more frequently. Manisha was staying at her maternal uncle's house; she was attending school in Jehanabad town. Munni wanted Hardeo to come home for the chatth festival, and if he got leave, he was to inform her in advance. Munni had also written, "What else can I write? You know what a family is like. And for a wife it is the husband who gives happiness. The wife's happiness is not there without you. What can I do when this is written in my fate?" Then there was mention of the potatoes that had been harvested, and the rice that had been threshed. There was mention of loneliness here but also a hint about some tension in the wider family. I thought of one of Hardeo's letter, in which he had scribbled in the postscript, "Do not fret too much and whatever people might say or do in the house, you should not utter a word in response. Okay. Ta-ta". "You have taught young men that it is not only Kargil but also Lahore where the Indian tricolour will fly" Hardeo's younger brother, Vinod, a pleasant, unemployed man, had come and sat down on the ground near me. He was holding a yellow sheet of paper in his hand. When he gave it to me, I saw that it was a rather bombastically worded tribute to Hardeo on his first death anniversary observed only a few months earlier. The tribute ended with a declaration in Hindi: "By being a soldier and by assuming command, you have taught the young men of your village that it is not only Kargil and Kashmir but also Lahore and Islamabad where the Indian tricolour will fly. For the peace of your soul, the District Development Forum takes this solemn oath". Tea and sweets had been brought for me on a small stainless steel tray. I said to Munni that I would quickly drink the tea and leave. She brought me an album of photographs. There were only a handful of pictures in the book. A few of them showed Hardeo in Somalia, and in one picture he was standing in front of a temple in Bhutan. There were photographs from the funeral, including one of Hardeo's body washed and laid out on the ground with a brown cloth wrapped around the torso. The hands of the villagers were propping up the head and shoulders for the photograph. There was one picture of Hardeo and Munni together. It had been taken during their happier days. It said "Prabhat Studio" in the bottom corner. Munni was difficult to recognise in the photograph: she wore her hair open on the side, and her clothes were new and bright. She appeared amused as she looked at the camera. I asked Munni if I could take a picture of her. She solemnly took down the framed photograph of Hardeo in Somalia, and then posed for me with her eyes fixed on the ground between us. I wanted to ask Munni something before I left. I asked her if she would have anything to say to a woman in Pakistan who was also a war widow like her. Munni said, "Why should I say anything to the one who took away my husband?" "But the women, the widows, they were not fighting. They did not take away Hardeo", I said. But Munni shook her head. She would not relent. Maybe she was right, maybe she was not. Maybe the fault lay in my fantasies. I was dreaming of a dialogue between all those who had suffered from war's injustice. I still hold on to that dream. I cannot help feeling that Munni was the war's double victim. She had lost her husband, and she had lost a link to the broader world which shared her suffering. As I look at the television screen today - from where all signs of life have been banished, as if there were no human beings in Iraq - I wonder whether a woman sitting afraid in Baghdad knows that there is another woman, in a small town in suburban America, shedding tears for her. It is not much, but it would take away, for a moment, the horrible isolation we all feel amidst this violence. From eye at ranadasgupta.com Tue Apr 15 12:20:07 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 12:20:07 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] US chat show hosts on war and dubya Message-ID: "War continues in Iraq. They're calling it Operation Iraqi Freedom. They were going to call it Operation Iraqi Liberation until they realized that spells 'OIL.'" .Jay Leno "Yesterday, the president met with a group he calls the coalition of the willing. Or, as the rest of the world calls them, Britain and Spain." .Jon Stewart "According to the New York Times, Saddam Hussein has mined all his oil fields, planted bombs in all his major cities, he's got bombs in the military installations, in the airports, and he's mined all the government buildings. There's not much left for us to do, really." .Jay Leno "Good news for Iraq. There's a 50 percent chance that President Bush will confuse it with Iran." .Craig Kilborn "President Bush spent last night calling world leaders to support the war with Iraq and it is sad when the most powerful man on earth is yelling, 'I know you're there, pick up, pick up." .Craig Kilborn "President Bush spent the day calling names he couldn't pronounce in countries he never knew existed." .Jay Leno "President Bush found out something this week. Between the countries of Cameroone, Chile, Angola and Syria, Angola plays the best music when they put you on hold." .Craig Kilborn "As you all know we're about to start March Madness. That's NCAA college basketball tournament when they start with 64 teams and you whittle them down to just one, you know kind of like our allies." .Jay Leno "Turkey has voted not to allow U.S. troops into their country and Saddam Hussein said 'You can do that?'" .Jay Leno A lot of students around the country protested the war today. The National Youth and Student Peace Coalition sponsored an anti-war organization called 'Books Not Bombs.' President Bush said, 'Why do you want to drop books on them?'" .Jay Leno "My wife wanted to go somewhere expensive for the weekend. So, I took her down the street to the local Texaco." .Jay Leno "Experts say that if we go to war with Iraq, oil could reach as much as $80 a barrel. Of course, after the war it will be free." .Jay Leno "Saddam Hussein also challenged President Bush to a debate. The Butcher of Baghdad vs. the Butcher of the English language." .Jay Leno "President Bush announced tonight that he believes in democracy and that democracy can exist in Iraq. They can have a strong economy, they can have a good health care plan, and they can have a free and fair voting. Iraq? We can't even get this in Florida." .Jay Leno "In an interview with Dan Rather, Saddam has challenged President Bush to a live, televised debate. I think this would be fair, since English is a second language to both of them." .Jay Leno "In a speech earlier today President Bush said if Iraq gets rid of Saddam Hussein, he will help the Iraqi people with food, medicine, supplies, housing, education . anything that's needed. Isn't that amazing? He finally comes up with a domestic agenda . and it's for Iraq. Maybe we could bring that here if it works out." .Jay Leno "Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations Security Council, offering a compelling 90-minute presentation that not only furthered his case but reminded the world why America is second to none in the field of PowerPoint." .Jay Leno "You know why the French don't want to bomb Saddam Hussein? Because he hates America, he loves mistresses and wears a beret. He is French, people." .Conan O'Brien "The state of Texas executed its third prison inmate this week. This week. In fact, they don't even have a last meal anymore, now it's a buffet." .Jay Leno "I read today that the president was interrupted 73 times by applause and 75 times by really big words." .Jay Leno "This week officials from France, Russia and Germany accused President Bush of having a fondness for war. Yeah, when asked about it, a spokesman for Bush said, 'It's a one syllable word, of course he's fond of it.'" .Conan O'Brien "CNN said that after the war, there is a plan to divide Iraq into three parts ... regular, premium and unleaded." .Jay Leno "President Bush has said that he does not need approval from the UN to wage war, and I'm thinking, well, hell, he didn't need the approval of the American voters to become president, either." .David Letterman From announcer at pukar.org.in Mon Apr 14 16:29:43 2003 From: announcer at pukar.org.in (PUKAR @ Kitab Mahal) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 16:29:43 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Place and Photography in New York City Message-ID: Dear Friends: PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research) cordially invites you to a lecture by Professor Mary Woods, "Learning to See the 'New' New York: Place and Photography in New York City: 1890-1950". Professor Woods' lecture will demonstrate how artists, amateurs, journalists and documentarians contributed to the visual canon of architectural histories of seeing the "new" New York from 1890 until 1950, and thus expanded them to include things other than the usual and conventional photographs of buildings. MARY N. WOODS received her Ph.D. from Columbia University, New York. She is an Associate Professor of architectural history at Cornell University. In the past year she has been a Fulbright Research fellow working on women architects in India and Sri Lanka. Her publications include From Craft to Profession: Architectural Practice in 19th-Century America (1999, University of California Press) and contributions to The Architecture of the Night (Prestel, 2003), After-Image and the City (Cornell University Press, 2003), Cass Gilbert: A Life and Career (Norton, 2002). This summer she will be a Fellow at the Georgia O'Keefe Museum and Study Center to complete a book on photography and the 20th century American built environment. Date: SATURDAY 19 APRIL 2003 6.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. At: PUKAR 4th Floor, Kitab Mahal Dr Dadabhai Naoroji Road Mumbai 400001 Next to New Excelsior Cinema, near VT Station Entrance from New Book Company, D.N. Road _____ PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research) P.O. Box 5627, Dadar, Mumbai 400014, INDIA E-Mail Phone +91 (022) 2207 7779, +91 98200 45529, +91 98204 04010 Web Site http://www.pukar.org.in _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From sadan at sarai.net Thu Apr 17 02:47:12 2003 From: sadan at sarai.net (sadan) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 17:17:12 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] writing alternative Histories Message-ID: <200304161717.13053.sadan@sarai.net> Dear all, i have found an interesting discussion on alternative histories. would like to share with you sadan. link http://www.transforming.cultures.uts.edu.au/conferences/remembering/discussion1.html Discussion 1: Event, Metaphor, Memory w/ Shahid Amin, Fiona Nicoll, Michael McDaniel, Kim Mahood ?historical fieldwork: a dialogue at the present site of past actions? Shahid Amin history truth & uncertainty Q: Can academia write moral uncertainty into history and memory in Australia? or does moral uncertainty need to come from outside the academic structure in Australia? Is there something in the structure of Australian academic discourse that requires the production of moral certainties? Shahid: I guess all I have to say is I don't know, right. [laughs] But I guess another way of looking at it is ask whether today the only viable statements that academics make are definitive statements, or whether academic history is only, and can only be the truth of a certain kind of certainty. And if it's not, then it is not academic history. I guess what -- even if we keep the prefix out, just concentrate on uncertainty of whatever sort -- economic, political, cultural, moral -- I think there is some kind of a need for a rethink. Also when you connect the production of academic writing to uncertainty, because you can produce uncertainties without it being produced in the academe. Implied there is that there is a certain play off between persuasion and proof that academics normally deploy. Most academic writings are not only proof-based writings. There is a certain amount of persuasion in that, and whether the kind of play off between persuasion and proof changes as you raise questions whose answer is not amenable in terms of the solid proof. ?Lord Curzon said this about Indian peasants. And sent a telegram to the Secretary of State, and before sending this telegram, the telegraph office said 'Clear the line, Viceroy's message follows.' ? So I think that what I take your question to imply is whether history writing by academics can be persuasive, precisely because it now seeks to establish new notions of proof which have to be adequate to the new questions that are being asked. So that if you want to know about what the Indian soldiers who were sent to the French front in the First World War felt like, you're most probably not going to get their letters, because those letters were preserved only for English soldiers in the Imperial War Museum. Because this is the big thing about the First World War, and literary and other memory and literary production. What you get is the report of a censor established in Flanders to find out what these black Indian soldiers felt, and what we will then get is not the letter with the censored portions of the letter. Now, that's all you're going to get. And so that what these people actually wrote successfully by-passing the censor is lost. So I guess these are some of the issues that I can relate to. It goes back to my earlier point about the evidence of the archive, which is always assembled for somebody other than the historian. You know, this is purely a rhetorical sentence, when the historian sits to write, because the state doesn't provide evidence for the historian. The state provides evidence for other functionaries of the state. And so that before the historian arrives, somebody else has already been on the scene, to use that evidence and digest it. And the term digest, law digest and so on, is a nice term, because the state function is to both produce and digest the material. It's then, later on, that we follow the tapeworms! Oh, the earthworms, sorry! Top... memory identity & oppression Heather: The role of the historian? Michael: The role of the historian? That's a big one, that's bigger than the last one? This is about truth, isn't it? It's about truth and certainty. I don't know that you can ever know that you've got it, I think the problem is, the only problem is, in everything we talking about, you know, is that you can't get certainty and truth. There are situations where you're more likely to get it, and situations not. But then again, it's your political or historical position that decides that you believe that this is more certain than the other thing. I just sort of -- you know, you can go into an Aboriginal community, you can go into a family, and people have got -- you can go into a nation -- and people have got different versions of the truth. They're different histories, different memories. It's not problematic. That's history. It's not problematic. It's only problematic when you try to record it and use it for a particular purpose. It's like if you're in the pub telling a yarn, or you're at home round the kitchen table or doing something or other, you scrape a few stories together, a few memories from here and there, a little bit of this memory, a little bit of that, someone else's story. That's the purpose at the table. And you know, it's like putting things into a tool kit, and the tool kit that you need to take to this particular job for this particular task. But if certainty is one of the things you need in that box with that bunch of stories, it's always going to be problematic. You're always going to be sitting around saying, who's got the truth, who owns the truth. The trouble is that institutions insist on -- particularly western institutions -- insist and want the truth to be static and correct. And want to nail it down forever. There's this constant pursuit for something that just can't be nailed down. And I think that's it. That's the argument, and I don't know if there's any answer for it. That's just simply what we're doing, trying to talk about why do we change all the time? We change all the time cause it changes all the time, and there's no certainty in it. I would even question some of the most certain things that I've heard in my life as ?truth?. I mean some of the things that I imagined in my life that were absolute fundamental truths that underpinned my life, I now don't believe at all. It is constantly changing. I'll tell you another funny little story. All I can do is tell stories, right. You know, if you ask me who I am now, I'll tell you I'm a Wiradjuri man and blah, blah, blah, and I come from this long line of oppressed people, etcetera, etcetera. From central New South Wales, and I can tell you all the government policies and etcetera. But in fact I have to tell my Nan how oppressed she is and how oppressed she was at the time, because she doesn't know. She was too busy being a Salvation Army sergeant-major at the time, and raising nine kids on the edge of town. Now, she didn't -- and I've got to tell her about this. She didn't know about terra nullius either until I told her? Q: what did she think of it? Michael: She just didn't really care. And how when I was a kid, there was the Captain Cook Bicentenary -- 1970 -- and we all raced up to the petrol station and bought these cardboard Captain Cook hats. And we put them on, and Nan took us up the street and we watched the float, the Endeavour float go by. It sent fire crackers out this galvanised pipe at us! And we cheered and clapped. Now, was I oppressed at that time? What's the truth of it? What's the truth of it? I don't know. I know now I look at it differently, and perhaps my children will look at my life differently. I can't pin the truth down. In my life, so many things have changed. And I don't know if that answers the question, but? Shahid: ? There's a question about should writers of fiction be introducing this element in the popular discourse, or should intellectuals who are not academics be engendering it. I guess somewhere that's the point that is being be raised. Fiona: Yes, because there's an assumed burden of responsibility, particularly at the present very polarised political moment, that you know, would make this sort of ambivalent, and you know, partially contradictory realities of life, difficult to express. But I mean I think that also, that makes it quite difficult to say anything really, you know. Q: I've got one that just follows on quite sort of directly from what you were just saying. And I think it probably relates to what all of you have spoken about today. Especially Shahid and some of your work, Kim. Just an idea that -- well to start with, Shahid, you said that you still wanted to see yourself as a historian, producing historical discourse, despite the fact that it has come historically from 19th century, white -- it's been very much part of the colonial program -- but that you still saw something valuable in that and saw some purpose in that. And that the alternative histories that you've proposed are there to challenge or to problematise that history of domination, that single history which sort of speaks from the position of power and creates the power which dominates people. And so I guess what I wanted to say was, don't you find that there's a dialectic between, all right you can problematise history by introducing all the uncertainties or the voices which had previously been broken down, oppressed and not spoken, but by doing so, the actual power of historical discourse, its ability to dominate, its ability to give its speaker authority, is also broken down and is also brought into question. And I guess in my mind I just have this image that, as Michael spoke about, the state is asking the people seeking native title to delimit on a map their area, even if they never understood their ownership or their dwelling in the country that way. It's like your image of the fence, beyond which nothing is changed, and on this side of it everything is subject to change. In my mind, there are two sorts of history -- there's the monumental history which y throws up the monuments to you know the colonial dominator. There's the archive which is supposedly transparently representing the truth of the matter, and then there's the history which is questioning that, and introducing all of the actual, you know, uncertainties. One of those seems to be the one that has the power, the other is always contesting that. If that contestation was taken to its logical extreme, then there would be no power. What do you see as the value of doing that? Top... politics and relativism Shahid: In the talk and also in discussion, I've begun to categorise myself as a practising historian. Somebody who just doesn?t do research, or has a perspective but who tries to write things that are read by other people. And I say that for two separate but interrelated reasons. One has to do with the kind of work that I've done along with other people in this collective. And there has been a tendency in India to some extent, and also outside, to castigate all new ways of writing as writing which is alternative to history. And therefore, is not only irresponsible, shows lack of identity, shall we say, to the discipline. But merges into myth, whatever that is?. So there?s nothing?.there?s absolute relativism and so on. And there has been a tendency to say that Subaltern Studies has lost itself, as far as history's concerned. They're no good. They may be doing something else, but they're not doing history. And I want to have a rebuttal to that. First -- because I think history, especially in India, is too important a resource, quote-unquote, for it to go away. And in order to contest mainstream history which is seen to be the only history, or in order to contest fabrication of particular pasts as obvious counter to deracinated histories of people who are not responsible to the aspirations of the Indian Hindu resurgence, one needs to say that, you know, we can't -- at least in the Indian case perhaps, I'll stand corrected over here ? I, the historian cannot just stand by and say, ?well my past is as good or as bad as your history?. I'm not saying your past doesn't make sense. But for it to be elevated to history, would need two things. First, we go into absolute relativism. Who are you? You have got a PhD, I?ve got a PhD, and your history?s as good or as bad, and that's what we are seeing in India today. That there is an attempt consciously to do away with whatever intellectual capital historians have. So that a kind of majoritarian view of the past can very easily, say, lay claim to effective truth which could or could not be historical truth, but that's the truth that now matters. And that's why I want to stick my neck out and you know, spread myself all over this circle that I am in, and say, well there is history and there is history and there is -- alternative histories are not alternatives to history. They are not necessarily written outside the profession. The profession is big enough to have experiments going on within the professions, because this is a very important issue and a very important battle. Not only in terms of our colonial past, but in terms of how communities with different and conflicting pasts are going to live in India today. Something that I'll be talking about tomorrow. So I know that that, to some extent it does do away with the power of historical discourse. It's an alternative principle, shall we say. That it really grew up with the 19th century German historiography and so on and so forth. But as I was saying earlier on, we should try and broaden the kind of questions that historians can legitimately ask and give answers to. So that is just -- that is a psychological question. That is the question for indulgists. That is the question for the anthropologist. We say that well, there is a whole sort of questions that can be asked of the past by historians, who are inventing themselves, reinventing themselves. And this is very important. Top... history as story telling Q Without dissolving into storytelling? Shahid: Well, all history is storytelling. That's why, just as all evidence is all oral evidence. Short of when you?re writing a cheque or a bill or a marriage contract, where the actual signature is the event, everything else is a reported speech! When the police, you know, write the report, they are hearing something that somebody else is telling them and writing it down. So story telling, or the telling of stories perhaps, story telling is a way of being, shall we say? as Benjamin says. But all histories are stories, but that doesn't make it that any story is as good or as bad as the other one. I mean I did talk a bit about this idea of the tellability of stories. Not only whether you can tell them, spin them as stories, but that they have to be supported with some kind of rules or evidence and so on. That's the difference between me and a novelist and that's the difference between me and an anthropologist. I can't just choose -- go into a village and say, ?oh this is not the best type of village I wanted to study to work out the interface between class and caste. I'll go to another one which will be ten miles from a radio station, two miles from a petrol station, etcetera, etcetera, that will enable me to find out how social change and global isolation is affecting India?. The event is given to me. There is that kind of limitation. And I then try and jump into it and say, ?well, let?s not just talk about the event, which was a few hours of murder and mayhem. Let's talk about its pre-history, which was one and half hours of peasants talking about Gandhi?. Q I was interested, Fiona, when you were talking about, as part of your paper, just sort of briefly mentioned -- I don't know if it was criticism, but a comment at least -- on the role of historians, and in particular Henry Reynolds and Peter Read, who have just recently taken a bit of a shift in writing stuff -- Reynolds with 'Why Weren't We Told?' and Peter Read with 'Belonging' I think it's called. Moving into this kind of memoirs or reflections, say, like an engagement with -- so that as historians the sort of stuff they're reporting on, they've shifted towards looking at their own subjectivity, or their own cultural shift and change in engagement with the issues. And that's sort of become something that's part of the -- almost like in a linear way -- part of the history as well. Their experience and encounter with the material as historians, and their personal reflections on that. So not necessarily a criticism of that, but it's an interesting thing that's emerged. And it kind of, in a way, gels with the presentation that you made, Kim, in thinking about memoirs and the struggling with ideas around cultural identity and one's history and how you can re-engage with one's own individual history. And I'd just be a little keen to know more about what process you were thinking about in re-engaging with that personal history and representing that now. Fiona: One thing I noticed, particularly with Henry Reynolds, was there's a shift from almost looking at Australian race relations from the outside, counting casualties of frontier wars, to his role within it. Which I see as part of a self reflection on whiteness. But I am also aware that it's the -- he doesn't really go into -- he says he's from Tasmania -- but he doesn?t really go into like his family history there. And actually -- unfortunately I didn't get to the end of that paper, because I was actually going to posit white family histories as a -- as another way to get around that position of the disembodied, unimplicated, white observer. So yeah -- which is a different concern from the concern that Gillian Whitlock, who was discussing both Read and Reynolds, brought up, and she was concerned -- which I felt was quite a valid concern -- that you know, the baby was being thrown out with the bath water in terms of what history as a discipline has learnt from post-structuralist debates around textuality. Yeah, so I'll know throw that to you. Top... art and memory Kim: In terms of going back and looking at that place that I'd grown up in, there were sort of two things going on. One, it was -- and as you would have picked up from the artwork that I showed you -- there's a level at which I do work very unconsciously. I have the privilege, in a sense, of being a visual artist, which means that I've never made any money, so I don't have to worry about leaving behind all these possessions that I've accumulated, and taking off and pursuing these drives that, you know, to actually sort of follow this thread wherever it takes. And I was at a point before I made the journey back, that I realised I couldn't move anywhere in my own life without actually going back and dealing with this stuff, which had become -- I mean it's mythologised terrain anyway. You know, the ?outback?. This family that, you know, and that we have stories, all sorts of stories about, you know, the family that goes out into the wilderness and builds up a life out there. There's lots of that kind of anecdotal history in Australian writing. And it was just not holding for me, you know. And I needed to go back and find out in a sense whatever was out there. And of course the other thing that had happened, as I said, was that that particularly property had also become Aboriginal land. So -- I had no idea what to expect. But I had some sense though that what I was doing, that that story, what ultimately led me to writing about it as well, was that it did engage with what were becoming the big cultural debates in Australia. And that in my own way, maybe I could contribute something by attempting to ?. register and clarify, as honestly as I knew how, what that experience was about. So, at no point was I sort of positioning myself as a voice of authority. We just actually had this discussion about authority and voices in the group I was with. But -- I had a sense from my own experience that all those contradictions -- some of the things that Michael's talked about too -- are the reality of what we're dealing with now. You know, that the classic mythologies don't hold any more. And to go back to the previous questioner, I certainly had no particular sense of trying to undermine the thing. It was already breaking down, it wasn't holding. I had nothing to do with breaking it down. And I think that's happening overall with those sort of big narratives, you know, they were breaking down anyway. What people are doing now is trying to deal with that breakdown, you know. And all these other stories are surfacing regardless. So --- I guess -- yes, I went back, I made art work, I wrote a story and there it is. Q It follows directly on that question about how to use family. It was: how do we remember the skeletons in our closets, the sort of embodied family experiences, without repossessing the privilege of the white heterosexual family? How do we in fact do that? Top... challenging white hetersexual histories Fiona: I think -- and this came up in the group -- I think by taking on board the consistent demand for reparations as a consequence of the recognition of sovereignty, so that actually the acknowledgment of the family history, rather than the amnesia is accompanied by an effort to redress the effects, the gross imbalances in you know, living standards, and resource ownerships between the indigenous and the white immigrants to this place who've directly benefited. My -- I'm not sure how the state is going to do that, because -- I mean Michael pointed out, you know, the ridiculous ironies that have grown out of native title, which was presented during the Keating era as one means for redress anyway, particularly through the Indigenous Land Corporation. I think -- to me that's where I'm at. The reconciliation state-sponsored process has come to an end. It's like who is going to do it? And what do white citizens do in a situation where the state is not moving towards recognition and repatriation? Top... writing lightly Q You talked about that in alternative histories, you can't always rely on the fact that the reader's going to be familiar with the story or the area that you're dealing with. And then you went you went on to say -- and I'm not sure exactly -- you know, you said something like we need to overcome the details of the unfamiliar -- I assume that if -- and then you said -- which may choke the narration. What sort of interests me is this, you seem to have done it in your book. I mean I read it and I didn't know hardly anything about Indian history, but you've used certain approaches where I could get into it. It wasn't a problem, and I just wanted to hear really some of the approaches, problems you had in that sort of writing. Shahid: There are a couple of things that I did. First, I researched it for 14 years intermittently. To say that I worked on it for 14 years, it suggests that I really think you can?t really produce a book in 14 years. I?ll retire if I take that long for my second book by the time it comes out. But you know, so that in some ways I made a conscious decision that I'll try and write about this event, which was almost a phrase, you know. There's this violence that takes place in 1922 in the name of Mahatma Gandhi, and cannot really be written as a sentence, because the subject of the sentence has to be Mahatma Gandhi, who obviously is against this violence. So this violence, this strain of violence has to be a phrase, after which you put a comma, and say ??. which made Mahatma Gandhi call the whole thing off?. So the challenge that I faced was it would have been much easier in some ways, but less exciting, to do a critique of the way this has been triggered. But you know, if you want to take this seriously then you must really write a narrative where not even a sentence existed. And therefore the narrative challenges were very great. Which was possible, not by discovering some kind of style, but having so much detail that you could write lightly. So that writing lightly comes from a tremendous amount of material that you have. If you have less material, then your writing tends to be stodgy as a historian. So that was the first thing. Top... memory as ?voice over? to authority And the second idea was -- which many historians have done, Portelli does it for example -- and in a way, it goes against the way we have been trained as historians -- that you know, a fact is not exhausted by its first or second use. It can keep coming back again and again. And you can deploy it in ways. If you go to a small town in India and you ask for the local newspaper, they won't show it to you, because they say that only one piece has been written on that newspaper and the son and grandson of that newspaper is going to do it, So that's like saying, ?Ah, you?re writing a book on India? Oh but there was another book on India! ?? But that's the way historians work. So that, you know, ?Oh, you worked on sugar cane, there has been a thesis on sugar cane. How can you write another one?? Which, translated to the level of fact, you know, ?You?ve used it once, now get me another one!? But you can bring that over and over again, which also means that you know, you don't move from one monumental demonstration of historical facticity to another. There is a certain excess that is there in the way you describe things and then you are able to get that back again and bring it again in another context. What I found most liberating and enabling when I sat down to write, was this experience of what I call historical fieldwork. That is, that I march outwards from the archive. I only know my respondents as relatives of the writers, as a policeman would have known. And then we have an unequal exchange because all the state?s markers are there and so on. But I dialogue. Where I don't just say, ?oh how interesting?. Because I already know what is the official version. So the interest is not what is novel. How the novel plays on what is known. And because you know, the memories, in order to be ?authentic? memories, can't be complete variance with what was the truth as established in the court of law. Because what happened in the court of law was literally, as I say, a matter of life and death for them. So you keep getting these voices or voice-overs, shall we say, on what is officially known. And that then allowed me the freedom to decide when I'm going to relate one element of the story after which previous ones. So the memory then didn't figure as something that is opposed to fact. Memory or recall is a kind of a take on what is known and the gap between the two opens up the space for the next chapter. So when, what gets told after which chapter is in terms of the reader having been brought to a situation where they say ?Well, this is what the quote said, but why is this guy saying this? But others saying ?Oh, this guy obviously has forgotten what the quote said, after all we are dealing with memories?. Of course, that's true. He has ?forgotten? in the sense that he is, or she is, not reproducing that exact figure. But that creates an opening for telling another story also in terms of why is it that that fact gets recalled in a particular way. So that was very, very enabling for me, because I could then slash and cut whatever I had to tell in terms of the problems that the reader himself or herself had encountered at the end of a small chapter. So the question that then arose was anticipated, and would then be worked out in the next chapter. That's the way I did it. And also purely stylistically I tried to make the book easy in the sense that -- and difficult at the same time -- because there's a lot of speech which is in a dialect, which an average Hindi reader will not fully understand. But there are no footnotes, I didn't want the readers' ascent to be a forward downward movement, ?Oh, which sentence did you got it from sort of thing?. ?. I put a lot of research back. If you don?t believe me, you know, spend some time and go through that. So I didn't want to have footnotes. I didn't want to have a glossary. And these are ways in which I felt I was trying to get the permission to narrate from the reader and go forward. Top... alternative histories from within the discipline The rest is a product of a first rate colonial archive in India, that exists and that the Brits created for us. Now I'm not joking. You need a tremendous amount of material to write. It's not just the will of the historian to write a new narrative, because that's the difference. There has to be that huge amount of stuff that you can now refigure and retell in new ways. There is no -- and that's why I'm talking about people writing alternative histories from within the discipline. You can write some very interesting things about the past. But that to my mind is not to do history. Not because it doesn't measure up to a kind of diplomatic notion of real truth but because you know, it is based on things which are not from the ?archive? in the proper sense of the term. Top... oral evidence & the subaltern Q Shahid, what is the status of oral evidence in relation to the subaltern? And related to that, how do you integrate oral sources into your written text? Shahid: When I talked about everything is oral then I was referring to, to my mind one of the best historians of oral history, Alessandro Portelli, has got a book called The Death of Luigi Trastulli and other essays. Let me put it this way, before the historian reaches the historical event, which implicates peasants say, with the powers of the state. There already is a way in which testimony has been reworked by the judge or by the magistrate and so on. So that if that is the case, as I believe it to be, then I found it absolutely imperative for myself not to jump straight into the field without having mastered the archive. Because I could have said, ?well these guys might die, it will take me three years to get through all this documentation, let me first go and find out what they feel?. Because I think that is being dishonest as an historian. Because you're just turning up and you're not really implicating yourself, not purely morally but in terms of what you could really know for a dialogue to be established. It will just purely information gathering. ?All right, tell me what happened?? And you have no idea really what happened. So what sort of a dialogue are you going to have? So I wanted -- more so, as I said, since what they are going to remember is in terms of what was officially recorded as well. So that, so I had the field work right at the end. I tried to plough through the judicial evidence and so on and so forth. And then -- I'd not planned it like that. When I went to the villages, I realised that they were quite interested actually in the amount of information I already had on them. And the conversation then became a dialogue with all the differences that marked me from them. And therefore, I was not really producing a kind of oral history which gets produced because there's absence of record, you know. So that's first. Top... history as dialogue And that really also leads to the second question about how do you integrate oral history? It depends on the kind of question one is trying to address and write about. There might be instances where there are absolutely no written records, in which case I'll have to think about it in a new way. Or the term oral history itself might be too much of a blanket term. If I interview a performer and also record his songs, as I've done for the next project, is oral history a good enough term to encompass that. Though, you know, it is what I write as a historian will be a result of transcribing in what I hear. So these are some of the issues that I've tried to tackle in my book. And that's why I tried to write this term historical fieldwork. You know, it plays on this anthropological notion of fieldwork. But by historical I mean not just by a card-carrying historian, but fieldwork which is based on a dialogue which comes out of the historians marching outward from the archive. So I call it somewhere in the book ?a dialogue at the present site of past actions?. And I'm trying to play with this notion of dialogue so as to do away with, you know, people tell different stories to different people. Of course they do. And one way in which the dialogue of a historian gets useful for the historian is that it's not any elite knowing the dialect, talking to any peasant of the area about an event that many people remember differently. I do that to some extent. But you know, there are ways in which you narrow it down. I say somewhere in the book, you know, echoing Marx, that the subordinates make their own memories, but not as they please. Discussion 2: Writing Alternative Histories w/ Shahid Amin, Suvendrini Perera, Andrew Jakubowicz, Devleena Ghosh, Heather Goodall ?There?s no point going back to old certainties ? you have to do a new kind of history which gets into the question of memory, forgetfulness, constructions of the past, which are not the questions that proper historians anywhere had asked until very recently??.? Shahid Amin Narrative and new media writing Q In terms of the use of the multimedia form for the Shanghai project, how did the process come about? Was it informed as much by what goes on during your studies, or did you have a good idea at the beginning? Or did you have a good idea at the beginning? Andrew: Well, what you saw there is just a PowerPoint, so it's just a sort of assembly of bits and pieces of stuff. The multimedia project itself went though a number of iterations and the critical thing was trying to find a metaphor to hold it together, so that we had a narrative structure that was both open enough to be accessible to a lot of different sorts of users, audiences, and theoretically sophisticated enough not to trivialise the whole thing. And there was a totally serendipitous element which was the discovery of the menorah. Because that gave us the metaphor. And what we've essentially done in structuring the web site is to raise the queries about how was it that this menorah came to be in Shanghai in the year 2000. And the opening, basically the opening sequence of the website is an entry into Shanghai through a spinning menorah. And it ends up with the menorah flickering and you can then run your cursor over the lights. And each light takes you into a different family. And each family is then evocative of one of those particular dimensions. And sitting behind the whole thing is a research database. So that database is actually a very rich source of additional material. So for instance, there's a map, a book map of Shanghai in the thirties, all those databases that we identified -- the Sukahara list, the Polish Consulate list, the Hong Qu police list, is all there. So for instance, if you actually wanted to go in and find out, you know, what the profile of Russians living in Hong Qu in 1943 looked like, you can go in either directly off the research front of it, or in through the Russian families. Q: ? and for it being in a web form? Andrew: The reason for it being on line is that you can just go in deeper and deeper and deeper. So in a number of cases, the families have given us access to photographic albums. And you can actually go into the photographic album and go through their memorabilia. There's a whole variety of stuff. So there's the actual photographs, then there's a whole series of artefacts and things. Documents, passes, stamps, letters, postcards, which together form both a research archive for people who want to know more about it, but also form elements in a narrative which sits at the front. So that's the idea. And because it's a website it's -- as I keep telling the designer I'm working with -- this is an unending opportunity, you know. You can retire on this. Top... putting silence on the record Q from Fiona Nicol: This is for the entire panel potentially. How do we put silence on the historical record, not as an absence or a gap to be filled, but how do we register the active silences? And also, how do we register in histories, different types or tones of voices? Like whingeing, or nagging? Suvendrini: Maybe this is actually something I wanted to ask Devleena in terms of her work, so maybe this can come up with her. I was wondering about when you speak to people as an Indian from India, working on Fiji and talking to Fijian Indians, what are the politics of that, and are there ever refusals to speak or hesitations? Or do you feel that when people speak to you they edit what they're saying because you're an Indian from India? So I suppose how do you put silence on the register, I think that you have to respect also like silences that people want to keep. And this is something that I've only thought about today when Ann was talking about post-traumatic stress disorder, in terms of migrants. And this is something that I've written about actually, about migrants of say my mother's generation, who refuse to talk about certain experiences, and I think I've been guilty of misinterpreting this refusal sometimes, because I've written about it as a complicity with narratives of assimilation. And I've now been thinking about that, and perhaps it deserves a more complex treatment. So you know, that sort of silence can be also refusal and a very powerful form of speech. Devleena: Yes, I have actually done some work on this issue of my own position in this project. And to say of course that being an Indian from India both gives me some -- a leeway, it gives me a foothold. And because I can understand Fiji Hindi, it enables me also to speak in that. But of course it also sort of places me in a particular way. And in some ways it gives me some advantages that say a total non-Indian -- I mean however you would put it -- would have. And some disadvantages that a total non-Indian would not have. Because I think in the paper that was in the reader, some of these issues come up. Because the conflicts between the south Asian Indian and the indo-Fijian communities, I mention over there. You know, the issues around authenticity, legitimacy, a whole range of issues to do with sort of background and caste and of religion. So that places me also in a certain way. But what I actually found was, not only the editing and the silence, which of course happens, but also kind of mediation. So when I would speak to people, they would often say something to somebody else to tell me. So that in a sense that issue of I suppose whether you'd call it trust or whatever, I mean they can trust their friends to tell me something, or whoever it is they choose, whether it's a relative or so on, that mediated experience, which would come to me from somebody else who is seen as a friend of mine and could be trusted by that person. You know, so that I would not make the mistake that I might make by connecting with them directly in some ways. So that was one of the ways, especially with older people, that was very much a way in which they related to me. And secondly, yes, there were a lot of silences. I mean there were a lot of silences, for example, around all sorts of issues about sexuality, especially in relation to the Fijian community, where basically it was a way of retaining a certain level of sort of autonomy and a certain level of independence, which I completely respected. I think that my position as an Indian from India has really been complicated and difficult. It's also been very rewarding, because in a sense it's enabled spaces to open up that would not have otherwise opened up. And it's also closed off spaces, which perhaps would not have been closed. But you know, I just work with that. Top... fragile interview dialogue Shahid: I guess I could begin by rephrasing that question slightly, and say, you know, when does the outsider, the historian, the investigator, decide to deny herself or himself the opportunity to ask another question. I think that's the other side of what you're asking us. Because these are very -- and that takes me to the idea that I was trying to suggest of a dialogue -- that without the other person being silent, the dialogue which is going on gives you the signal, that you refuse then to ask a question that might produce a silence. And I have -- because so that you realise that incidentally, without it having been narrativised, something has been said which, if you broach it further, would then amount to asking a question which you would not like somebody else to ask of you. So I think at several places I, when I was interviewing for my book, I had the ?risk? of not getting more information, I decided not to ask the next question, precisely because I'd got some hint of an information which was otherwise very important to me, which I could build on, but a further asking of a question would have then led to the end of that conversation or dialogue. So that it's a much more fragile relationship where the dialogue is very important. It's not you pressing, and silence then being the result, but you being yourself silenced. I think that is what field workers and people who interview should also consider, because that's only then that the basic asymmetry that exists in any kind of interview is then rewardingly calibrated. Where you recognise, just as you recognise as a historian, that the archives are not created for you, that there are gaps that you can't do anything about, just because the other person is in flesh and blood, you can't squeeze the last bit of information, because after all, what you're doing is not interviewing in a purely fact finding thing, you are creating a dialogue. That's what I found, and there are many indicators that I tried to give of this in my book. I even narrativise it and then when this woman says this, I say, and then I could hear the historian mumbling, 'What else do I ask?' Because actually I do that on the tape. And because she says, 'What else can I tell you?' saying that look -- and she said 'How much more can I narrate?' And I say, 'Well, what do I ask her?' That's my silenced being verbalised. That's what I take that question to be. Andrew: There's a book that a colleague of mine, a linguist, has just published, called Silence, published by Allen & Unwin, and it's an exploration with a group of children of not only, but mainly children of holocaust survivors, about how their parents told them about what happened. And it's a very evocative account of the many different ways silence exists in relationships. And I found it very, very interesting, because it's -- there's all those sorts of things that people have talked about, but then there's the silence of spaces that are just out of bounds. There's the silence of I want you to push harder. You have to push harder, because unless you push harder I don't believe you really care. There's the silences of this is too painful, we don't want to go there. There's the silence of ?I tried to speak this 50 years ago and nobody would listen, why are you asking now?? So there's all sorts of elements to that. And I found that an extremely interesting book.The final chapter actually deals with a whole series of people whose parents had various traumatic or strange things happening and about how they had conversations with them over the years. Devleena: I was just going to say one last thing, and this reminded me of just one little family history thing, which is when my father died a few years ago, we found amongst his papers an advertisement looking for a Burmese woman. Our father had been in Rangoon during the war and had escaped overland, you know, when the Japanese came in. And what was of interest to me is not only his completely silence; we don't know who this Burmese woman was, whether it was, you know, a daughter, a lover, a wife. I mean there's no indication. But his complete silence about this person who had been so important that he had, for three years, constantly put these advertisements, you know, every month in the paper. It was quite expensive, and he didn't have much money. But I think Fiona, what your question reminded me of, is what we really wanted to know is did our mother know? How do we ask our mother whether she knew about this woman? How do we ask our mother, who is this woman? Is it a daughter, a lover, a wife. And we, all of us sisters, you know, skated around the question trying to find ways to ask our mother without asking her. And it was a really fascinating exercise, which just really picks up on what Shahid is saying about, you know, how do you ask the question that you can't actually ask. And I think that's with the indo-Fijian community, I think that comes up again and again -- how do you ask the question that you can't really ask? And I still don't know who the Burmese woman was. Probably never find out. Top... silences and public responsibilities Heather: There's been quite a lot of work on people remembering trauma, for example, and memory. Like Louisa Passerini, thinking about the memories of Italians about their experience under fascism. And there are things which become apparent when you interview a number of people, that there are patterns of silences, and her work is largely about an exploration of why it was that Italian workers were silenced about fascism. This was a situation in which many workers who had strong political convictions against fascism were unable to come to terms with their own complicity or their own need to take part in a state and a set of labour relations which were organised under fascism. So it was simply too difficult to narrate that story, and so it is just left out of people's otherwise chronological accounts of their life stories. And there's some very interesting work also from Nazi Germany as well. As well as in relation to indigenous people and memory. The point I wanted to raise was that -- in those personal relationships which are often really challenging, where you are speaking with someone about their memories, you have to make those decisions that Shahid has talked about at various points. But overall, this raises, I think, a question about the responsibilities of the historian or the analyst, whatever label you use, as a public intellectual, as an actor in the public arena. Because many of these silences as Suvendi has suggested allow a dominant narrative which is in contradiction to continue to circulate, as if it were unchallenged. So what role does the analyst have, having recognised that area of silence? This is not about pursuing people's memories which they don't wish to speak about, or about revealing individual memories, or pressuring people, but it's a question of the responsibility to indicate and express and perhaps explain or speculate about -- certainly indicate the presence of that silence, and ask in general, ask the public sphere, why that silence is there, and explore the reasons. And it seems to me that that's one of the other ways in which the issue that Shahid has raised, about the responsibilities of analysts or historians to take an active role. It is not only our role to facilitate the expression of individual testimony, we've also got a job which is analysis, which requires intense thought about the way people tell their stories, not just the detailed content -- and silence is very much a part of the way people tell their stories. Top... writing questions into the telling Shahid: I just wanted to share with you and others that I revised my manuscript, which I actually finished in Berlin, with Louisa Passerini as a fellow of the same institution and I actually wrote a chapter which I've called ?Towards Conclusion?, precisely to answer all the queries that she had to put to the manuscript. So that there was a way in which after I thought I'd finished and I had given this to a non-Indian reader, the questions that she asked, I thought I'll not put it as conclusion, but ?towards conclusion?. So I just wanted to share that with you, and also to thank you all for giving me this opportunity of presenting whatever I have from my very specialised reading of a very specialised set of events to audiences which are not Indian so as to take on their questions as a part of my story. So that's another bit of juggling that I do. That what I then write I make questions arise out of my own telling which are really other people's questions that were posed to me as questions coming from the outside, which I then incorporate as if they are emerging from within my own text, which hopefully then makes the text easily, slightly more easier for those same people, or other people to read. So I just wanted to share that with you. Top... secular/sectarian/multicultural Q I was interested in something that Shahid said, and I think it may tie up with the Australian situation. You talk about two strands in the Indian historiography ? One was the secular national and one was the sectarian Hindi. And one was based loosely on based homogeneity, and the other one based on conflict and blaming the other ? ? [inaudible] .. And I?d like to suggest that there may be a broad tie-up with the Australian context of multiculturalism on the one side, which is part of, sort of a new nationalism which is a consensual, harmonious sort of idea of ethnic relations within the country ? and Hanson?s which is exclusionist and based on racial analysis. A couple of questions there. One is the sectarian .. whether it predates the 19th century type of essentialism which you mentioned, the Hindu nationalist idea of the Hindu as the ?natural? citizen of India. And if you translate that to Australia, who?s the ?natural? citizen of Australia? ? And then secondly, If you accept difference with the present, how do you relate politics of the past ?.. and can we go past the consensual view of the past? Because this debate exists in Australia and obviously it exists in India? Shahid: It doesn't exist in historiography because the standard response of the secular nationalists is, ?they were not the kind of people that we are?. In fact that ?we have nothing to do with them?. While, you know, in a way the Hindu sectarian will say, ?Shahid Amin, that's your name. Your name speaks your history?. And I'll say, ?am I that name?? shall I say. So, you know, but yeah, I really appreciate what you say. And that's why when I was reading the last portion I qualified it by saying I really don't know how this will work out in Australia. When you talk about ?who is the natural citizen here?? It's quite clear who the original inhabitants -- even if they're not property owners -- are. But who the natural citizens of the nation state, you can be a citizen only of a nation state. You can't be a citizen of a space. So that I think -- correct me if I'm wrong -- that one would have to begin with the notion of whiteness and it?s tie up with the idea of a national citizenry in Australia and see how one complicates that, I guess. Suvendrini: Well, the obvious thing that when we were federated, when Australia federated in 1901, the indigenous inhabitants of this country were included by exclusion in the constitution of 1901. So those questions of citizenship and the native, who's the native, who's the alien, all those things are very complicated. I just have a question about whether we can actually, whether that narrative of the sectarian and the secular, can actually be productively for us translated into this opposition between the Hansonist and what you call the consensual multiculturalist. And I would say no, because I can see a lot of -- I'm going to get into big trouble now -- but I can see a lot of points of convergence between the official narrative of multiculturalism, which I see as a continuation rather than a rupture from assimilation, and the sort of assimilationism of Hansonism. So I'm sort of at a loss about doing that translation. Shahid: You say that quite clearly in one of your articles. Q In a sense it does relate to the issue that Shahid described, the same problems with the idea of national unity and of secular unity post-47 in India.. That simplified notion of inclusiveness is the same.. the problems with both are the same.. Shahid: Yes, so I am really saying that this kind of a view, the sectarian Hindu nationalism doesn't arise suddenly from nowhere in the 1980s. It was a moving of a fringe that was always there into the centre, from the margin to the centre of the political discourse. So that's always there, as even something that's part of a cultural base, or natural base, of nationalism as well to some extent. Andrew: I don't know if I necessarily agree with Suvendi's reading of multiculturalism. I think I'd agree that the current -- the so called Australian multiculturalism, which is the contemporary government ideology, definitely fits within a sort of developmental trajectory from the assimilationist White Australia period, because it's still very heavily based around notions of core values, which are fairly much unchanged. You know, so you can be any colour you like, as long as your values are Australian. And then you unpack what that might mean, etcetera. And it leaves totally untested the issue of the place of indigenous people in the Australian value structures. But I think that the issue about where the fault lines run in Australian consciousness are actually much more difficult to unpack than they might be in an environment where you have two blocks in a sense with long histories of confrontation. That the Australian, that the, if you like, the colonial settler society in Australia is still very early and fragile as an imposition on the landscape compared with I think the history of a country like India, which goes back solidly into the sort of heart rock of the country for so many, well thousands of years. And I think that issue is a really interesting one. And I'm reminded of it -- I remember once talking to an Indonesian scholar, we were debating issues about whether you could compare Australia and Indonesia. And he said, well initially he thought not, but then he thought well actually if you think of all societies as being essentially entropic. That is, that all societies have a tendency to fragment and dissolve and energy has to be put in, cultural energy has to be constantly invested in maintaining whatever it is, or sustaining or changing, then the issue fundamentally is who gets to write the scripts about where the energy is going to go? And I think the Australian contest is actually not as clearly cut as one might like. Again, I don't necessarily agree with someone like Ghassan Hage about the notion of whiteness per se, particularly having started work on the Chinese, on work in China, the notion of the Han Chinese as a sort of factional, fictional factional creation, which is far more impelling and far more, far less self-consciously self questioning than whiteness in Australia, actually raises for me some really quite significant questions about how useful the simple dichotomies in Australian models are. Top... the recalcitrant event Q Shahid, I wanted to say how useful your notion of alternative history has been for me ? I?m presently studying the alternative media of Central American liberation studies. I suppose you'd call it the guerilla media systems of El Salvador and Nicaragua. And your notion -- well especially your session this morning with the warrior martyr, triggered off my thoughts about the Nicaraguan experience where the figure of Sandino, who gave his name to the Sandinista revolution, it was really -- he was written out of Nicaraguan history given the time of the Somoza dynasty. When the Nicaraguans have started remembering why he was forgotten it created a consciousness, a nexus of consciousness I suppose, around which the movement was mobilised. And interestingly enough, when I left Nicaragua in 1990, the process of writing him out of history again had begun. The murals, the graffiti, everything. It was the first thing the new government did was to erase; burn the textbooks, the whole thing. And I've just read a paper where someone who's been there recently said it's almost totally erased. Now my question is when these historical contradictions or disjunctions or polarities or recalcitrant events arise -- I think my example of Nicaragua's probably an example of a conflictive history -- once identified, what happens to it? What do we do with it? What does an historian do with it? And there's another question spinning off from that, but I'd be happy if you could just answer that one. Shahid: Let me try a response along the following lines. And before that, a little prologue from a historian's tale. Not the clerk's tale. I was absolutely centrally influenced in working this problem about the warrior saint by my reading of the Spanish conquest of Latin America, which I read some early articles by Nathan Wachtel which became the book called The Vision of the Vanquished, which gave me some idea also about how relationships are worked out in performative arts with the conquistadors and the murders in Peru and Mexico. But that's just an aside. But let me just open up the question a little bit by saying that -- and correct me if I'm latching on to one word wrongly -- when these events are identified. I think it is not a case of our going and discovering something that was not there. But calling something that was not called an event, an event. You know, what I mean by that is that -- abbreviating the Azimer personality in terms purely of the cult. And saying, ?well the cult is real, the person didn't exist. So we can't handle that?. So what I'm going to suggest is that the identification from the point, exists from the point of view of the historian. In saying, ?look, what is not seen as an event ?.. ? so Azimir's life could be seen as a non-event, inasmuch as you emphasise only the miraculous powers that his shrine has, because of his untimely death. You can create a completely historical non-matheological (?) historical scenario saying, you know, Muslim Sufis had miraculous powers. This is a great local guy we have got. So many people have been going to his shrine from the time of Imnabatu time, 1351, let's now write a history of this shrine. And what it has meant to millions of people who have come over here. So you know, I'm not discovering this guy. I have not manufactured this guy in a Subaltern Studies history workshop. This guy has been staring everybody in the face, the dead face of his, for five hundred years. There's a separate railway station for pilgrims to get off. There's a special police posse, there is a separate magistrate who was brought into being when the fair takes place. It's just that his life is not seen as an event in the history of India, because that history is peopled by real characters. So you know, in a kind of a response to you, what we do really, what a historian does is not to identify an event and then do something about it, but to discover something as an event which could not be written because, if it gets written as an event, then it would do something else to many other events, or other things. And say that, ?well, this is an event in a very special sense of the term??, especially in this case, with a guy who doesn't exist, is really eventful, because what is important about the event is how, from the 14th century, people have created this character, this life, to reflect on very momentous events with whom he is associated. Right? So that's the take I am trying to suggest. And -- have I unfairly latched onto your word identify? But you know, it helped me to suggest what I'm -- so it's not -- I then discover an unknown guy and say ?look, this is the most important chap nobody has ever heard of?. So this is the complete, you know, autonomous realm where people have made their own sense of Turkish conquest and not told anybody about it. And the historian then, through perseverance, discovers this nugget and said, ?look, nobody knew, I've got a big grant and I've got this event out. Now this is the most important event?. With my book on Chauri Chaura also, I said ?look, let's find out why nobody else has written on this? Everybody knows about it. Definitely in one way or the other. But why aren't people taking this as an event?? Top... engaging history in the political contest Q But something similar happened in Australia with our Aboriginal history. I?m not a historian so I might be out of my depth here, but I think it was barely studied. I think Manning Clark was probably the first historian who actually started to look at it any way? I know he didn't do it very much? But this actually leads me to my second question, you know. The public discussion of this. The debate on our various, our I suppose polarised histories, the polarised history of Australia, with Aboriginal Australia, which is fuelling a lot of public debate at the moment. And in fact, historians have played a part in this in fuelling this debate. The whole concept of the black armband view of history much touted around by a lot of politicians, which I think was originated by Geoffrey Blainey, and that sort of opened up out the debate. So I guess the second question is the historian as public intellectual or public figure. Shahid: I guess, as I said, what really propelled me into this sort of history of memory and remembrance and so on, was -- and I was discussing with a few people over coffee -- is that along with the rise of this Hindu majoritarian movement, which claimed a certain sanctity for a particular kind of action in the present, on the base of a particular construction of history, where history was invoked, the professional historian was being marginalised. And that was also done systematically, because it was not necessarily that a political party was now giving political expression to a major historiographical trend. And say ?once we come to power, we'll put this guy's history into practice?. Coming to power and creating a new history by the political party were a simultaneous process, and history as it was institutionalised in India was associated with kind of a deracinated western secular Marxist kind of history, so we had to necessarily bring down the intellectual capital of all professional historians. The moment you created this instant history, written by non-historians, which was very positivistic, but on the other hand, totally enmeshed in ?This is my belief and this is the land of India, of Hindus and Hindu beliefs should count. Now this belief is history and this should count?. So precisely when history was invoked the historian as a professional was being marginalised. And that's what made me intervene and suggest that this rallying cry of ?Let's all like-minded historians get together!? and ?One more push for scientific social history and these cobwebs would go away!? I thought this will not do, because as I tried to say in the beginning of that paper On Remembering the Musalman, what historians, or professional historians, had not done, was to try and write histories of how memories and communities are intermixed. I forget the beautiful lines that Suvendrini quoted. That communities and histories come together or something like that. Top... creating a new history So my earlier pieces were really stemmed, in 1986? from this. But that move was a challenging move, because that also meant convincing the professions that what is needed is another kind of history which is still history. Because the secular hardliners would say, ?look, if you let go of facticity, of positivist Marxism and so on and so forth, you are going to cross into their courtyard?. And I would say, well, but how can you fight them unless you take the fight into their courtyard and the metaphor that in India I've often given, is the boxing ring. And if you're keeping your punching in your corner, you're not going to get the guy. You have to, as they say, come out and, as they say, fight. So you have to really come to that ground. And punch harder and better. And -- which would also mean that you have to also convince the other people on your side that you are doing something new, because that's what they have not been able to do, but yet, it is history, because that's how -- it's like a new, it's like the Colgate Dental Ring that gives you 12 hour protection, right. In the sense that it's something new, but it comes out of something that is the usual. But this is something that you are able to do better. So that there's no point going back to old certainties. You have to do history, but you have to do a new kind of history which then gets into the question of memory, forgetfulness, constructions of past and so on, which are not the questions that proper historians anywhere had asked until very recently, or were cagey to ask, because they thought to ask these questions is to -- as somebody asked yesterday -- is to really pull the ground from under the edifice of proper history itself. Top... impact in the present Q I'm not sure that you haven't already partly addressed some of the things that came up in the question that our group discussed, which came out of discussing ways in which the past lives on in the present. And with very specific reference to the real context in India in the present. We wanted to know what effects you thought this story of yours from the past and your refashioning of the Warrior Saint, will actually have in the present in India. Shahid: Well, as some friends, comrades would think that I should not be doing this kind of history. Nobody has written about it, why do you want to do it now? Because some people might utilise this sort of thing to perhaps to have a movement and you attack the shrine or something like that. I am conscious of that, but you know -- and I'm also conscious of the fact that in certain senses local constructions or even regional constructions can be hijacked, by people who use a particular site to construct a pan-Indian view of things, as has happened in the past. I refer to the way in which, in the late 19th century, certain Hindi writers hijacked local events about matrimonial alliances and fitted it into a certain notion of India's past. But I guess what I'm saying is that one, that given the way non-professional histories are being fabricated in the interest of a particular majoritarian view of India's past, we should as professional historians, really create histories which are already in the market or on the ground, before a very positivist kind of a pop Hindu chauvinist history is created. And then you all scurry back and we then mount a defence or write a critical review of this really bad book on Wazimir [?], which would be written by an ideologue, or a World Bank returned economist who is now a member of the Cabinet, and who specialises in writing 600 page books on everything. Avin Surey (??) who did economics in the same college as I did history from. So then, so that, you know, so we must do this, otherwise it might be done in a non-professional way and a much more emotive way by somebody else. So that the professional historians would always be reacting. Top... popular culture, history and the warrior saint Secondly, and I think I've already said this, I'm amazed how the professional historians who are otherwise interested in popular culture and so on and so forth, can ignore something that is so much a part of the popular culture of this region for the past 500 years, including today. So that you know, if there are problems that the local chauvinists have thought about, they have thought about it for the past 70 years. There have been attempts since the 1910s by the local Hindu Arissamas(??), especially of this district. What good are you as a major Hindu figure of Behright(?) if you don't rebut their story. And there have been any number of pamphlets which have come up in the past from the 1910s which say ?well, these Bannadiers(??) are real scoundrels?, meaning they have cooked up these stories. But they don't say, that well, ?this hagiography?s a hagiography. Who was this guy? He didn't exist, so why bother about him?. They really converge hagiography into history ?This is what happened!? and then they advise Hindus to read this history properly, in terms of what we already know, what we already remember about the Musalman. So that there is for the past 80 years, an attempt independently of my first discovery of Wazimir [?] in 1980, to bring this guy down in the area in the province. And if that movement succeeds, I think it would succeed independently of whatever subversive or incendiary effect my little book will have on these people. You know, so that again, I'm not really addressing this book as with my Chauri Chaura book, to the actual devotees, on either side of the divide -- those who are really upset with the Hindu wives going to this guy, or those who go to the shrine. I talked to them: they are my major material, but this is really an intervention in the sphere of the non-devotees. And I think that the fact that this cult has existed for 500 years and has survived the attacks with print capitalism and so on, on it for the past 80 years -- even today at the big fair there is a stall put up the RSMI(??), who sell their history of Hindus and Wazimir every year. I bought some of them over there. So there is -- what I'm saying is that there is enough attempt to counter it, tension and survival, independently of my intervention. And I think that it would be fruitless on my part to only think well, they'll read this book in New Delhi and then launch a campaign on this. If it comes to that, then that would be really sad, that what I write as a historian becomes the occasion for a major political attack on this person, while at the local level and the provincial level, in fact the cult has been there surviving and existing because of this attack for so long. Let me just point out, you know, it's not that every guy who comes there is made to kneel and accept that ?Look, you have come to worship at the shrine of this guy who killed so many people?. There's a tension over there. I mean nobody's forced to admit. And the cult is able to survive precisely that. Neither is this guy made into a complete Hindu god, right. Doing only cows and nothing else. Nor is this guy written totally in terms of an Islamic hero. And it is the tension between the two that creates the space for all sorts of ideas in the same head, leading towards the movement towards this guy. And in effect, repeated attempts, several attempts to clarify the mind, clear the mind, have failed, and so that way I feel that it's not that dangerous. It would be overestimating my particular role as a public intellectual. That's how I think. Top... rethinking diaspora Q I'm particularly interested -- Devleena you mentioned the idea of the diaspora? I'm also interested in hearing a little bit from yourself? how do you use the concept of diaspora, and what are the problems with writing histories of diasporas? particularly if you are on the periphery of the diaspora? Suvendrini: That's a really interesting question to ask a Sri Lankan, because when you say if you're on the periphery of a diaspora, I mean in one of the biggest debates for us, for Sri Lankans is are you part of the Indian diaspora. [laughter] And -- which is a really sort of complicated question. And then you know, the Sri Lankan diaspora and the sort of complications of that. And so there are obviously huge problems and debates about all of that, which I acknowledge in a way, but I'm not particularly interested in buying into because they don't seem to be important to what I want to look at. So I wouldn't position myself in that way as someone who writes about diaspora. I'm not really trying to dodge the question, it's just that that's not where I would locate myself. I would see myself as writing about migration, which is slightly different. And also as writing, you know, what I've called somewhat -- you know, people are asking me about this -- why I use the term multi racial and multi ethnic, rather than multiculturalism. But I don't really -- I don't locate myself within that diasporic tradition. Devleena: Yeah, Suvendrini's stolen my thunder, because I was going to say, I actually think I write history of migrants, which I was going to say when you said it. But I suppose the problem -- certainly for India, in which I don't include Sri Lanka, I'll try not too -- there's a whole sort of range of questions about the notion of South Asia in the diaspora. And looking just at the Indian diaspora, if you want to use that word, in Australia for example, I mean leaving the Indo-Fijians out of it for the moment, to a large extent --the way that they, the way that the Indian diaspora seems to sort of work, is in a sense much more regionalised, certainly in Australia. So there's Bengali associations and Tamil associations, and even I think a Telugu association. And there's even a Vishuwa Hindi Parishad. So in a sense, they might come together for certain things, like when a film star comes from India, then everybody and his dog turns up, and her cat or whatever. But the thing is, in terms of actual inter-dining, inter-socialising, inter, you know, whatever you want to call it, it's much more. So then do we say, is there a Bengali diaspora? Is there a Calcutta diaspora? I mean it just gets into this kind of mess, really. So I try and keep out of the mess and just sort of work around the edges and just say well, migrants, I'm talking about migrants, and they come from certain parts of India, or Bangladesh sometimes, or whatever. So I don't know if I answered your question, but it's probably because I don't know the answer. Q In relationship to the jewish diaspora ?. what is that the relationship of homeland to the diaspora in your situation? Andrew: Yeah, well I was about to say, the Jewish diaspora, you mean the Jewish diasporas, right, because you know, five Jews, six presidents. I think the value of diaspora as a concept is actually primarily with those peoples who don't have a homeland in which they control a nation state. Because it sort of sets the political context rather more effectively. ? In the context of the Jewish diaspora, I think it's a really interesting problematic term, because it implies a whole series of things about the role that Israel plays in notions of Judaism. And that's a political question around which there are huge arguments, amongst Jews, let alone amongst everybody else. And that analytically I think though diaspora really has its initial linkage to ideas of the Jewish diaspora, it was more relevant to a period before the establishment of the state of Israel, where there were enormous questions about what it means to have -- what a Jewish home is, right? Is it -- prior to the Second World War, some people were fairly comfortable about the notion of Judaism as a religion, as other religions, and you were a citizen of the nation state, and therefore that was it. But over the last hundred years with the growth of political Zionism in its various forms, again diaspora then takes on a particular political tone, which has as one of its solutions to the diasporic problem, is the establishment of the state of Israel, which has all sorts of other questions. Top... truth, cultural experience and representing the ?other? Q This is a question for Andrew. I was thinking a lot about your representation of China in your project, and I guess I'm interested in the fact that you seem to -- and I might be wrong of course -- you seem to concentrate on a national discourse of China and relationship to Jewish in a particular period. But when you then describe what was going to happen with your website, you are very clear about representing differences within the Jewish community that end up, for some reason or another, in China. And I guess I'm a bit concerned about the fact that China is just represented in one way, which is a national dominant way. Andrew: Yeah, I skated over that question. I thought I made some reference to it. The ideology of pan-Hanism as an ideology of China making is, I think, a really important issue. Because China as a single concept is very much an ideological thing generated out of a particular political trajectory. And that the energy put into holding China together, as we know, is enormous. I mean the political, cultural energy that goes in on a daily basis to reproducing the notion of China in the modern PRC, whether it's talking about the destruction of the Falun Gong, the confrontation with Taiwan, the debate over the role of Mandarin as the national language, how they deal with minorities ? so-called minorities -- what to do about the Manchurian history, or the Manchu history of the Han empires. All those things are highly problematic elements I think. And I wouldn't want you to think I was unaware of that. But I think one of the interesting questions we've asked a lot of the people in the research is, thinking back, how would you summarise your experience of what it was like -- or how would you summarise your experience of China, leaving it as open as possible. And what you tend to get are these extraordinarily different projections, which are essentially relational projections. So some people say, I lived there for 50 years and I regret never getting to know China. Others said it was an extraordinarily affluent and spoilt life. It could never have happened in another time or place. Others would say, one guy said, I left there when I was 14, but as a child and an adolescent, those years were the most extraordinary of my life. It was like a magic land at the end of the rainbow. And others said it was the most horrific time -- it really depends. But each of them has a particular China that they related to. And this comes back to the question of what is the truth of any cultural experience. I mean the truth is all those truths. They are each true in terms of the experience of the people concerned. And the issue I guess in interviewing is to try and sense how much the individual is drawing on this notion of a panoramic external history to draw on an reinterpret their own experience. And how much they're simply lying about what happened. One particular guy who's now extremely wealthy, and a really nice guy, and the interview that he gave, he was particularly concerned to put to sleep two myths that he was concerned about in the community that he was in. One was that the white Russians, the tsarist Russians in China, were extremely anti-Semitic. And he describes in quite elaborate detail, how one of the leading Russian fascists actually helped him escape. And he then tells another [similar] story about being in Shanghai and gives quite a detailed history of the time in Shanghai. And in another interview with somebody else, who knew him well, she said 'Oh, did he tell you about the time he was in gaol?' No. Never mentioned it. It was part of his narrative at all. But it was very much part of her narrative about him. So there are all these questions -- there are all these questions about how you actually pin things down and try and tell a story. And I guess, taking up Shahid's point, a lot of what you're trying to do is actually evoke a respect for a multitude of alternalities about what goes. So that you're not stuck with a particular fixed statement about this is what life, this is what it was really like. And one of the experiences that a lot of people researching in this area have had is when they get a group, for instance, of Shanghailanders together, they have enormous arguments the moment they get together. 'No, it wasn't like that, it was like this.' 'It might have been like that for you, but it was like this for me.' And you get this extraordinary dynamic where people are absolutely convinced of the reality of their own history, obviously. But are very aggressive about anyone else's history, which might suggest that their's is anything but true and valid. Heather: I'd like to say on behalf of Transforming Cultures at UTS, and of the Institute for Cultural Research at UTS and UWS, it's been an incredibly valuable two days?Thank you to you all. Top... ________________________________ winter school home T|fC home From sadan at sarai.net Thu Apr 17 02:55:52 2003 From: sadan at sarai.net (sadan) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 17:25:52 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] some more readings Message-ID: <200304161725.52290.sadan@sarai.net> Dear all, i am sending you some more readings on history. Specially insightful are papers by Partha Chatterjee and Shahid Amin. There is no need to inform that both these names are leading vioces of post colonial conditions. Here Partha Chatterjee has written on Modernity and Shahid Amin has reflected upon alternative histories. thanking you. sadan http://www.iisg.nl/~sephis/publ.htm From sunil at mahiti.org Thu Apr 17 09:50:18 2003 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: 17 Apr 2003 09:50:18 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] I used to trust the media to tell me the truth In-Reply-To: <20030416185101.31210.34388.Mailman@mail.sarai.net> References: <20030416185101.31210.34388.Mailman@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <1050553219.1070.170.camel@sunil> This photograph http://www.antiwar.com/orig/baghdad.html Reminded me of a band that I used to overplay in college...QueensRyche. Come to think of it the song is 15 years old but still very relevant. Highlights: "I used to trust the media to tell me the truth, tell us the truth But now I've seen the payoffs everywhere I look Who do you trust when everyone's a crook?" "I used to think that only America's way, way was right But now the holy dollar rules everybody's lives Gotta make a million doesn't matter who dies" The complete lyrics is quoted below Thanks, Sunil ----------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.queensryche.com/releases/operation-mindcrime/index.html REVOLUTION CALLING - QueensRyche [1988] For a price I'd do about anything except pull the trigger For that I'd need a pretty good cause Then I heard of Dr. X, the man with the cure Just watch the television... Yeah, you'll see there's something going on Got no love for politicians, Or that crazy scene in D.C. It's just a power mad town But the time is ripe for changes, There's a growing feeling That taking a chance on a new kind of vision is due I used to trust the media to tell me the truth, tell us the truth But now I've seen the payoffs everywhere I look Who do you trust when everyone's a crook? Revolution calling, Revolution calling, Revolution calling you [There's a] Revolution calling, Revolution calling Gotta make a change, gotta push, gotta push it on through I'm tired of all this bullshit they keep selling me on T.V. About the communist plan And all the shady preachers begging for my cash Swiss bank accounts while giving their secretaries the slam They're all in Penthouse now or Playboy magazine, million dollar stories to tell I guess Warhol wasn't wrong fame fifteen minutes long Everyone's using everybody, making the sale I used to think that only America's way, way was right But now the holy dollar rules everybody's lives Gotta make a million doesn't matter who dies Revolution calling, Revolution calling, Revolution calling you [There's a] Revolution calling, Revolution calling Gotta make a change, Gotta push, gotta push it on through I used to trust the media to tell me the truth, tell us the truth But now I've seen the payoffs everywhere I look Who do you trust when everyone's a crook? Revolution calling, Revolution calling, Revolution calling you [There's a] Revolution calling, Revolution calling Gotta make a change, Gotta push, gotta push it on through ----------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Sunil Abraham, CEO MAHITI Infotech Pvt. Ltd. 'Reducing the cost and complexity of ICTs' 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 4150580. Mobile: 98455 12611 sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org From monsoon at pukar.org.in Wed Apr 16 18:38:36 2003 From: monsoon at pukar.org.in (PUKAR Monsoon) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 18:38:36 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Invitation to DOC-SHOP, 19-23 May 2003 Message-ID: Dear Friends: Please circulate this announcement as widely as possible to UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS in Mumbai. To register for the PUKAR Monsoon Doc-Shop, or for more information, contact Sanjay Bhangar at 3105 0246 (mobile), 2494 5046 (residence), Shonali Sarda at 3259 5974 (mobile), or Rahul Srivastava or Shekhar Krishnan PUKAR at 2207 7779 or . Regards, Rahul Srivastava, Shekhar Krishnan, Shonali Sarda and Sanjay Bhangar _______ PUKAR Monsoon 2003 DOC-SHOP, 19-23 May 2003 WHAT IS A DOC-SHOP? "Doc-Shop" is a shorthand term for "documentation workshop". In a Doc-Shop, undergraduate students will discuss acts of documentation as a creative and critical exercise, and simultaneously gain hands-on experience with various old and new media technologies. WHY DOCUMENTATION? Today all of us deal with information in great abundance. The Internet is a huge archive of information with massive streams of ideas, discussions and stories flowing through its networks. This makes special demands on us as creative and critical people. Any creative and critical engagement today means also learning to deal with such enormous archives, and understanding how they are made. Participating in a Doc-Shop is one such form of engagement. Doc-Shops help us to develop our conceptual skills and make sense of archives shaped through new media and digital technologies. They equip us to document the world on our own terms. The world around us is mediated by new technologies that shape our perceptions acutely. Yet most of us do not have access to these technologies, nor are we encouraged to shape the mediated reality around us. PUKAR views documentation not simply as a passive act of recording reality, but an active, creative process that allows us to participate in the construction of reality around us. PUKAR MONSOON DOC-SHOP in MAY 2003 Between 19 and 23 May 2003, PUKAR shall be conducting the Doc-Shop, as part of PUKAR Monsoon 2003. The Doc-Shop will be a week-long series of workshops that encourage hands-on learning of technical skills and equipment, and foster a critical and intellectual engagement with the terms and practices of documentation. The Doc-Shop will be facilitated by a group of resource persons: artists, media producers, documentalists and activists. The PUKAR Monsoon 2003 theme, "On Cities, On Water" will be the main content of the Doc-Shop. The Doc-Shop is open to all undergraduate students in Mumbai, and will be held for about 20 students. The Doc-Shop will culminate in the production of a small archive of images and words and other productions which can be used in further phases of the PUKAR Monsoon 2003 from June to August 2003 (see below). Each day will consist of a morning "reading-cum-discussion" session. These will be followed by afternoon "practicals" that will enable the hands-on use of different technologies. After five days, we hope that small groups of students will form who work on specific projects -- a short video, photo-essay, radio or sound story, a piece of fiction or an essay, or any other creative form -- on the PUKAR Monsoon theme of "On Cities, On Water" (see below). The small documentary projects will be exhibited publicly in the week following the Doc-Shop, and will form the basis of future events with local and international audiences in the PUKAR Monsoon 2003. DAY 1: The Moving Image Documentary films have a complex story of relating to the modern world, and we begin our Doc-Shop by reflecting on this story. Does the movie camera capture reality as a given? Or does it shape it through the selective eye of the movie-maker? What sense do we make of the huge archive of documentaries that exist today, and how do we evaluate their contribution to our understanding of the contemporary world? Handling a digital video camera and making some samples of moving images will be an important part of the session. DAY 2: The Photograph The still photograph has its own language and potency to shape our world and photographic images reach out to us through posters, advertisements and personal photo-albums. How do they shape our relationship to knowledge, with their particular method of recording reality? How does digital technology change the story of the photograph? The use of digital cameras and actually taking photographs will enhance reflection on these issues. DAY 3: Sound-Scapes Radio and the Internet have transformed the experience of "hearing" into a specialised zone that makes sound an autonomous space to act upon, for all those interested in documentation. How does one relate to audio archives today? How do audio records produce their own version of visual culture? Learning the nuances of sound archives through digital audio recording technologies and producing audio stories will complete this session. DAY 4: Words and Writing Words and texts remain crucial components of documenting reality. A script for a film, or a caption for a photograph, is vital to structure even visual forms of archiving. How do we relate to words and writing as old and new modes of documentation? How do we use words creatively to innovate on classificatory systems and taxonomies? How do we simply become better writers and therefore better archivists, even when using new visual media? Creative writing and "naming" exercises will form part of these reflections. DAY 5: Web Art Visual and performing art forms can be seen as the most sophisticated modes of documenting the complexities and nuances of lived experience. That is why we understand the richness of past and the present by relating to all kinds of art forms. However, digital technologies have transformed many art practices in all kinds of ways. We focus on the newly emergent form of "web art" as a space that reflects on earlier artistic traditions, and links the themes of the four previous days as converging in virtual or cyber-space. If the Internet is the most obvious manifestation of the "excess" and "overload" of documentation practices, then perhaps "web art" is a competent way of taking charge -- through participation, creation and subversion of virtual space. Making your own virtual and web-based creations will be a vital part of the learning experience. About the PUKAR MONSOON Pedagogic interventions are important to a new generation of urban youth whose critical understanding of society is mainly formed in the space of undergraduate colleges, and through negotiating the world of the mass media. In a spirit of engagement with these unexplored spaces and voices, PUKAR organises the PUKAR Monsoon: a series of lectures presentations, interactive sessions and activities from May to August every year in which college students address a specific theme through a variety of creative pedagogic approaches. The first annual PUKAR Monsoon, held in July and August 2002 in eight colleges in Mumbai was "The City at Work: Livelihoods and Ways of Belonging". Reflection on the history and economics of everyday life in the city helped students cultivate a critical sensibility about the market at a pre-professional stage of their lives. In the PUKAR Monsoon 2002, we used the idea of livelihood or work as an entry point for student participation in small activities or documentation projects to examine and understand how class and cultural identities are changing in the context of globalisation in Mumbai. Three short video-clips, installations, charts and small essays were some of the output which were then collectively shared and discussed in a subsequent discussion at The Bombay Paperie in August 2002. PUKAR MONSOON 2003: "On Cities, On Water" The theme for PUKAR Monsoon 2003 is "On Cities, On Water". Water as substance and as medium has been central to urban development throughout human history. In our city, as in many other world cities, modern urban experience and "structures of feeling" are definitively connected to the city's geographical form as island, and its location on the coastline. In the context of globalisation, other dimensions of water, and of the relationship between cities and water are becoming increasingly visible and contested in the public arena -- notably, the privatisation of water resources and the infrastructural networks delivering water. One of the aims of PUKAR Monsoon 2003 is to enable young people to develop a critical understanding of these and other relationships between cities and water. We propose that these connections could be explored along four axial dimensions of water -- in relation to its role as conduit, in the promotion of concourse and commerce, and in its dimension as contaminant. PUKAR Monsoon 2003 will work to create a better understanding of the political and cultural implications of these connections among the student participants, and will also attempt to extend the dialogue with other citizens. We expect that artists, intellectuals and activists from the student community as well as from the wider public in the city and beyond will participate in different ways. Our attempt will be to facilitate dialogue and debate, encourage artistic, intellectual and creative expression, and demonstrate civic-political concerns. _____ PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research) P.O. Box 5627, Dadar, Mumbai 400014, INDIA E-Mail Phone +91 (022) 2207 7779, +91 98200 45529, +91 98204 04010 Web Site http://www.pukar.org.in _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From gabrown at axionet.com Wed Apr 16 22:52:04 2003 From: gabrown at axionet.com (graham a brown) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 10:22:04 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] International Call To Creative Action In-Reply-To: <20030416185101.31210.34388.Mailman@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: Hi I would like to bring to your attention the International Call To Creative Action. The theme is to explore your post 9€11 experience. All the winning and finalists entries will be published September 2003, on the 9€11 International Call to Creative Action, a digital storytelling interactive DVD, to be presented to the United Nations Library, and Canadian Parliamentary Library and the American Library of Congress. Categories: Writer, Visual Artist, Photography, Multimedia, and a separate family or school entry. Detailed information is on the web site or email info at netcomediainteractive.com. Entry fee: fifteen ($15) US money order with one (1) entry or twenty five dollars ($25) US money order for three (3) entries.1st Prize: $250, 2nd Prize: $150, all in US currency. Winners will receive a copy of the published DVD. Deadline post marked May 1, 2003 c/o netcoMedia Interactive 1027 Davie Street, Suite 532 Vancouver, BC, Canada V6E 4L2 http://www.netcomediainteractive.com info at netcomediainteractive.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030416/b3f02813/attachment.html From shuddha at sarai.net Thu Apr 17 21:24:05 2003 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 21:24:05 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Conscientous Objectors in the War against Iraq Message-ID: <03041721240502.01384@sweety.sarai.kit> Here is a posting of an article by Gabriel Packard forwarded by Coco Fusco on the Undercurrents List, about conscientious objectors (soldiers who refuse combat ) in the war against Iraq. I thought it would be of interest for those who have been part of the ongoing discussions on the Iraq war in this list cheers Shuddha ___________________________________________________________ IRAQ: Hundreds of U.S. Soldiers Emerge as Conscientious Objectors Gabriel Packard NEW YORK, Apr 15 (IPS) - Although only a handful of them have gone public, at least several hundred U.S. soldiers have applied for conscientious objector (CO) status since January, says a rights group. The Center on Conscience and War (CCW), which advises military personnel on CO discharges, reports that since the start of 2003 - when many soldiers realised they might have to fight in the Iraq war - there has been a massive increase in the number of enlisted soldiers who have applied for CO status. ”The bare minimum is several hundred, and this number only includes the ones that have come to my group and to groups we're associated with,” CCW official J.E. McNeil told IPS. ”There will be others who will have gone through different channels, and some people do it on their own,” she added. Generally, COs possess a sincere conviction that forbids them from taking part in organised killing. This objection may apply to all or to only particular aspects of war. Only a small percentage of people who apply receive a CO discharge. But military statistics lag about one year behind, and the decisions on CO applications take on average six months to one year - sometimes as long as two years - so the exact number of COs in the present war will not be known for some time. Also, military figures do not count applications from servicemen who are absent without leave, so they will not include Stephen Funk, a marine reserve who was on unauthorised leave before he publicly declared himself a conscientious objector and reported back to his military base in San Jose, California, Apr. 1. Funk, 20, realised that he was against all war during his training, which including having to bayonet human-shaped dummies while shouting, ”kill, kill”. Since publicly declaring his opposition to war, he has become a symbol of resistance both in the United States and around the world. ”Since Stephen went public,” says Aimee Allison, a CO from the first Gulf War who has been supporting Funk, ”some people from Yesh Gvul (a group of Israeli soldiers who have refused to fight in the occupied territories in Palestine) have contacted me to pledge their support for Stephen and to show solidarity and to thank him for making a stand.” ”People in other countries are proud that an American can stand up to the hegemony and the violence of the war in Iraq,” she adds. Soldiers in other countries, including Turkey, have refused to fight in the current war sparked by last month's U.S.-led attack. Three British servicemen were sent home from the Persian Gulf after objecting to the conduct of the invasion and a U.K. member of parliament, George Galloway, says he ”is calling on British forces to refuse to obey the illegal orders” involved in the war. As it is in the British army, CO discharge is a long-established practice in the U.S. armed forces and always peaks in wartime. CCW says there were an estimated 200,000 COs in the Vietnam War, 4,300 in the Korean War, 37,000 in World War II and 3,500 in World War I. The military granted 111 COs from the army in the first Gulf War before putting a stop to the practice, resulting in 2,500 soldiers being sent to prison, says Bill Gavlin from the Center on Conscience and War, quoting a report from the 'Boston Globe' newspaper. During that war, a number of U.S. COs in Camp LeJeune in North Carolina state were ”beaten, harassed and treated horribly”, Gavlin says. In some cases, COs were put on planes bound for Kuwait, told that they could not apply for CO status or that they could only apply after they'd already gone to war. As far as Gavlin knows, that type of treatment has not happened this time. But he has counselled service members who were harassed. For example, one woman was told that if she applied for CO status she would be court marshalled. It is not an offence to apply, and her superiors did it, Gavlin says, ”to intimidate her.” Funk is being treated ''with kid gloves'' in his home camp, where he is on restricted duty, according to Allison. But he is poised to be transferred to a ''remote'' camp, a standard procedure for COs, says Gavlin. Allison says she was both supported and condemned when she became a CO. ”Privately I received overwhelming personal support from the other members of my unit,” she says. ”But publicly I was isolated by my unit.” ”I was a senior at Stanford at the time, and again, in private I got lots of support - for example anti-war groups on campus asked me to speak at events,” she adds. ”But there were also detractors on campus and in the broader community.” Even though conscientious objection is well established, Funk - like many others - found it difficult to find information about it within the military system. ”It took him six or seven months,” says Allison. ”And eventually he was searching the Internet .... and found the G.I. Rights website.” G.I. Rights is a network of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) that give advice and information to service members about military discharges and about complaint procedures. CCW belongs to this network. The NGOs advise soldiers on whether they meet the criteria for CO status, and help them complete a CO application. The process involves filling in a 22-question form, being interviewed by a military chaplain, a psychologist and an investigating officer. To succeed in getting CO status, soldiers must demonstrate that their beliefs about war have changed since they enlisted. Soldiers that have this change of heart fall into three main groups, says McNeil. The first group contains ”those who go into the military understanding war and are willing to accept it”, she says. ”But then something happens during their service and they are no longer OK with war.” The second group contains people who have ”sought out spiritual growth and have come to believe that God doesn't want them to participate in war.” The third, and biggest, group, she says, is made up of young, often naive, people who join the military in their late teens. They are often poor whites, blacks or Hispanics, who either have limited employment opportunities, or are looking for a way to fund their college education. Because military recruiters target poor youth in urban centres - the so-called ”poverty draft” - this is probably the fastest-growing group of COs as well as the biggest, added McNeil. . (END/2003) From ghoshvishwajyoti at rediffmail.com Thu Apr 17 22:33:28 2003 From: ghoshvishwajyoti at rediffmail.com (vishwajyoti ghosh) Date: 17 Apr 2003 17:03:28 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] International Call To Creative Action Message-ID: <20030417170328.12767.qmail@webmail32.rediffmail.com> ISKO ENTRY KAHIN SE NAHI MIL RAHA HAI KYA..? BAAR BAAR YEHI MAIL BHEJTA REHTA HAI... ONE SHOULD SEND HIM A PICTURE OF A WOUNDED IRAQI CIVILIAN BURIED IN DEBRIS FR THE "POST 9-11 EXPERIENCE".. APPOLOGIES TO ALL POLITICALLY CORRECT INTELLECTUALS, BUT I'M IN NO MOOD FR ANY SYMPATHIES... On Wed, 16 Apr 2003 graham a brown wrote : >Hi > >I would like to bring to your attention the International Call To Creative >Action. > >The theme is to explore your post 9€11 experience. > >All the winning and finalists entries will be published September 2003, on >the 9€11 International Call to Creative Action, a digital storytelling >interactive DVD, to be presented to the United Nations Library, and Canadian >Parliamentary Library and the American Library of Congress. > >Categories: Writer, Visual Artist, Photography, Multimedia, and a separate >family or school entry. Detailed information is on the web site or email >info at netcomediainteractive.com. Entry fee: fifteen ($15) US money order with >one (1) entry or twenty five dollars ($25) US money order for three (3) >entries.1st Prize: $250, 2nd Prize: $150, all in US currency. Winners will >receive a copy of the published DVD. > >Deadline post marked May 1, 2003 > >c/o >netcoMedia Interactive >1027 Davie Street, Suite 532 >Vancouver, BC, >Canada V6E 4L2 >http://www.netcomediainteractive.com >info at netcomediainteractive.com > From hoomair at yahoo.com Fri Apr 18 05:39:18 2003 From: hoomair at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?q?Omair=20Faizullah?=) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 01:09:18 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] International Call To Creative Action In-Reply-To: <20030417170328.12767.qmail@webmail32.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: <20030418000918.78402.qmail@web40903.mail.yahoo.com> i'm not intending to defend anyone. your politically incorrect intellectualism is appreciated. but really...that is no justification to blame someone for calling for entries. contrary to our culture...at least they are aware of the importance of memorialization. and sadly...all we do is talk & blame. --- vishwajyoti ghosh wrote: > > ISKO ENTRY KAHIN SE NAHI MIL RAHA HAI KYA..? > BAAR BAAR YEHI MAIL BHEJTA REHTA HAI... > ONE SHOULD SEND HIM A PICTURE OF A WOUNDED IRAQI > CIVILIAN BURIED IN DEBRIS FR THE "POST 9-11 > EXPERIENCE".. > APPOLOGIES TO ALL POLITICALLY CORRECT INTELLECTUALS, > BUT I'M IN NO MOOD FR ANY SYMPATHIES... > > On Wed, 16 Apr 2003 graham a brown wrote : > >Hi > > > >I would like to bring to your attention the > International Call To Creative > >Action. > > > >The theme is to explore your post 9€11 experience. > > > >All the winning and finalists entries will be > published September 2003, on > >the 9€11 International Call to Creative Action, a > digital storytelling > >interactive DVD, to be presented to the United > Nations Library, and Canadian > >Parliamentary Library and the American Library of > Congress. > > > >Categories: Writer, Visual Artist, Photography, > Multimedia, and a separate > >family or school entry. Detailed information is on > the web site or email > >info at netcomediainteractive.com. Entry fee: fifteen > ($15) US money order with > >one (1) entry or twenty five dollars ($25) US money > order for three (3) > >entries.1st Prize: $250, 2nd Prize: $150, all in US > currency. Winners will > >receive a copy of the published DVD. > > > >Deadline post marked May 1, 2003 > > > >c/o > >netcoMedia Interactive > >1027 Davie Street, Suite 532 > >Vancouver, BC, > >Canada V6E 4L2 > >http://www.netcomediainteractive.com > >info at netcomediainteractive.com > > __________________________________________________ Yahoo! Plus For a better Internet experience http://www.yahoo.co.uk/btoffer From shuddha at sarai.net Fri Apr 18 16:22:08 2003 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 16:22:08 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Bad News from Cuba Message-ID: <03041816220800.01259@sweety.sarai.kit> Dear all on the Reader List, While everyone is focused on what is going on in Iraq, bad news seeps in from elsewhere, and often goes un noticed. Earlier this month, in a spectacular set of show trials in Cuba, 75 people were given lengthy prison sentances, (of more than 20 years each) in trials that often did not last longer than a day. These people were mainly independent journalists, human rights activists, university teachers and writers. Three people who tried to flee Cuba in a ferry that they had hijacked were apprehended and executed by a firing squad. Cuba is a small country, with a population of not more than 11,184,023 (as of July 2001). Compare this with the city of Delhi, which has more than 13 million people. Now consider the impact that the sudden arrest of 75 independent journalists, human rights activists, university teachers and writers within a single day would have in Delhi. For those of us who live in Delhi and are on this list, we would probably know many amongst them, (if 75 such people were to be arrested in one day). ( I am not even talking about India - because the scale is too different, for the scale to be comparative, we would need to have at least 7,500 people arrested and served with life sentances, not for any acts committed by them, but because of their opinions and views on the politcial realities that they faced) The Castro regime, like that of many other third world dictatorships of varying political colours is a quagmire of decaying tropical repression. We gloss over this when we are seduced by the images of sunny beaches, the beautiful city of Havana, the happy Cuban music we all play at parties, the films we all love and the photo-play of radical rhetoric and long speeches that many have grown sentimental about. Its not just the length of Fidel's speeches that is oppressive. The length of his shadow, which grows even as he ages and his radical shine gets mouldy, and which lies heavily on the lives of many ordinary Cubans, is something for all of us to think about And so, I just thought, that while we spend a lot of time thinking about Fidel's powerful tyrant neighbour up north, and the devastating consequences world wide of the Bush administrations criminal acts, we should not neglect to spare a moment thinking about those who have to live with El Comandante, seemingly forever. No tyrant no matter how big or small, how near or far, be he Bush, or Pinochet, or Saddam Hussein, or Stalin, or Narendra Modi, or Castro, or Kim Jong Il, or Bal Thackeray or Indira Gandhi should ever be forgotten, or be allowed to think that they can secure their corner in the world and in history, away from the attention of anyone who loves their liberty. Below are two forwarded texts, one from the Digital Freedom Network website by Shravanti Reddy on the show trials, and another, a press release from the Amnesty International website about the three recent executions by firing squad. Cheers (?) Shuddha _____________________________________________________________________________ 1. Cuban activists and independent journalists await international action by Shravanti Reddy, Digital Freedom Network http://www.dfn.org/news/cuba/trials.htm (April 11, 2003) As the last of the 78 Cuban dissidents that were arrested last month were tried and sentenced this week, the Cuban government has shown little concern over the worldwide condemnation over their actions. On March 18, Cuban authorities began arresting political dissidents, independent journalists, and human rights and pro-democracy activists throughout the country. In all, 78 people were arrested for peacefully exercising their freedom of expression and assembly. The majority where charged under Law 88 Protection of Cuba's National Independence and Economy and Article 91 of the Penal Code. The arrests were swiftly followed by mass trials held throughout the country under "facilitated procedures" that are only to be used under exceptional circumstances. Defense lawyers had little time to prepare cases and in many instances could not meet with their clients until just before their trials began. Each trial lasted no longer than one day and was closed to both the international press and foreign diplomats. In addition, many trusted colleagues of the arrested revealed that they were informants working for the state security. They provided damaging testimony against many of the activists and journalists during their trials. Many believe that Cuba orchestrated the crackdown to coincide with the US and British war on Iraq, when world attention would be focused elsewhere. Sentences are considered excessive and range from six to 28 years. Among the more prominent of those arrested are economist Marta Beatriz Roque, poet and journalist Raul Rivera, journalist Omar Rodriguez Saludes, and opposition leader and reformist Hector Palacios. They received 20, 20, 25, and 27 years respectively. Luis Enrique Ferrer who was a coordinator for the Varela Project, a petition-drive seeking greater democracy in Cuba, was sentenced to 28 years. Many believe that the communist one-party state, run by Fidel Castro since 1959, orchestrated the crackdown to coincide with the US and British war on Iraq, when world attention would be focused elsewhere. "The regime was able to begin the crackdown, end the crackdown, and have these people sentenced all during the swift war in Iraq," explained Rene Gomez Manzano in an interview with the Digital Freedom Network. Manzano, an independent lawyer and prominent Cuban dissident, co-authored "The Homeland Belongs to All of Us" along with Roque, Vladimiro Roca, and Felix Bonne Carcasses for which they were all imprisoned. They are often referred to as the "Group of Four." With the trials ending on April 8, the Cuban government made their first public statement concerning the arrests and trials the following day when Foreign Minister Filipe Perez Roque confirmed that 75 prisoners had already been given lengthy prison sentences. He referred to those on trial as mercenaries working for the US. According to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the government claimed they were protecting their "independence from a US-funded conspiracy to undermine the government of Castro." Although the Cuban government has shown little concern with the widespread condemnation of their actions thus far, those sentenced are looking to international support and action to bring about their release. Behind bars again Acclaimed economist and human rights activist Marta Beatriz Roque has already spent three years and six months in prison for co-authoring "The Homeland Belongs To Us All." Released in 2000, Roque continued her work to promote human rights and democracy in Cuba. As the head of the Assembly to Promote Civil Society"-a coalition of approximately 85 opposition organizations around the country-Roque was instrumental in organizing the Campaign to Promote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) at the end of last year. Prosecutors had originally pursued a life sentence against Roque, the only woman tried during the recent crackdown, but this was subsequently reduced to a 20-year sentence. Like the others, Roque was charged under Law 88. The first time it has been invoked by the government, Law 88 allows for prison sentences or the death penalty for those who act against the "independence or the territorial integrity of the State" and prohibits "distributing subversive materials of foreign organizations." "Not only in Marta's case, but in all the others, the sentences are filled with generalities," claimed Manzano, who had the opportunity to read the sentences. "They are filled with vague accusations and vague statements accusing them of acting with the purpose of attacking the Cuban government." Using imprecise and indirect language, Manzano maintains that "there are no concrete charges against them." For example, independent journalist Adolfo Fernandez Ruiz's sentence only contained 15 lines describing his crime, yet he received a 16-year sentence, explained Manzano. Government officials searched Roque's home and confiscated her computer, books, documents and other items. Others had their furniture, fax machines, typewriters and other valuable items taken. According to Manzano, some dissidents' houses were even confiscated by the government, despite relatives and family members still residing there. Ironically, the Assembly to Promote Civil Society had announced in a press conference in January that its work in 2003 would focus on the release of political prisoners. In fact, the arrests last month seem to be part of the government's escalating efforts that began last year to disband the opposition. "At the end of 2002, there were more political prisoners or prisoners of conscience than at the same time a year before," stated Manzano. Just prior to her arrest on March 20, Roque had participated in a hunger strike to demand the release of political prisoners including Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, who was arrested on December 6 for an act of civil disobedience during a teach-in on the UDHR. Dr. Biscet received a 25-year sentence yesterday. "Before the crackdown, Cuba had more political prisoners than anywhere else in the world in real terms," explained Manzano. "But now you can add 78 more people, which means there are over 90 political prisoners in Cuba now." An American (diplomat) in Cuba The role of US Interests Section Chief James Cason in prompting the crackdown has been the subject of debate. Many have criticized Cason, who arrived in Cuba last summer, for meeting with and openly supporting Cuban activists and independent journalists. According to the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), Cason has also "publicly referred to them as the future political leaders of the country" and has "criticized the government in comments to the international press." Roque's meetings with an American diplomat were considered "repeated provocations" by the Cuban government. In fact, most of the convictions last week were based on charges of collaborating with American diplomats to undermine the socialist state and to harm Cuba and its economy. According to the Seattle Times, Raul Rivera was accused of accepting money from US diplomats. Rivera and his wife, Blanca Reyes, have denied the accusation. About a week before the arrests began, independent journalists attended a workshop that was held at Cason's residence. According to the New York Times, an independent journalist group headed by Ricardo Gonzalez Sainz approached Cason for assistance in holding the workshop. The group had previously been blocked from holding reporting and editing classes by the Cuban government. Roque has also been linked to Cason, who attended a meeting held at her residence on February 24, Cuban Independence Day. This and similar meetings have been referred to as "repeated provocations" by the Cuban government, which had also threatened to close down the US Office of American Interest in the capital city of Havana if such meetings continued to occur. Former US Interests Section Chief Wayne Smith criticized "Cason's 'bull in a china shop' tactics as provoking the arrests," as reported by NACLA. However, Laida Carro of the Coalition of Cuban-American Women disagreed. "When Marta [Roque] held a meeting in her home on February 24, she invited all the diplomats from all the embassies but James Cason was the only one who came," explained Carro in an interview with the Digital Freedom Network. "I think everyone should have gone and done the same thing, but it is easy to say he was wrong to do so now." In fact, many of those arrested had never even met with Cason. Instead, Carro believes that the opposition's growing strength was the reason behind the arrests. "This is why they were arrested," explained Carro. "They got together and they were doing well." Importance of international support "Those in Cuba, they are telling us that and they depend on the world's solidarity," said Carro. Fortunately, there has been widespread condemnation of the Cuban government despite the attention-grabbing war on Iraq. Several international human rights and press organizations have strongly condemned the arrests and demanded the release of the dissidents, including Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International, Committee to Protect Journalists, and the International Press Institute. ________________________________________________________________ 2. Cuba: Executions mark an unjustifiable erosion in human rights Amnesty International Press release, 14/04/2003 news.amnesty.org/mavp/news.nsf/VwDocid/ 6DF1171EC0CC4D4280256D0800518177?openDocument In yet another blow to respect for human rights, Cuban authorities have ended a three-year de facto moratorium on executions by sending three men to their deaths before an official firing squad, said Amnesty International today. "Coming on the heels of the mass arrest and summary trials of at least 75 Cuban dissidents -- most of whom received shockingly lengthy prison terms ranging up to 28 years -- these executions mark a serious erosion in Cuba's human rights record." "The executions are extremely worrying as a human rights development, not only because they signal the end of Cuba's widely-heralded de facto moratorium on executions," continued Amnesty International. "What is equally of concern is that the men were given a summary trial, and their appeals to the supreme court and the Council of State were dealt with in a cursory and wholly inadequate manner. They were shot and killed less than a week after their trial began." The three men, Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García and Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac, were among a group who reportedly hijacked a Cuban ferry with several dozen passengers on board on 2 April and tried to force it to the United States. The incident,the third hijacking in two weeks in Cuba, ended without bloodshed, after several days' standoff between Cuban security forces and the the hijackers. Currently there at least 50 people on death row in Cuba. Amnesty International is concerned that these people may also face imminent execution given that the moratorium has ended, and has taken action by calling on authorities to urgently commute all pending death sentences. Lorenzo Enrique Copello, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla and Jorge Luis Martínez were convicted of terrorism under Law 93 of late 1991, which expanded existing anti-terrorism measures and reaffirmed the use of the death penalty in the most extreme cases. Another four hijackers received life sentences, while four others received shorter prison terms. In an official statement on the executions on 11 April, the Cuban government claimed that it was undergoing serious provocations and threats to its national security emanating from the United States. "There is no justification for executions, particularly following summary trials," Amnesty International responded. "Over the last four weeks, Cuba has reversed significant human rights progress made over a period of years. This represents a return to extreme repressive measures in use decades ago which cannot be justified, and which ultimately harm the Cuban people." ____________________________________________________________      From shyama at ekno.com Fri Apr 18 21:50:02 2003 From: shyama at ekno.com (shyama at ekno.com) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 16:20:02 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] hello big bro In-Reply-To: <20030418042512.13597.72775.Mailman@mail.sarai.net> References: <20030418042512.13597.72775.Mailman@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <1050682802.3ea025b2a3358@www.ekno.lonelyplanet.com> well it's not really very much....just a lot of hot gas mostly....but yahoo, apparently, has decided to do its bit for the ol' red, white and blue. the wackyiraqi mailing list has been unceremoniously booted - a visit to the site (www.wackyiraqi.com) would give you a fair idea of what the list was about. thank you uncle dubya...i feel so seditious and all. with all the other nonsense that's happening (we've got togadia, they've got rumsfeld), this surely is infinitesimal. or maybe also not. the moderater's mail (sub: the demise of the wackyiraqimailing list) follows. ------------------------------------------ Please excuse this email if you had already unsubscribed from the WackyIraqi list. If that is the case, rest assured that this is the last email you'll ever receive from us. --- Retards, As you may have already realized, you are no longer a member of the WackyIraqi Yahoo Group. Welcome to the club. Today, the fascist pricks at Yahoo Groups deleted our lovely little list, citing a "violation of [their] terms of service." As one might expect with a free service, violating their terms of service doesn't take much, and in retrospect this event was inevitable on an offensive list like ours. This deletion came without warning, and without an explanation. I didn't even have 30 seconds to download the member list before it was erased. I do have nearly every post from the last year or so saved on my machine (which is where I got the email addresses to send this letter), but I am reluctant to subscribe you to a new list without your explicit permission. Fear not, however, I have already created a NEW list with WackyIraqi.com's current web host. If you would like to join the new and improved Retarded WackyIraqi.com mailing list, please visit: http://wackyiraqi.com/list If you have any questions, please feel free to email me. Thanks. Taco taco, -Z --- ziad at wackyiraqi.com "Once you go Iraqi, you never go baqi."--Jon Stewart __________________________________________________ save up to 70% on calls, get voicemail & send SMS ekno - more than a phonecard http://www.ekno.lonelyplanet.com � From ayish at vsnl.net Wed Apr 16 19:13:50 2003 From: ayish at vsnl.net (Ayisha Abraham) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 19:13:50 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Fwd: FW: Physical Review, reviewer correspondence] (fwd) Message-ID: >Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 16:36:33 +0530 >To: reader-list at mail.sarai.net >From: Ayisha Abraham >Subject: [Fwd: FW: Physical Review, reviewer correspondence] (fwd) >Cc: >Bcc: >X-Attachments: > >>Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2003 16:32:51 +0530 >>To: "Reader-List at Mail. Sarai. Net" >>From: Ayisha Abraham >>Subject: [Fwd: FW: Physical Review, reviewer correspondence] (fwd) >>Cc: >>Bcc: >>X-Attachments: >> >>A scientist with courage! Read on. >> >>>>Dr. Daniel Amit >>>> >>>>Univ. di Roma >>>> >>>>La Sapienza >>>> >>>>Ple Aldo Moro 2 >>>> >>>>00185 Roma, ITALY >>>> >>>>Electronic URL-Download Referral from Physical Review E >>>> >>>>Code: EA8932 >>>> >>>>Title: Transitions in oscillatory dynamics of two connected >>>> >>>>neurons with excitatory synapses >>>> >>>>Received 08 January 2003 >>>> >>>>Dear Dr. Amit: >>>> >>>>We would appreciate your review of this manuscript, which has >>>> >>>>been submitted to Physical Review E. This message is the >>>> >>>>COMPLETE REFERRAL. No hardcopy will be sent unless requested. >>>> >>>>-------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>> >>>>---- >>>> >>>>From: "Daniel Amit" >>>> >>>>To: "Physical Review E" 
>>>>
>>>>Sent: Friday, March 21, 2003 6:11 PM
>>>>
>>>>Subject: Re: Review_request AMIT EA8932 Roudi
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>I will not at this point correspond with any american institution.
>>>>
>>>>Some of us have lived through 1939.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>From: "martin blume" 
>>>>
>>>>To: ; 
>>>>
>>>>Subject: your email to the American Physical Society
>>>>
>>>>Date: Tuesday, April 08, 2003 10:31 PM
>>>>
>>>>Dear Dr. Amit,
>>>>
>>>>We have received your email with your decision not to review a
>>>>
>>>>paper for us in light of American actions in the middle east. We
>>>>
>>>>recognize that reviewing manuscripts is a voluntary activity, one
>>>>
>>>>that you perform as a service to the physics community, and we
>>>>
>>>>thank you for your efforts.
>>>>
>>>>Given the voluntary nature of your participation we of course
>>>>
>>>>respect your decision to cease, and have made an indication in our
>>>>
>>>>database so that no further papers will be sent to you for review
>>>>
>>>>until you inform us otherwise.
>>>>
>>>>We ask, however, that you consider the following in hopes that in
>>>>
>>>>the not too distant future you will decide to review for us again.
>>>>
>>>>We regard science as an international enterprise and we do our best
>>>>
>>>>to put aside political disagreements in the interest of furthering
>>>>
>>>>the pursuit of scientific matters. We have never used other than
>>>>
>>>>scientific criteria in judging the acceptability of a paper for
>>>>
>>>>publication, without regard to the country of origin of the author.
>>>>
>>>>We have done this even in cases where some of us have disagreed
>>>>
>>>>strongly with the policies of that country, and we will continue
>>>>
>>>>this practice. We believe it is essential that all parties involved
>>>>
>>>>make every effort to separate social and political differences from
>>>>
>>>>their participation in scientific research and publication. The
>>>>
>>>>pursuit of scientific knowledge needs to transcend such issues.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Sincerely,
>>>>
>>>>Martin Blume
>>>>
>>>>Editor-in-Chief
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>>----
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Dear Dr Blume, Editor in Chief
>>>>
>>>>American Physical Society
>>>>
>>>>09.04.2003
>>>>
>>>>Thank you for you letter of April 8. I would have liked to be able
>>>>
>>>>to share the honorable sentiments you express in your letter as
>>>>
>>>>well as your optimism in the future role of science and the
>>>>
>>>>scientific community. To be frank, and with much sadness and pain,
>>>>
>>>>after 40 years of activity and collaboration, I find very little
>>>>
>>>>reason for such optimism.
>>>>
>>>>What we are watching today, I believe, is a culmination of 10-15
>>>>
>>>>years of mounting barbarism of the American culture the world over,
>>>>
>>>>crowned by the achievements of science and technology as a major
>>>>
>>>>weapon of mass destruction. We are witnessing man hunt and wanton
>>>>
>>>>killing of the type and scale not seen since the raids on American
>>>>
>>>>Indian populations, by a superior technological power of inferior
>>>>
>>>>culture and values. We see no corrective force to restore the
>>>>
>>>>insanity, the self-righteousness and the lack of respect for human
>>>>
>>>>life (civilian and military) of another race.
>>>>
>>>>Science cannot stay neutral, especially after it has been so
>>>>
>>>>cynically used in the hands of the inspectors to disarm a country
>>>>
>>>>and prepare it for decimation by laser guided cluster bombs. No,
>>>>
>>>>science of the American variety has no recourse. I, personally,
>>>>
>>>>cannot see myself anymore sharing a common human community with
>>>>
>>>>American science. Unfortunately, I also belong to a culture of a
>>>>
>>>>similar spiritual deviation (Israel), and which seems to be equally
>>>>
>>>>incorrigible.
>>>>
>>>>In desperation I cannot but turn my attention to other tragic
>>>>
>>>>periods in which major societies, some with claims to fundamental
>>>>
>>>>contributions to culture and science, have deviated so far as to be
>>>>
>>>>relegated to ostracism and quarantine. At this point I think
>>>>
>>>>American society should be considered in this category. I have no
>>>>
>>>>illusions of power, as to the scope and prospect of my attitude.
>>>>
>>>>But, the minor role of my act and statement is a simple way of
>>>>
>>>>affirming that in the face of a growing enormity which I consider
>>>>
>>>>intolerable, I will exercise my own tiny act of disobedience to be
>>>>
>>>>able to look straight into the eyes of my grandchildren and my
>>>>
>>>>students and say that I did know.
>>>>
>>>>With regard
>>>>
>>>>Daniel Amit
>>>>
>>>>PS I intend to distribute our exchange as much as possible. I
>>>>
>>>>authorize and pray that you do the same.
>>>
>>>Satyajit Mayor
>>>National Centre for Biological Sciences
>>>UAS-GKVK Campus,
>>>Bangalore 560065,
>>>India
>>>Ph:  91 80  363 6421/29 Extn: 4260
>>>Fax: 91 80 363 6662/75
>>>
>>>E-mail: mayor at ncbs.res.in
>>>web-address http://www.ncbs.res.in/~faculty/mayor.html
>>>
>>
>>
>
>

Please note change of address and ID.
Ayisha Abraham
302 Silverdale, #5 Hutchins Road, Cooke Town
Bangalore 560 005, India
Tel: ++91 (0)80 546-4058  e-mail: ayish at vsnl.net




From souvikmukherjee at vsnl.net  Fri Apr 18 23:04:32 2003
From: souvikmukherjee at vsnl.net (souvikmukherjee)
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 23:04:32 +0530
Subject: [Reader-list] Fw: posting for readers-list
Message-ID: <001401c305d0$c784a000$7db341db@xx>


----- Original Message ----- 
From: souvikmukherjee 
To: readers-list at sarai.net 
Sent: Friday, April 18, 2003 11:01 PM
Subject: posting for readers-list


  
 POSTING FOR SARAI READER-LIST 

COMPUTER GAMES AND READING HABITS

- by Souvik Mukherjee and Riddhi Sankar Ray

In our research proposal we have looked at the computer game as a possible alternative to the books we read and also how these, thereby, change our reading habits. Games in their own little way, tell stories. And these are not the hidebound stories created by someone else: these stories are to a large extent created by us, the readers. How novel this is , is of course a matter of speculation. Retelling, of any sort, would incorporate making changes to the base text. There have been quite a few examples of such in literary history. the point, however, is to see how far this can go and what it is like from the experiential point of view. 
 

In an earlier submission , we have looked at a few similarities and differences between Computer games and fiction. Our comparison was made between the Bond novels and Wolfenstein 3D (made by ID software). The action-packed storyline of the Bond novels likens these to computer games like Wolf. But to how many more genres can we apply this ? The element of re-telling is best observed in another genre of computer games. In the strategy game , be it a war game like Age of Empires or a city building game like Zoo tycoon, the story can have more ramifications because it allows us to 'build' the resources that make up the story. It is  quite a novel experience: mining gold and stone, chopping wood , gathering food by various means , we are expected to build for ourselves a city which in turn will withstand sieges and furnish soldiers. Very often, with the medley of things that can be constructed and the updates that can be made on the storyline and the characters,  this idea of re-telling is given its fullest scope. In the above games , one can build the story of entire civilizations; one can even change history. In this regard ,  one can look at the numerous Age of Empires 'scenarios' constructed by various individuals and made available online. The age of Empires game has in effect , besides its own campaigns allowed the 'playing' of various other stories ranging from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings to the battle of Plassey. So successful has the series been , that it has spawned three successive sequels : The Age of Kings , The age of conquerors and the age of Mythology. The games have a framework involving a basic historical framework, with realistic fighting units, graphics and being set in a quasi-real environment. The pay-offs of such a structure are many. For some people, the ability to manoeuver 

the same building blocks to make numerous arbitrary stories is very attractive. Even among games , this is not always possible. The most arbitrary version of  playing would be children playing with toys. Theorists of game playing have differentiated between the Game , which is structured formally with a set of rules, and Play , where the rules are absent. The above have been called ludus and paiedia respectively. Thus chess would be a good example of a  ludus  and a child playing with her doll's house and dolls would be a Paidea. The computer strategy game , however, combines the Ludus with the paiedia. There is a set of rules alright but it is accompanied by an almost infinite amount of choices of how one can play. Ultimately , though actually a Ludus, the strategy-game seems to be a Paiedia. 

 

There is , however, a difference between the child playing with dolls and  someone playing the computer games that we have so far discussed. There is flexibility , in fact a lot of it, in the story  but there is a story. The arbitrary sequence of events in the child's paiedia  is replaced by an ordered plot structure. 

    

The computer game is thus, a story whose end can keep changing. It is a book within a game that is being played. In an earlier posting, we had looked at how certain fiction could correspond to game-like structure. It is time to turn the tables. We will look at certain requisites, determined by eminent critics, for the ideal plot and we will see whether computer games can be regarded as novels in their own right. More often than not, it is the player-reader constructing and reconstructing the story from a base narrative supplied by the makers. 

Aristotle , in the Poetics, gives us the classic definition of plot: the plot is the imitation of a whole action. Does the computer game correspond in any way with the above definition ? Let us take the 'plot' of  an Age of Mythology game. It begins with Arkantos , the Greek Hero from Atlantis (the lost continent) re-experiencing his battle exploits in a dream. Athena appears in his dreams and warns of greater dangers to come. And soon enough, Arkantos finds himself a victim of Poseidon's wrath and has to join Agamemnon in the siege of Troy. The Trojan wars over, Arkantos finds himself pitted against the evil Gargantos and the Minotaur Kemos  and he has to foil their plans of freeing Kronos by opening the gates of Tartarus. In this last battle ,Arkantos  defeats the villains and even fights the living statue of Poseidon. But victory comes at a cost and the city of Atlantis is destroyed for good. This is the base outline of the game. Needless to say, the narrative shifts according to the players actions. But the elements of Aristotle's definition hold good , by and large. There is a beginning, a middle and an end as far as the game is concerned. The beginning consists of the cinematic or written introduction to the game. It might also come as a series of written instructions. What the Greek chorus would have done for an Aeschylus play, the makers of the "Mythology" game have done with their mind-boggling cinematics.  The elements of necessity and probability should be there in the ideal plot. And so they are, in the tale that the game creates. The action in the game is  "like" real action, or at least is like what a certain situation would have been had it been true. There is a change of fortune in the game: this , of course, must be further qualified. If the player wins, it obviously corresponds to the change of fortune from bad to good. But what if he loses? Well, we might look at this as multiple changes of fortune. Or, maybe, a change from bad to worse or from bad to something slightly better. It is also possible to identify reversals and incidents of recognition in the game-narrative. The pity and fear of Aristotelian poetics can be witnessed in the emotional reactions of the player. Brenda Laurel has already done some pathbreaking research in comparing the computer-game narrative to classical concepts of plot. The above comparison would , as in Arkantos' story in the Age of Mythology game , would illustrate a similar comparison with respect to the strategy game. 

This analogy between the game and the book , especially from the point of view of plot, would go to show that the playing experience becomes somewhat like the reading experience.  We might , through our analysis here , find out more about the changing forms of 'reading' habits created by the computer game and whether the flexibility , interactivity and the feeling of involvement that we wish for in our favourite stories is to be found in the game-narratives. If that is so, then we can consider this as one of the reasons for the growing popularity of complex computer-games as a genre. 

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From announcer at pukar.org.in  Fri Apr 18 17:36:49 2003
From: announcer at pukar.org.in (PUKAR @ Kitab Mahal)
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 17:36:49 +0530
Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Place and Photography in New York City
Message-ID: 

Dear Friends:

PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research) cordially 
invites you to a lecture by Professor Mary Woods, "Learning to See 
the 'New' New York: Place and Photography in New York City: 
1890-1950".

Professor Woods' lecture will demonstrate how artists, amateurs, 
journalists and documentarians contributed to the visual canon of 
architectural histories of seeing the "new" New York from 1890 until 
1950, and thus expanded them to include things other than the usual 
and conventional photographs of buildings.

MARY N. WOODS received her Ph.D. from Columbia University, New York. 
She is an Associate Professor of architectural history at Cornell 
University. In the past year she has been a Fulbright Research fellow 
working on women architects in India and Sri Lanka. Her publications 
include From Craft to Profession: Architectural Practice in 
19th-Century America (1999, University of California Press) and 
contributions to The Architecture of the Night (Prestel, 2003), 
After-Image and the City (Cornell University Press, 2003), Cass 
Gilbert:  A Life and Career (Norton, 2002). This summer she will be a 
Fellow at the Georgia O'Keefe Museum and Study Center to complete a 
book on photography and the 20th century American built environment.


Date:
SATURDAY 19 APRIL 2003
6.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m.


At:
PUKAR
4th Floor, Kitab Mahal
Dr Dadabhai Naoroji Road
Mumbai 400001

Next to New Excelsior Cinema, near VT Station
Entrance from New Book Company, D.N. Road
_____

PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research)
P.O. Box 5627, Dadar, Mumbai 400014, INDIA

E-Mail 
Phone +91 (022) 2207 7779, +91 98200 45529, +91 98204 04010
Web Site http://www.pukar.org.in
_______________________________________________
announcements mailing list
announcements at mail.sarai.net
http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements


From announcer at pukar.org.in  Fri Apr 18 21:34:42 2003
From: announcer at pukar.org.in (PUKAR Talkies)
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 21:34:42 +0530
Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Five Films on War
Message-ID: 

Dear Friends:

PUKAR and Aragon Services invite you to a week-long series of 
American feature films on the experience of war, to be screened in 
the evenings from Monday 21 to Friday 25 April 2003.


MONDAY 21 APRIL 2003, 6.30 P.M.

"Apocalyse Now" (Redux)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, 1979 (Redux 2001)
Starring Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Harrison Ford 
and Laurence Fishburne
3 hours, 23 minutes


TUESDAY 22 APRIL 2003, 7.00 P.M.

"Dr Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb"
Directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1964
Starring Peter Sellers, George C. Scott and Sterling Hayden
1 hour, 33 minutes


WEDNESDAY 23 APRIL 2003, 7.00 P.M.

"Three Kings"
Directed by David O'Russell, 1999
Starring George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, Spike Jonze and Nora Dunn
1 hour, 54 minutes


THURSDAY 24 APRIL 2003, 7.00 P.M.

"Black Hawk Down"
Directed by Ridley Scott, 2001
Starring Josh Hartnett, Eric Bana, Tom Sizemore and Ewan McGregor
2 hours, 24 minutes


FRIDAY 25 APRIL 2003, 7.00 P.M.

"Wag the Dog"
Dir. Barry Levinson, 1997
Starring Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Anne Heche, Kirsten Dunst 
and Denis Leary
1 hour, 37 minutes


All screenings will be held at:

PUKAR
c/o Aragon Services
4th Floor, Kitab Mahal
Dr Dadabhai Naoroji Road
Mumbai 400001


Kitab Mahal is next to New Excelsior Cinema, and is near VT Station. 
Entrance to Kitab Mahal is from the New Book Company on Dadabhai 
Naoroji Road. Lift is available to the third floor.

Kindly note that while admission is free of charge, this is a private 
screening, and right of entry is reserved by Aragon Services. 
Admission is on a first come, first serve basis.

PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research) is a 
cross-sectoral research collective based in Mumbai. For more 
information, contact .

Aragon Services is a space for curated activities in the arts, 
culture and education. For more information, contact Niloufer Kapadia 
at .
_____

PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research)
P.O. Box 5627, Dadar, Mumbai 400014, INDIA

E-Mail 
Phone +91 (022) 2207 7779, +91 98200 45529, +91 98204 04010
Web Site http://www.pukar.org.in
_______________________________________________
announcements mailing list
announcements at mail.sarai.net
http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements


From menso at r4k.net  Sat Apr 19 22:34:53 2003
From: menso at r4k.net (Menso Heus)
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2003 19:04:53 +0200
Subject: [Reader-list] Fw: posting for readers-list
In-Reply-To: <001401c305d0$c784a000$7db341db@xx>
References: <001401c305d0$c784a000$7db341db@xx>
Message-ID: <20030419170453.GE81028@r4k.net>

On Fri, Apr 18, 2003 at 11:04:32PM +0530, souvikmukherjee wrote:

Hello Souvik Mukherjee and Riddhi Sankar Ray

> In our research proposal we have looked at the computer game as a possible alternative 
> to the books we read and also how these, thereby, change our reading habits. Games in their 
> own little way, tell stories. And these are not the hidebound stories created by someone 
> else: these stories are to a large extent created by us, the readers. How novel this is , is 
> of course a matter of speculation. Retelling, of any sort, would incorporate making changes 
> to the base text. There have been quite a few examples of such in literary history. the 
> point, however, is to see how far this can go and what it is like from the experiential 
> point of view. 

> In an earlier submission , we have looked at a few similarities and differences between 
> Computer games and fiction. Our comparison was made between the Bond novels and Wolfenstein 
> 3D (made by ID software). The action-packed storyline of the Bond novels likens these to 
> computer games like Wolf. But to how many more genres can we apply this ? The element of 
> re-telling is best observed in another genre of computer games. In the strategy game , be it 
> a war game like Age of Empires or a city building game like Zoo tycoon, the story can have 
> more ramifications because it allows us to 'build' the resources that make up the story. It 
> is  quite a novel experience: mining gold and stone, chopping wood , gathering food by 
> various means , we are expected to build for ourselves a city which in turn will withstand 
> sieges and furnish soldiers. Very often, with the medley of things that can be constructed 
> and the updates that can be made on the storyline and the characters,  this idea of 
> re-telling is given its fullest scope. In the above games , one can build the story of 
> entire civilizations; one can even change history. In this regard ,  one can look at the 
> numerous Age of Empires 'scenarios' constructed by various individuals and made available 
> online. The age of Empires game has in effect , besides its own campaigns allowed the 
> 'playing' of various other stories ranging from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings to the battle of 
> Plassey. So successful has the series been , that it has spawned three successive sequels : 
> The Age of Kings , The age of conquerors and the age of Mythology. The games have a 
> framework involving a basic historical framework, with realistic fighting units, graphics and 
> being set in a quasi-real environment. The pay-offs of such a structure are many. For some 
> people, the ability to manoeuver the same building blocks to make numerous arbitrary stories 
> is very attractive. Even among games , this is not always possible. The most arbitrary 
> version of  playing would be children playing with toys. Theorists of game playing have 
> differentiated between the Game , which is structured formally with a set of rules, and Play 
> where the rules are absent. The above have been called ludus and paiedia respectively. Thus 
> chess would be a good example of a  ludus  and a child playing with her doll's house and 
> dolls would be a Paidea. The computer strategy game , however, combines the Ludus with the 
> paiedia. There is a set of rules alright but it is accompanied by an almost infinite amount 
> of choices of how one can play. Ultimately , though actually a Ludus, the strategy-game 
> seems to be a Paiedia. 

I think the research you are doing is rather interesting. The types of games
you bring up seem to lack one genre though: the role-playing game, or RPG for
short.

The RPG is, in my opinion, the perfect example of a game that not just tells a
story but allows the player of the game to actively change it. The RPG works 
with a rule system, the most common one being the Dungeons & Dragons system. 
This would make it a Ludus, though since there is an infinite amount of things
the player can do, it is also seems to be a Paiedia.

Originally the RPG is played with several people around the a table. There 
is one person who leads the game, the Dungeon Master or Game Master. He plays
'the world' the players are in, ranging from the people players meet in the 
towns they go to to the monsters they encounter. The Game Master's role is also
to keep an eye on the rules and decide whether or not things are possible. 
The game around the table takes part in the players imagination, there are no
visual representations of the world itself. 

Each player comes up with a character, a person (or 'role') he would like to 
play. This can be a sneaky thief, a brave warrior or an evil mage and everything
in between. Then, there is a storyline, created by the Game Master. The players
for example could be asked to help out with a plague of zombies that is attacking
a town, or a cult that is kidnapping all the children. 
The interesting thing about a roleplaying game is that the players are free to 
choose whether or not they want to do this, they do not have to do certain things
in order to progress in the game. For example, a thief might decide he can't be 
bothered with the zombies and, while everyone is fighting them, quietly loot the 
houses. An evil mage might try to take control of the zombies and then use this
new army to do his evil bidding. A noble warrior will probably help out the town
and be rewarded for it.

So, how does this translate to computer games? There are several companies that
started making computer game RPG's. The best known are probably games like Baldurs
Gate and Neverwinter Nights. These games come on four CD-Roms and, although they 
have a general storyline concerning the player, the player is free to roam around
the world and do al sorts of things. Next to 'the main story line' there are usually
tens of other little subplots the character can do, or can decide not to. 
In a shop, a character can either pay for what the sword he wants to buy or just
kill the shopkeeper and take it, for example. 
Roleplaying games also feature something that is called 'alignment' which has very
much influence on how the world responds to your character. Every action changes 
this alignment: killing innocent people will make you shift to evil and probably 
set the guards after you. Helping people out continuously will make the world respond
much nicer to you and perhaps give you discount on things and such.

Most of the succesfull games come from a company called Black Isle, you can check
at their website at www.blackisle.com.

Another very popular game, NeverWinterNights is probably the most interesting one for 
you since it gives the players even more freedom. It is released by Bioware and their
website is www.bioware.com (www.neverwinternights.com for the game site).
Next to the general 'single player' release, it comes with a big toolset that allows 
people to create their own stories which they can then have their friends play. 
These tools also allow for someone to take upon them the role of 'Game Master' and follow 
the players as they walk across his world. 

The Game Master for example creates a town where the player can talk to people
that live there. All the conversations he has scripted before hand (giving the
players several ways to respond, each response giving different respones from 
the person in that town, etc). When the game master wants to however, he can 
choose to play a certain character himself immediately, thus avoiding the scripted
conversation and interactively engaging in the talk with the players, just like 
a Game Master would do the 'old fashioned' way on a game without a computer. 

The classical roleplaying game has no 'end'. A game can go on for years and
years and years, the players getting what is called 'experience points' for
their actions, which can be swapped for certain abilities (more magic spells,
hitting people harder with your sword, being able to pick pockets better, etc)

The entire objective of the game is to create an interesting world, or interesting
story if you will, in which all players have an even amount of influence. It is 
the ultimate 'interactive story' which is created by the players and the game master
together. The choice of Bioware to release tools so players can create their own 
stories has brought this aspect back into computer Roleplaying games too.

There are also several RPG games running online, featuring thousands of players all
walking around in the same world, each with their own ideas and objectives. This,
as you can see, creates more and more stories and do not have to be part of the pre-made
quests one can follow in this world since players might come up with their own quests.
(For example: if you want to join our thief guild, steal this item that charachter Bob
is carrying around, bring it back and we will make you a member. Becoming a member of
a professional thief guild has a lot of advantages, and is a very nice thing for a 
thief character)

Quite a few players keep diaries of their characters, thus effectively are writing
a story. One example you can find here: http://playnaked.com/olie/DandD/diary/diary.html

If you want more information, drop me a line.

Menso

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
   "The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and
    robbers there will be."                        -- Lao Tsu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


From lehar_hind at yahoo.com  Sun Apr 20 13:16:26 2003
From: lehar_hind at yahoo.com (Lehar ..)
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2003 00:46:26 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Reader-list] washing and wiping
Message-ID: <20030420074626.89317.qmail@web20905.mail.yahoo.com>

Washing and Wiping
- inspired by a zen koan and the 'liberation of Iraq'

Washing and wiping
is the difference.
Washing involves touch.
Wiping involves no contact.
Only a dead tree-
a manufacturing plant.
The Fundamental clash
of Civilisations.

Lehar SZ- April 2003.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo
http://search.yahoo.com


From list at sanart.info  Mon Apr 21 11:32:59 2003
From: list at sanart.info (SANART)
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2003 23:02:59 -0700
Subject: [Reader-list] Istanbul Museum, Web Biennial 2003 CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Message-ID: 

On Going Call for proposal for Web Art till the end of
2003. The galleries will be organised on first come
first serve bases. 

Web Biennial 2003 will be realised and exhibited
exclusivly on the WWW.
No limitation on media, size or the number of the
artists paricipating but projects should be send to us
as URL's.

1) We require every proposal to have a single URL and
a custom title as below:

 
Web Biennial 2003- Name of the Artist- Name of
the Project




If you do not want to modify your index page, send us
the URL of a redirection or a jump page. Consult a web

master if necessary.

2) Only one project from each artist, please!.

4) No Portfolio or commercial sites, please!

5) We will make an online gallery each time we receive
41 different submissions.

6) Our portal will be ready by June.

Send proposals to: webbiennial at yahoo.com attention
Feyza Kucukaltintas.

We are also accepting proposals from institutions to
participate our event.





:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

SANART  

http://www.sanart.info



From shashibiswa at yahoo.com  Mon Apr 21 18:30:02 2003
From: shashibiswa at yahoo.com (Shashi Gupta)
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 06:00:02 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Reader-list] Raigad project
Message-ID: <20030421130002.37167.qmail@web80507.mail.yahoo.com>

dear all, for those of you who maybe interested in this project. Shashi
  
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED TO HELP 125 RIOT-AFFECTED CHILDRENrequired to teach & play with 125 riot- affected children between 15th April to 30th May. Victims of the Gujarat carnage, they are now studying in a boarding school in Maharashtra.  THE RAIGAD SCHOOL PROJECT: a wonderful opportunity for riot affected kids to re-build their lives
Children directly affected by the communal carnage of 2002 in Gujarat were identified from 2 areas in Ahmedabad � Vatwa and Naroda-Patiya. They have been given free boarding and lodging in the hostel of a school situated in Raigad District, Maharashtra.

125 children have come to the school since October 2002 in three batches. These children have now settled down in the school. The ratio of girls to boys is around 2:3. The age group varies from 5 to 15 years (majority is in the bracket of 8-12).

The school, known as Dr. A. R. Undre High School is fully equipped with classes from KG to XII Std.  It also runs a B.S.C college for girls. The school has around 1200 local students and is an English medium school. The school was set up over 20 years ago to provide quality education to rural students.

The school is run by a trust � Royal Education Society. The promoters are the Undre family who unhesitatingly opened their hearts to these kids and took them in. Zia Hajeebhoy (from Bombay) liasoned with the school and with Volunteers working in relief camps in Ahmedabad who identified, selected & brought these kids to the school.
Boarding and Lodging: 
The School has ensured that every child has a bed, clean sheets and pillows, a trunk to keep their belongings etc. Clothes, uniform, shoes & toiletries have been provided. Girls and the little boys stay in the Girls Hostel and the Older Boys in the Boys hostel. Additional help including an additional warden, cooks, cleaners etc have been hired to provide for the needs of these children. The hostel provides wholesome nutritious meals including milk, eggs and non - vegetarian dishes and fresh fruits which the kids enjoy.

Academic: 

18 teachers and students went in the October holidays, voluntarily to give the children their first academic inputs. Their abilities and levels were assessed and they have now been assigned classes where they sit with the local students. 3 teachers have been appointed to give these children extra coaching after school hours.

Emotional & Psychological: 

Mrs Undre, the staff at the school, the caretakers in the hostel, are wonderful and give tremendous affection and care.

Volunteers in their interaction and others with their thoughtful contributions (school kids from Bombay donated their toys, clothes etc) brought these children a lot of love, cheer and hope.

A group of counselors did a preliminary assessment of the emotional health of these children, which is being used as a valuable input in interaction with these children.

Financial:

Donations have come in from a variety of people in the form of one time contribution, long term financial commitments and resources in kind (clothes, shoes, games, books, food etc). Every little bit is helping, however the expenses exceed the donations and the gap is met by the school trust and personally by the Undres!

WHAT CAN U DO?

The immediate focus for the next two months [April and May]- when the school will shut down for holidays � is to help these kids catch up with their peers academically, especially in the sphere of English. Save a handful, most of these kids were previously studying in Gujarati medium, and a few in Urdu medium. Since the Raigad School is an English medium school, the children will suffer academically inspite of their intelligence and aptitude, if they do not get adequately familiar English.

Though the school will close for holidays, the children from Gujarat will stay in the hostel to attend coaching classes from 1st of April to 30th of May. After which they will be given a holiday for 10 days, to visit their homes in Ahmedabad, before the commencement of the next academic year.

We are looking for volunteers who will come to the Raigad School to teach English to the riot affected children and also play and spend time with them- for a minimum of 10 days.

 It is very simple to teach. We do not require professionals to teach English (although if they are willing to come, so much the better). Only a couple of the 18 volunteers who came in October holidays to teach the kids were in anyway connected with education. They just came because of their motivation and enthusiasm  & they did a wonderful job! 

The kids already know their alphabets. Linkages between alphabet & sound and between word & meaning has to be reinforced, reading and conversational skills have to be upgraded. A structured syllabus will be handed down, which anyone fluent in English can follow.

If you know of any kit / module meant for teaching English to vernacular students, you can get it along or inform us about it and we will make it available. The more inputs, the better.

 It can be a lot of fun. Besides being a rewarding experience, interacting and playing with these children can itself be a lot of fun for some people. It will be even better if you are accompanying friends. Because the place that you will be visiting� Borli-Panchatan village, Raigad - is located between green hills and warm blue waters! It has a lovely unspoiled, and as yet uncommercialised beach. Volunteers will teach the kids in the morning, play with them till early evening and then they can be on their own - to trek on the hills or swim in the sea. And the temperature will be significantly lower than the cities we stay in. What more can one ask for in the summers

Besides the English classes, we have organised other activities. We are expecting theatre workshops, film screenings etc. Various groups from Delhi and Bombay will undertake these camps/ workshops. Meeting such a variety of people from various fields can itself be an interesting & exciting experience.

It will easy on your purse. We realise the size of each individual�s purse will vary! Nevertheless volunteers will only have to spend for travelling up to Raigad and back. A bus ride from Bombay to Raigad is approximately Rs 100. If you are from outside Bombay you can add this to the expense for travelling to Bombay. The School will take care of the food and the accommodation of the volunteers. 

 When are volunteers required? from 15th of April to 30th of May

For how long? We would prefer volunteers to stay for at least 2 weeks, but 10 days is the minimum.

How many volunteers at a time? On an average we would like to have 10 to 15 volunteers at a time. So each volunteer can take care of 10 to 12 kids.

How to reach? Busses ply to Borli, Raigad from Bombay (6 hrs); from Pune (5 hrs); from Goa (7 hrs).

 In case you are interested please inform us in advance. You can get in touch with:

Monica Wahi: monicawahi at rediffmail.com  ph: (0)9825412467

Zia Hajeebhoy: hajeebhoyzia at yahoo.com   ph: (0)9820048509

Note: if you or your organisation are interested only in conducting workshops/ camps in the school during these two months, please write to us asap, so we can block the dates for you.



---------------------------------
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From menso at r4k.net  Mon Apr 21 20:25:24 2003
From: menso at r4k.net (Menso Heus)
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 16:55:24 +0200
Subject: [Reader-list] The revolution is not an AOL keyword
Message-ID: <20030421145524.GJ81028@r4k.net>


From info at art-action.org  Tue Apr 22 02:29:32 2003
From: info at art-action.org (Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin)
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 22:59:32 +0200
Subject: [Reader-list] :::: INVITATION :::: + :::: INFO RENCONTRES 2003 BERLIN ::::
Message-ID: 

Destinataire / Recipient: reader-list at sarai.net
Se désinscrire / To unsubscribe :
mailto:info at art-action.org?subject=REMOVE%20reader-list at sarai.net

ENGLISH VERSION BELOW

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
:::: INVITATION :::: PROJECTION ::::
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Le colonialisme à l'envers d'une culture"
MERCREDI 23 AVRIL 2003 :::: 14h30 > 17h30
La Salle de Conférence de l'Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de
Paris invite les Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin pour une séance de
projection ponctuelle en entrée libre, en partenariat avec Arte.
:: Gavin Younge : Curating the waves (video exp., 9mn, Afrique du Sud)
:: Yervant Gianikian, Angela Ricci Lucchi : Images d'Orient, tourisme
vandale (doc., 60mn, Italie)
:: The Wooster Group : The emperor Jones (video exp., 38mn, USA)
DETAIL DE LA SEANCE: http://art-action.org/fr_reseau.htm
Adresse : Ensba - 14 rue Bonaparte, 75006 Paris - Métro:
Saint-Germain-des-Prés

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
:::: RENCONTRES 2003 A BERLIN :::: OCTOBRE 2003 ::::
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Les 7èmes Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin se dérouleront à Berlin en
octobre 2003.
Communiqué: http://art-action.org/fr_info.htm
Accréditation: http://art-action.org/fr_info_presse.htm

:::: PLUS D'INFORMATION ::::
Site: http://art-action.org
Programme à Paris: http://art-action.org/fr_prog_02_03_paris.htm

|==============|
| IN ENGLISH   |
|==============|

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
:::: INVITATION :::: SCREENING ::::
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
"Le colonialisme à l'envers d'une culture"
APRIL 23, 2003 :::: 14:30pm > 17:30pm
The ENSBA - National School for arts invite the Paris/Berlin international
Meetings for a specific screening, in association with Arte TV. Free
entrance.
:: Gavin Younge : Curating the waves (exp. video, 9mn, South Africa)
:: Yervant Gianikian, Angela Ricci Lucchi : Images d'Orient, tourisme
vandale (doc., 60mn, Italy)
:: The Wooster Group : The emperor Jones (exp. video, 38mn, USA)
SCREENING DETAILS (in French): http://art-action.org/fr_reseau.htm
Venue: Ensba, 14 rue Bonaparte, 75006 Paris - Subway: Saint-Germain-des-Pres

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
:::: 2003's MEETINGS IN BERLIN :::: OCTOBER 2003 ::::
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
The 7th Paris/Berlin international Meetings will take place in Berlin on
early october 2003.
Communiqué: http://art-action.org/en_info.htm
Accreditation: http://art-action.org/en_info_presse.htm

:::: MORE INFORMATION ::::
Web site: http://art-action.org/en_index.htm
Program in Paris (in French): http://art-action.org/fr_prog_02_03_paris.htm

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin 2003, avec le soutien de / supported
by:
The City of Paris, Regional Council Ile-de-France, AFAA French Foreign
Ministry, Arte TV, Radio France International, Maison Heinrich Heine, Goethe
Institut Inter Nationes, Estonian cultural center in Paris, Canadian
Embassy, Canadian cultural center, Barco France, Hotel Novotel
Paris-Les-Halles, Montaudon Champagnes, Citroen, Papiers Condat. With the
sponsorship of the High French-German Cultural Council.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +





From ravikant at sarai.net  Tue Apr 22 13:53:46 2003
From: ravikant at sarai.net (ravikant)
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 13:53:46 +0530
Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Arvind N Das Summer Felloshp
Message-ID: <200304221353.46294.ravikant@sarai.net>


THE DR. ARVIND N. DAS ‘SUMMER REPUBLIC' UNDERGRADUATE FELLOWSHIP 
 
 
The Dr. Arvind N. Das (AND) Foundation for Critical Social and Cultural 
Studies is pleased to announce its ‘Summer Republic' Fellowship, and invite 
applications to the same. 
 
The ‘Summer Republic' Fellowship is meant for currently enrolled Indian 
undergraduate students of the Delhi University. The Fellowship, in the unique 
spirit of its inspiration, Dr. Arvind N. Das, offers a financial award of up 
to Rs. 10,000 to a student (or a clearly-specified group thereof) wishing to 
undertake an unusual creative, intellectual project in a specific social 
science area. Such a project should entail some amount of identification and 
academic investigation of a principle, objective, issue or argument perceived 
as essential and necessary to the contemporary Indian Republic, played out at 
a local level.  
 
This Fellowship is thus meant to extend support towards projects involving 
potential steps such as: 
 
• Identification of an issue significant to the discussion of what constitutes 
‘the Indian Republic' in contemporary times.  
 
This may include a contextualized discussion of issues such as communalism, 
economic liberalization, gender roles, development models for poverty 
reduction, the contentious role of ‘history' in India, the significance of 
sport, the divisions and possibilities raised by language, and so on. The 
Foundation would be extremely interested also in students identifying new, 
previously under-researched areas of interest students themselves feel are 
vital to study, in a discussion of issues or topics crucial to the entity 
that may be called ‘modern India'.    
 
• A ‘field trip' to a local place (such as a bazaar, a tea shop, a cyber cafe, 
a sports ground or a movie theatre) or a location physically removed from the 
student's current one (a village, semi-rural or urban area in another state), 
added to by research on the chosen location's local history, its economic 
standing and its significance within a larger social picture.  
 
• The Fellowship would then entail the awardee to present findings or 
discussion on her/his chosen topic, either through a written paper on the 
same, or through slightly more unconventional means of representation, such 
as an audio-visual mode.  
 
The aim of the AND Foundation's ‘Summer Republic' Fellowship is to extend a 
certain amount of support to Delhi University undergraduate students, so that 
they may follow up research interests of their own choice and desire with 
organized financial backing.  
 
The primary interest of the Fellowship is to encourage a strong element of 
fieldwork in the applicants' proposed projects. The point is essentially to 
allow younger students some agency to delve into their own ideas of how 
dreams, disasters and possibilities of ‘the Indian Republic' are played out 
at an everyday, local level, to carry out some amount of academic research on 
such topics and present discussion matter or findings that are topical and 
thought-provoking.  
 
The AND Foundation will hold a right to independently publish written material 
produced by the support of this Fellowship, as well a right to use 
subsequently any other kinds of material produced through the direct support 
of the Foundation. 
 
Applications to the AND Foundation's ‘Summer Republic' Fellowship may be made 
to the following address: 
 
The Dr. Arvind N. Das Foundation for Critical Social and Cultural Studies, 
27, Moulsari Avenue, 
DLF Qutab Enclave, Phase III, 
Gurgaun,  
Haryana. 
 
Please include the following with an application: a detailed project proposal, 
a schedule, a financial plan/estimate, a current CV/resumé with complete 
academic qualifications and contact details, a statement of support from a 
serving Head of Department at the Delhi University. 
 
Closing Date: *31 May 2003*** 
 
Applications will be judged by a panel of AND Foundation Trustees. The 
awardee/s will be notified of their decision by ****  
 
 
India is Your Republic!  
 
Be Inventive, Be Intrigued and Be Critical! Be an AND Foundation  
 
‘Summer Republic' Fellow! 
 
 
 
 


_______________________________________________
announcements mailing list
announcements at mail.sarai.net
http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements


From namitaa at rediffmail.com  Wed Apr 23 13:06:48 2003
From: namitaa at rediffmail.com (namita)
Date: 23 Apr 2003 07:36:48 -0000
Subject: [Reader-list] not about war in iraq - our posting
Message-ID: <20030423073648.10781.qmail@webmail25.rediffmail.com>

Our project is about documenting signage, trying to understand the role it plays in the experience of the city, locality, community, and what signs and symbols mean for people who create signs, and those who glance at them during their daily routine. The second phase of this project is an active participation in this making of signs through forms of public art, while right now we are in the second month of our project and we have been following the routes that signs take through the locality from production, display, wear and tear and removal or being covered up. The project is within a locality in Bangalore called Shivajinagar. 

Walks through Shivajinagar seem like an entry into a different sort of space. Shivajinagar is in opposition to various aspects of the real and imagined city of Bangalore. It is an old bazaar sprawling over dozens of lanes in the heart of the city in defiance to the new, IT enabled city connected by optical cable. It belies the aspirations of the city to become Singapore, Silicon Valley of India, and reveals the vitality and life of an older version of commerce that relies on cheap products, texture and smell, lanes made of small shops selling similar wares and special local services not available elsewhere. It is here (and in some other parts like Chickpet, Avenue Road, parts of Mysore Road) that a different side is revealed. 

The diversity of pheonomenon is what attracted us to Shivajinagar in the first place and there are in fact always some things about the place that are constantly changing in our face. From what we believed to be a predominantly Muslim community, it has now changed for us to become a mixture of Muslim and Tamil people, Dalit shop owners, Christians, Jains, some Shias and several others. From a place which we thought had a community that belonged there, it has become a place of flux – with constant movings in and out as people who live somewhere else come and work here, people who live here and go somewhere else everyday. From a place that produced most number of signs it is again a transit point where there is heavy consumption of religious and cultural signs, but most of them are produced in Sivakasi, Pondicherry, Chennai and are framed and laminated by shop owners here for the people who buy them in Shivajinagar. 

Signs reveal the diversity of castes and communities in this area – signs outside computer shops that claim variety of services including translations into the various different languages spoken in the area - urdu, kannada, telegu, english, tamil. Signs reveal different types of expressions by people, from their ambitions and superstitions (message about going to Dubai), to how they cover up signs with other signs (Karnataka Against Communalism over CM unveils statue of Saint God Thiruvalluvar), to how they remove signs (leaving Kareena Kapoor’s face preserved). 

Conversation with a vendor for different signs reveal that the tension between communities is layered and converted into a fight between signs, where the rough and tough Muslims as described by the vendor, want the signs of Islam (Haj, Ajmer dargah) to be placed on top of all other signs in the shop. The explanation that the shopkeeper gives is that this is because they have a kanoon within their religion that demands that this be done, and if the signs are placed haphazardly, on the pavement or below other signs in the display, the rough and tough type will not be pleased. Hence this particular shop avoids selling such signs, but has sold them before and is willing to make them if requested. They also sell poster of actresses which sell the most, Arnold in his three excessively muscular poses and WWF posters.

Some of our discoveries have ranged from a mural of the signs of the three religious communities on the wall painted there to prevent people from urinating on that wall which also surrounded a school. People decorate the place where they work, live, walk through – not only physically but also probably by what they chose to see. More or less like we did whenever we walked through Shivajinagar. What Michel de Certau in a passing reference describes as mobile geographies is probably the most descriptive term for how people look and glance, absorb, ignore different signs and sights on the road. For us it has been a different stream of images each time, because of the time we chose, the heat and the weather of the day, the entry point from where we have entered, who we have talked to or whether we have not, whether we framed events or images and took photographs. Each walk has brought into play different images, different strings and juxtapositions of images, different types of creators and consumers of signs. 

People also don’t decorate or leave imprints of themselves where they live, work or are. Some images are borrowed from meanings that other people might have given, chosen or foisted by someone else – like signs about Moulana Lungees which is only the company name for a product and its naming is not something special to the shopowner and is just another name, like sometimes when the scenery on the backs of autos which are glimpses of lakes, seas, boats and coconut trees in the midst of urban traffic and smoke are not chosen by the driver but by the company that makes these signs.
 
Some signs however are made with care. A young boy paints Shahrukh Khan with the word Killer in the background himself on his auto. An old man who painted the outline of Gandhi on the shutter of his shop himself, many years ago and patiently explained to us (violent youth of the new world) that an eye for an eye would mean taking a life for a life, and what good would that do. He also dismissed very quickly the question whether making this sign about ten years ago was connected to the violence in 1992. Some signs seem to have no way of explaining how they came to be like a wooden door with Dubai scratched into it again and again.

In some senses what we are discovering is what we don’t see is almost equally important in the world of signs. The blindness and deafness to sights and sounds while passing by, also make the personal map of each person of the signs that constitute their locality or even city.  




Of all the things worth doing, and not done
The things that others do instead of this

Rachel Loden





From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com  Wed Apr 23 13:20:29 2003
From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir  bazaz)
Date: 23 Apr 2003 07:50:29 -0000
Subject: [Reader-list] Fellowship for DU students
Message-ID: <20030423075029.5091.qmail@webmail7.rediffmail.com>

THE DR. ARVIND N. DAS 'SUMMER REPUBLIC' UNDERGRADUATE FELLOWSHIP


The Dr. Arvind N. Das (AND) Foundation for Critical Social and 
Cultural
Studies is pleased to announce its 'Summer Republic' Fellowship, 
and invite applications to the same.

The 'Summer Republic' Fellowship is meant for currently enrolled 
Indian
undergraduate students of the Delhi University. The Fellowship, in 
the unique spirit of its inspiration, Dr. Arvind N. Das, offers a 
financial award of upto Rs. 10,000 to a student (or a 
clearly-specified group thereof) wishing to undertake an unusual 
creative, intellectual project in a specific social science area. 
Such a project should entail some amount of identification and 
academic investigation of a principle, objective, issue or 
argument perceived as essential and necessary to the contemporary 
Indian Republic, played out at a local level.

This Fellowship is thus meant to extend support towards projects 
involving potential steps such as:

* Identification of an issue significant to the discussion of what 
constitutes'the Indian Republic' in contemporary times.

This may include a contextualized discussion of issues such as 
communalism,economic liberalization, gender roles, development 
models for poverty reduction, the contentious role of 'history' in 
India, the significance of sport, the divisions and possibilities 
raised by language, and so on. The Foundation would be extremely 
interested also in students identifying new, previously 
under-researched areas of interest students themselves feel are 
vital to study, in a discussion of issues or topics crucial to the 
entity that may be called 'modern India'.

* A 'field trip' to a local place (such as a bazaar, a tea shop, a 
cyber cafe, a sports ground or a movie theatre) or a location 
physically removed from the student's current one (a village, 
semi-rural or urban area in another state), added to by research 
on the chosen location's local history, its economic standing and 
its significance within a larger social picture.

* The Fellowship would then entail the awardee to present findings 
or
discussion on her/his chosen topic, either through a written paper 
on the same, or through slightly more unconventional means of 
representation, such as an audio-visual mode.

The aim of the AND Foundation's 'Summer Republic' Fellowship is to 
extend a certain amount of support to Delhi University 
undergraduate students, so that they may follow up research 
interests of their own choice and desire with organized financial 
backing.

The primary interest of the Fellowship is to encourage a strong 
element of fieldwork in the applicants' proposed projects. The 
point is essentially to allow younger students some agency to 
delve into their own ideas of how dreams, disasters and 
possibilities of 'the Indian Republic' are played out at an 
everyday, local level, to carry out some amount of academic 
research on such topics and present discussion matter or findings 
that are topical and thought-provoking.

The AND Foundation will hold a right to independently publish 
written materialproduced by the support of this Fellowship, as 
well a right to use subsequently any other kinds of material 
produced through the direct support of the Foundation.

Applications to the AND Foundation's 'Summer Republic' Fellowship 
may be made to the following address:

The Dr. Arvind N. Das Foundation for Critical Social and Cultural 
Studies,
27, Moulsari Avenue,
DLF Qutab Enclave, Phase III,
Gurgaun,
Haryana.

Please include the following with an application: a detailed 
project proposal,a schedule, a financial plan/estimate, a current 
CV/resumé with complete academic qualifications and contact 
details, a statement of support from aserving Head of Department 
at the Delhi University.

Closing Date: *31 May 2003***

Applications will be judged by a panel of AND Foundation Trustees. 
The
awardee/s will be notified of their decision by ****

India is Your Republic!

Be Inventive, Be Intrigued and Be Critical!






From amitbasu55 at hotmail.com  Wed Apr 23 09:58:12 2003
From: amitbasu55 at hotmail.com (Amit R Basu)
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 04:28:12 +0000
Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: [RadPsyNet-Members] Islam as a psychological disorder
Message-ID: 

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From khadeejaarif1 at rediffmail.com  Wed Apr 23 19:42:27 2003
From: khadeejaarif1 at rediffmail.com (khadeeja  arif)
Date: 23 Apr 2003 14:12:27 -0000
Subject: [Reader-list] Zakir Nagar
Message-ID: <20030423141227.28924.qmail@mailweb34.rediffmail.com>




When Dilli wali Amma (I call her Amma only) came to Zakir Nagar, Gali numbers already existed. House numbers were allotted once people deposited house tax. Amma was the first to deposit the tax. She does not remember the exact year. According to Amma, She was among the first people to arrive in gali no. 22 (her gali).


Nafees Lane (adjacent lane to 22) was named after Patwadi Nafees from Old Delhi. Amma also recalls the old Babool trees and a “sham Shan ghat”in place of newly settled Tooba Colony, adjacent colony to Zakir Nagar that ends at Taimoor Nagar.

Whenever I go to see Amma she is busy with people. She is rather busy solving their problems.


These days Amma is busy preparing for her daughter Yasmeen’s marriage.
Sunday is a busy day for her. She meets most of her neighborhood people with their problems only on Sunday.

Last time I was with Amma on the day of World cup final (23 March, 2003). Amma was glued to television since morning though the match started at 1pm.

“Are is Bush ko to Uda do” Amma showed her anger on America. The Iraq war was already on. She was more worried about Iraq war. in between the match Iraq war was her primary preoccupation.
Amma wanted to arrange a rally against Iraq War. “Ab yeh sab karni ki mujhme takhat nahi hai”.

In between the talk Amma is concerned about my tea too.

All the enthusiasm that Amma set to watch the world cup with disappeared immediately Australia made unbelievable run score of 360. “Scahin ki jab zaroorat ho jab yeh ek dam out ho jata hai". She was too angry with Indian team that day. She was thoroughly disgusted.
Her TV was switched off much before India was actually declared lost the world cup.

I met Amma on the 10th of this month. I saw her applying henna on her head. She was busy talking to her friend Noorjahan who came from Dryaganj to consult Amma. Her shops in Daryaganj were demolished about three months back and nothing is given her back as compensation. 


Next day I found her ill. Amma recovered fast as she has to prepare for Yasmeen’s marriage.

Yasmeen is looking for a job. She wants to be” financially independent”.
Most of the time Amma is sitting glued to TV watching AAJ TAK, her favorite news channel. She also thinks that AAJ TAK is sabse tez channel.

For yasmeen’s marriage Amma still prefers to shop from Jama Masjid as she believes that one gets the best bridals wears there.
Amma had to submit her electricity bill. She didn’t want to go in the bus as she had to carry quite some money, and she considered it unsafe to travel by bus. She took her nephew with her. She does not trust anyone else with such large amount of money that’s why she herself goes to submit all her bills  


















From amitbasu55 at hotmail.com  Thu Apr 24 21:11:52 2003
From: amitbasu55 at hotmail.com (Amit R Basu)
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 15:41:52 +0000
Subject: [Reader-list] Are you interested to interlocute?
Message-ID: 

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From aiindex at mnet.fr  Fri Apr 25 06:43:58 2003
From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor)
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003 02:13:58 +0100
Subject: [Reader-list] Argentina's Luddite rulers
Message-ID: 

Globe and Mail
April 24, 2003

Argentina's Luddite rulers

Workers in the occupied factories have a different vision: Smash the logic,
not the machines

By Naomi Klein

In 1812, bands of British weavers and knitters raided textile mills and
smashed industrial machines with their hammers. According to the Luddites,
the new mechanized looms had eliminated thousands of jobs, broken
communities and deserved to be destroyed. The British government disagreed
and called in 14,000 soldiers to brutally repress the worker revolt and
protect the machines.

Fast-forward two centuries to another textile factory, this one in Buenos
Aires. At Brukman, which has been producing men's suits for 50 years, it's
the riot police who smash the sewing machines and the 58 workers who risk
their lives to protect them.

On Monday, the Brukman factory was the site of the worst repression Buenos
Aires has seen in almost a year. Police had evicted the workers in the
middle of the night and turned the entire block into a military zone guarded
by machine guns and attack dogs. Unable to get into the factory and complete
an order for 3,000 pairs of dress trousers, the workers gathered a huge
crowd of supporters and announced it was time to go back to work. At 5 p.m.,
50 middle-aged seamstresses in no-nonsense haircuts, sensible shoes and blue
smocks walked up to the police fence. Someone pushed, the fence fell, and
the Brukman women, unarmed and arm in arm, slowly walked through.

They had only taken a few steps when the police began shooting: tear gas,
water cannons, rubber bullets, then lead. The police even charged the
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, in their white headscarves embroidered with
the names of their "disappeared" children. Dozens of demonstrators were
injured.

This is a snapshot of Argentina less than a week before its presidential
election. Each of the five major candidates is promising to put this
crisis-ravaged country back to work. Yet Brukman's workers are treated as if
sewing a grey suit were a capital crime.

Why this state Luddism, this rage at machines? Well, Brukman isn't just any
factory; it's a fabrica ocupada, one of almost 200 factories across the
country that have been taken over and run by their workers in the past 18
months. For many, the factories, employing more than 10,000 nationwide and
producing everything from tractors to ice cream, are seen not just as an
economic alternative, but as a political one as well. "They are afraid of us
because we have shown that, if we can manage a factory, we can also manage a
country," Brukman worker Celia Martinez said on Monday night. "That's why
this government decided to repress us."

At first glance, Brukman looks like every other garment factory in the
world. As in Mexico's hypermodern maquiladoras and Toronto's crumbling coat
factories, Brukman is filled with women hunched over sewing machines, their
eyes straining and fingers flying over fabric and thread. What makes Brukman
different are the sounds. Along with the familiar roar of machines and hiss
of steam is the Bolivian folk music, coming from a small tape deck at the
back of the room, and softly spoken voices, as older workers show younger
ones new stitches. "They wouldn't let us do that before," Ms. Martinez says.
"They wouldn't let us get up from our workspaces or listen to music. But why
not listen to music, to lift the spirits a bit?"

In Buenos Aires, every week brings news of a new occupation: a four-star
hotel now run by its cleaning staff, a supermarket taken over by its clerks,
a regional airline about to be turned into a co-operative by the pilots and
attendants. In small Trotskyist journals around the world, Argentina's
occupied factories, where the workers have seized the means of production,
are giddily hailed as the dawn of a socialist utopia. In large business
magazines such as The Economist, they are ominously described as a threat to
the sacred principle of private property. The truth lies in between.

At Brukman, for instance, the means of production weren't seized -- they
were simply picked up after they had been abandoned by their legal owners.
The factory had been in decline for several years, and debts to utility
companies were piling up. The seamstresses had seen their salaries slashed
from 100 pesos a week to two pesos -- not enough for bus fare.

On Dec. 18, the workers decided it was time to demand a travel allowance.
The owners, pleading poverty, told the workers to wait at the factory while
they looked for the money. "We waited until night," Ms. Martinez says. "No
one came."

After getting the keys from the doorman, Ms. Martinez and the other workers
slept at the factory. They have been running it every since. They have paid
the outstanding bills, attracted new clients and, without profits and
management salaries to worry about, paid themselves steady salaries. All
these decisions have been made by vote in open assemblies. "I don't know why
the owners had such a hard time," Ms. Martinez says. "I don't know much
about accounting, but for me it's easy: addition and subtraction."

Brukman has come to represent a new kind of labour movement in Argentina,
one that is not based on the power to stop working (the traditional union
tactic) but on the dogged determination to keep working no matter what. It's
a demand that is not driven by dogmatism but by realism: In a country where
58 per cent of the population is living in poverty, workers know they are a
paycheque away from having to beg and scavenge to survive. The spectre
haunting Argentina's occupied factories is not communism, but indigence.

But isn't it simple theft? After all, these workers didn't buy the machines,
the owners did -- if they want to sell them or move them to another country,
surely that's their right. As the federal judge wrote in Brukman's eviction
order, "Life and physical integrity have no supremacy over economic
interests."

Perhaps unintentionally, he has summed up the naked logic of deregulated
globalization: Capital must be free to seek out the lowest wages and most
generous incentives, regardless of the toll that process takes on people.

The workers in Argentina's occupied factories have a different vision. Their
lawyers argue that the owners of these factories have already violated basic
market principles by failing to pay their employees and their creditors,
even while collecting huge subsidies from the state. Why can't the state now
insist that the indebted companies' remaining assets continue to serve the
public with steady jobs? Dozens of workers' co-operatives have already been
awarded legal expropriation. Brukman is still fighting.

Come to think of it, the Luddites made a similar argument in 1812. The new
textile mills put profits for a few before an entire way of life. Those
textile workers tried to fight that destructive logic by smashing the
machines. The Brukman workers have a much better plan: They want to protect
the machines and smash the logic.


Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences and Windows.


From aiindex at mnet.fr  Fri Apr 25 08:55:57 2003
From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor)
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003 04:25:57 +0100
Subject: [Reader-list] Judgement  Day - War and Peace (Jang Aur Aman) Vs Censorship
Message-ID: 

[Important victory for Freedom of Speech in India]


South Asia Citizens Wire  |  25 April,  2003

#2.

Judgement  Day - WAR AND PEACE (JANG AUR AMAN) Vs Censorship

24 April 2003. The Honorable Justices H. Gokhale and R. Desai of the 
Bombay High Court delivered their final verdict in the matter of the 
censorship of the film "War and Peace".

It may be recalled that the Central Board of Film Certification 
(CBFC) had ordered 21 cuts in this anti-war, anti-nuclear documentary 
film. The cuts included demands to delete footage depicting the 
assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by Nathuram Godse, all mention of the 
Tehelka arms scandal, all statements made by Dalits and all speeches 
by political leaders.

We appealed to the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT) who 
reduced the cuts to two and also asked for an "addition" to the film. 
Aggrieved by these interventions we approached the Bombay High Court 
for redress. Following his petition, the CBFC shockingly filed a 
petition challenging the order of their own higher body (the FCAT) 
and demanding that all 21 cuts be re-imposed.

On 5th April during the course of arguments,  the Honourable judges 
asked the CBFC if they had ever in their history appealed against the 
orders of their own higher authority. The answer came in the 
negative. The judges then inquired as to what special interest the 
CBFC had in the matter of "War and Peace" that had prompted them to 
challenge the order of the FCAT. When no coherent reply was 
forthcoming the judges asked if the CBFC wanted to withdraw their 
petition. The CBFC  withdrew their petition challenging the order of 
the FCAT.

What remained in contention were the orders passed by the FCAT.  The 
following are some excerpts from the judgement delivered by Justices 
H. Gokhale and Ranjana Desai in the matter.

Excerpts from the Judgement

         " In the present case, the petitioner is trying to espouse 
the cause of peace and against war. It is in this context of making 
of this documentary that the above three scenes are incorporated 
therein. It is a matter of his legitimate right to decide as to what 
should be included therein and we have no hesitation in saying that 
neither of the two cuts recommended are in any way justified. The 
Petitioner has only recorded a demonstration in one scene and then 
the speech of a Dalit leader in another. It was his choice to include 
both these scenes and even what is stated by the demonstrators or in 
the speech of the Dalit leader, is not conflicting with the theme of 
the documentary. Similarly as far as the addition recommended is 
concerned, the Petitioner submits, and in our view rightly, that the 
same was totally uncalled for."

ŠŠ..  " Before we conclude, we would like to record the oft stated 
proposition that an issue may be one but there are many facets of 
looking at it. It is quite possible that the persons in authority 
today may feel that what they see is the only correct facet of it 
though it may not be so. It is only in a democratic form of 
government that the citizens have the right to express themselves 
fully and fearlessly as to what is their view point towards the 
events which are taking place around. By suppressing certain view 
point, it is not only the propagator of the view point who suffers 
but it is the society at large and equally the people in authority 
who suffer. This is because they fail to receive the counter view and 
it may eventually lead to an immense damage to society due to 
erroneous decision at the hands of the persons in authority in the 
absence of the counter view. That apart, the freedom of speech and 
expression is important not merely for the consequences that ensue in 
the absence thereof but since the negation of it runs as an 
anti-thesis to basic human values, instincts and creativity. It is 
high time that the persons in authority realize the significance of 
freedom of speech and expression rather than make and allow such 
attempts to stifle it."

I am deeply grateful to Advocate P.A. Sebastian who fought the case 
in the Bombay High Court, to Ms Nitya Ramakrishna and M.S. Ganesh who 
earlier represented the film before the FCAT in New Delhi and to the 
thousands of well wishers across the country and globe. We believe 
that this judgement will be a shot in the arm for all democratic and 
secular forces and for artists, writers, journalists and filmmakers 
in particular as it re-establishes the right to freedom of expression 
as guaranteed by our Constitution.

Anand Patwardhan [Mumbai, India]



From eye at ranadasgupta.com  Fri Apr 25 09:53:37 2003
From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta)
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003 09:53:37 +0530
Subject: [Reader-list] Recording Industry Goes After Students Over Music Sharing
Message-ID: 

New York Times
April 23, 2003
Recording Industry Goes After Students Over Music Sharing
By AMY HARMON

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/23/national/23STUD.html?th=&pagewanted=print&
position=


COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Jason, a senior at the University of Maryland, ran one
of the most popular Web sites on campus out of his shoebox dorm room here.
The site let his 8,500 fellow dorm residents search for music files, among
other things, stored on one another's computers and copy them in seconds.

Then came the news that the record industry had filed lawsuits against four
students running similar sites at other universities, accusing them of
enabling large-scale copyright infringement and asking for billions of
dollars in damages. Within an hour, Jason, who insisted on anonymity for
fear of being sued himself, had dismantled his site.

"I don't think I was doing anything wrong," said Jason, a computer science
major. "But who wants to face a $98 billion debt for the rest of their
lives? I was scared."

The lawsuits, filed on April 3, are the most aggressive legal action the
record industry has ever directed against college students, who in recent
years have exercised an enduring predisposition to consume large quantities
of music by copying it over the Internet without ever paying for it. College
campuses, the record industry says, have become far and away the prime locus
for online piracy.

Wary of alienating young customers who continue to generate a large chunk of
their revenue, record companies until recently focused on prodding
university administrators to discipline their students. But freshman
orientation sessions on respect for intellectual property have had little
effect. With CD sales in a tailspin that record executives attribute at
least partly to the downloading frenzy in academia's hallowed halls, they
said they needed to try another approach.

Record executives say the lawsuits — singling out four students at three
colleges — mark a turning point in the battle they have been waging since
Napster popularized Internet music trading three years ago. (A federal judge
in 2001 ruled that Napster had abetted copyright infringement, and it has
been off line since.) The unauthorized copying of digital music that has
become as routine a part of college life as cramming and keg parties may
have finally lost some of its charm.

"We have decided to bring to the attention of universities just how much
music piracy is going on on college campuses and universities," said Cary
Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America, which
brought the suits, "and we think that message has been received."

College students are not the only ones copying music off the Internet. But
students, who often justify their behavior by arguing that CD's are too
expensive and that artists do not get the money anyway, may be more hostile
toward the music industry than most. Many say record labels should accept
that the Internet has irrevocably changed their business and instead offer
new services, like chat sessions with artists or early ticket sales for
concerts, which they would be willing to pay for. Others say they buy as
many or more CD's as they ever did because they are able to sample music
free and discover artists they like.

"This is just more crazy litigation that shows everyone over 40 not
understanding the future of music," said Thomas Geoghegan, 21, a history
major at Maryland and a frequent user of Jason's site before it was so
abruptly removed.

College administrators say they are mindful of their responsibility to teach
students that what they are doing is wrong. They are also aware of the
expense they are incurring as the constant flow of large media files strains
campus networks.

At the same time, they want to protect students' privacy and rights to free
speech and stay out of the role of monitoring what is sent over their
networks. As a result, most colleges have simply sent warnings to students
whom industry groups have reported as downloading copyrighted material. Some
have required students to write papers on copyright law or have temporarily
deprived them of Internet access. But such measures have had little impact

"It's been very difficult because students have grown up viewing the
Internet as a place where you go to get lots of free access to things," said
Graham Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University. "As we have
tried to educate our students, half of them understand it's like going into
a store and putting a CD in your pocket and the other half just can't see it
that way."

The threat of legal retribution may be improving their vision. Since the
record industry filed its lawsuits, officials say they have seen over a
dozen internal campus Web sites devoted to music-sharing go dark.

The complaints charge Daniel Peng, a student at Princeton University; Joseph
Nievelt, a student at Michigan Technological University; and Aaron Sherman
and Jesse Jordan, both students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, with
directly infringing copyrights by providing dozens of songs from popular
artists to other students to copy.

They also charge the students with contributing to much broader infringement
by running programs that indexed tens of thousands of songs stored on other
computers connected to the campus network by students who chose to make them
available to copy. Accusing the four of having "taken a network created for
higher learning and academic pursuits and converted it into an emporium of
music piracy," the lawsuits ask for $150,000 for each of the recordings
listed on the students' Web sites, but recording industry officials
acknowledge that having made their point, they expect to settle out of
court.

The proliferation of campus file-trading networks appears to have started
two years ago, when many universities capped the amount of bandwidth
allotted to each student.

In response, students began using programs that would let them share files
over the superfast networks that connect computers on campus, without
relying on the Internet.

Because those files may be notes from Psych 101, family pictures or music by
bands that choose to distribute it freely, some academic community members
argue that the students running the programs should not be held accountable
for how others may have used them. By singling out the technology, they say,
the record industry has also raised First Amendment issues in what otherwise
could have been a straightforward copyright infringement case.

"If this becomes more about a challenge to the technology than about
downloading music for recreational purposes, that is a serious concern for
us," said Peter McDonough, general counsel for Princeton. "Because we
emphatically believe the technologies themselves are not illegal."

That is also the conclusion of Brendan Dolan-Gavitt, 19, a freshman at
Wesleyan University who has continued to run his own site, which indexes the
shared files of every computer on the Wesleyan network.

Mr. Dolan-Gavitt took his site down the day after the suits were filed but
put it back up the next day after poring over copyright statutes. He said
that if a copyright holder notified him of an infringing file in his index,
he would remove it, just as the law says. His mother is nervous, but "I just
figured if there was something I was going to take a stand on it might as
well be this," he said.

Even before the lawsuits, university administrators felt the heat of the
music industry's stepped-up anti-piracy campaign. In recent months,
entertainment companies have barraged administrators with complaints
documenting alleged copyright infringement over their networks. Several
colleges, in turn, issued more stringent policies regarding student
behavior.

Harvard University warned undergraduates this month that they would lose
their Internet access for a year if they illegally shared copyrighted
material more than once. The United States Naval Academy punished 85
students who were found to have downloaded copyrighted movies and songs
through the academy's Internet connection. Penn State warned students that
file-sharing could lead to huge fines and jail time, and deprived 220
students of high-speed Internet connections in their dorms after finding
that they were sharing copyrighted material. A committee of university
presidents and entertainment industry executives are in the process of
formulating strategies to address the illegal activity on campus. One idea
under consideration: negotiating campuswide licenses for legal online music
services, which colleges could provide as part of a standard student
activities fee along with recreation facilities and newspaper subscriptions.

Colleges have a financial interest in working with the entertainment
industry to solve the downloading problem: the free bandwidth they provide
to students is getting more and more expensive, and they must constantly
investigate all of the entertainment industry's complaints to avoid being
held liable for the infringement themselves.

The peremptory lawsuits have also angered some college administrators.

"They have apparently changed their minds about wanting to work
cooperatively with universities," said Curtis Tompkins, president of
Michigan Tech, who vented his frustration in an open letter to the recording
industry association. "To pick four individuals out of thousands and line
them up against the wall and say, `Here's the firing squad,' is not the way
you deal in higher education."

Just how successful the industry's tougher tactics will be is unclear. On a
recent afternoon at Maryland, a student who once used Jason's site showed a
reporter how to log on to another local network instead.

"We can't live without it," said Eric Lightman, a junior majoring in
computer science. "If one goes down, another comes up."

On the other hand, an advertisement for a new administrator for Jason's site
willing to "take on whatever legal risks may come about" has so far received
no replies.



From ghoshvishwajyoti at rediffmail.com  Fri Apr 25 10:35:41 2003
From: ghoshvishwajyoti at rediffmail.com (vishwajyoti  ghosh)
Date: 25 Apr 2003 05:05:41 -0000
Subject: [Reader-list] Argentina's Luddite rulers
Message-ID: <20030425050541.27508.qmail@webmail32.rediffmail.com>

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From naunidhi at hotmail.com  Fri Apr 25 12:36:18 2003
From: naunidhi at hotmail.com (Naunidhi Kaur)
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003 12:36:18 +0530
Subject: [Reader-list] Mumbai as a post riot city
Message-ID: 

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From aiindex at mnet.fr  Fri Apr 25 14:06:15 2003
From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor)
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003 09:36:15 +0100
Subject: [Reader-list] Argentina's Luddite rulers
In-Reply-To: <20030425050541.27508.qmail@webmail32.rediffmail.com>
References: <20030425050541.27508.qmail@webmail32.rediffmail.com>
Message-ID: 

You can try reaching Klein via: 

At 5:05 AM +0000 25/4/03, vishwajyoti  ghosh wrote:
>does anyone have:
>naomi klein's email id???
>
>On Fri, 25 Apr 2003 Harsh Kapoor wrote :
>>Globe and Mail
>>April 24, 2003
>>
>>Argentina's Luddite rulers
>>
>>Workers in the occupied factories have a different vision: Smash the logic,
>>not the machines
>>
>>By Naomi Klein
>>
>>In 1812, bands of British weavers and knitters raided textile mills and
>>smashed industrial machines with their hammers. According to the Luddites,
>>the new mechanized looms had eliminated thousands of jobs, broken
>>communities and deserved to be destroyed. The British government disagreed
>>and called in 14,000 soldiers to brutally repress the worker revolt and
>>protect the machines.
>>
>>Fast-forward two centuries to another textile factory, this one in Buenos
>>Aires. At Brukman, which has been producing men's suits for 50 years, it's
>>the riot police who smash the sewing machines and the 58 workers who risk
>>their lives to protect them.
>>
>>On Monday, the Brukman factory was the site of the worst repression Buenos
>>Aires has seen in almost a year. Police had evicted the workers in the
>>middle of the night and turned the entire block into a military zone guarded
>>by machine guns and attack dogs. Unable to get into the factory and complete
>>an order for 3,000 pairs of dress trousers, the workers gathered a huge
>>crowd of supporters and announced it was time to go back to work. At 5 p.m.,
>>50 middle-aged seamstresses in no-nonsense haircuts, sensible shoes and blue
>>smocks walked up to the police fence. Someone pushed, the fence fell, and
>>the Brukman women, unarmed and arm in arm, slowly walked through.
>>
>>They had only taken a few steps when the police began shooting: tear gas,
>>water cannons, rubber bullets, then lead. The police even charged the
>>Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, in their white headscarves embroidered with
>>the names of their "disappeared" children. Dozens of demonstrators were
>>injured.
>>
>>This is a snapshot of Argentina less than a week before its presidential
>>election. Each of the five major candidates is promising to put this
>>crisis-ravaged country back to work. Yet Brukman's workers are treated as if
>>sewing a grey suit were a capital crime.
>>
>>Why this state Luddism, this rage at machines? Well, Brukman isn't just any
>>factory; it's a fabrica ocupada, one of almost 200 factories across the
>>country that have been taken over and run by their workers in the past 18
>>months. For many, the factories, employing more than 10,000 nationwide and
>>producing everything from tractors to ice cream, are seen not just as an
>>economic alternative, but as a political one as well. "They are afraid of us
>>because we have shown that, if we can manage a factory, we can also manage a
>>country," Brukman worker Celia Martinez said on Monday night. "That's why
>>this government decided to repress us."
>>
>>At first glance, Brukman looks like every other garment factory in the
>>world. As in Mexico's hypermodern maquiladoras and Toronto's crumbling coat
>>factories, Brukman is filled with women hunched over sewing machines, their
>>eyes straining and fingers flying over fabric and thread. What makes Brukman
>>different are the sounds. Along with the familiar roar of machines and hiss
>>of steam is the Bolivian folk music, coming from a small tape deck at the
>>back of the room, and softly spoken voices, as older workers show younger
>>ones new stitches. "They wouldn't let us do that before," Ms. Martinez says.
>>"They wouldn't let us get up from our workspaces or listen to music. But why
>>not listen to music, to lift the spirits a bit?"
>>
>>In Buenos Aires, every week brings news of a new occupation: a four-star
>>hotel now run by its cleaning staff, a supermarket taken over by its clerks,
>>a regional airline about to be turned into a co-operative by the pilots and
>>attendants. In small Trotskyist journals around the world, Argentina's
>>occupied factories, where the workers have seized the means of production,
>>are giddily hailed as the dawn of a socialist utopia. In large business
>>magazines such as The Economist, they are ominously described as a threat to
>>the sacred principle of private property. The truth lies in between.
>>
>>At Brukman, for instance, the means of production weren't seized -- they
>>were simply picked up after they had been abandoned by their legal owners.
>>The factory had been in decline for several years, and debts to utility
>>companies were piling up. The seamstresses had seen their salaries slashed
>>from 100 pesos a week to two pesos -- not enough for bus fare.
>>
>>On Dec. 18, the workers decided it was time to demand a travel allowance.
>>The owners, pleading poverty, told the workers to wait at the factory while
>>they looked for the money. "We waited until night," Ms. Martinez says. "No
>>one came."
>>
>>After getting the keys from the doorman, Ms. Martinez and the other workers
>>slept at the factory. They have been running it every since. They have paid
>>the outstanding bills, attracted new clients and, without profits and
>>management salaries to worry about, paid themselves steady salaries. All
>>these decisions have been made by vote in open assemblies. "I don't know why
>>the owners had such a hard time," Ms. Martinez says. "I don't know much
>>about accounting, but for me it's easy: addition and subtraction."
>>
>>Brukman has come to represent a new kind of labour movement in Argentina,
>>one that is not based on the power to stop working (the traditional union
>>tactic) but on the dogged determination to keep working no matter what. It's
>>a demand that is not driven by dogmatism but by realism: In a country where
>>58 per cent of the population is living in poverty, workers know they are a
>>paycheque away from having to beg and scavenge to survive. The spectre
>>haunting Argentina's occupied factories is not communism, but indigence.
>>
>>But isn't it simple theft? After all, these workers didn't buy the machines,
>>the owners did -- if they want to sell them or move them to another country,
>>surely that's their right. As the federal judge wrote in Brukman's eviction
>>order, "Life and physical integrity have no supremacy over economic
>>interests."
>>
>>Perhaps unintentionally, he has summed up the naked logic of deregulated
>>globalization: Capital must be free to seek out the lowest wages and most
>>generous incentives, regardless of the toll that process takes on people.
>>
>>The workers in Argentina's occupied factories have a different vision. Their
>>lawyers argue that the owners of these factories have already violated basic
>>market principles by failing to pay their employees and their creditors,
>>even while collecting huge subsidies from the state. Why can't the state now
>>insist that the indebted companies' remaining assets continue to serve the
>>public with steady jobs? Dozens of workers' co-operatives have already been
>>awarded legal expropriation. Brukman is still fighting.
>>
>>Come to think of it, the Luddites made a similar argument in 1812. The new
>>textile mills put profits for a few before an entire way of life. Those
>>textile workers tried to fight that destructive logic by smashing the
>>machines. The Brukman workers have a much better plan: They want to protect
>>the machines and smash the logic.
>>
>>
>>Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences and Windows.
>>_________________________________________
>>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 aiindex at mnet.fr  Fri Apr 25 22:19:35 2003
From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor)
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003 17:49:35 +0100
Subject: [Reader-list] On Data streaming from satellites and the war in Iraq
Message-ID: 

Los Angeles Times
April 24, 2003
COLUMN ONE
The Eyes and Ears of War
Data streaming from satellites proved pivotal in Iraq, letting U.S. 
troops beat Hussein's forces to the punch on the battlefield.
 
By Usha Lee McFarling, Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-sci-spacewar24apr24,1,3427519.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dtechnology


From aiindex at mnet.fr  Fri Apr 25 22:19:12 2003
From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor)
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003 17:49:12 +0100
Subject: [Reader-list] Online, All the Time, an All-Seeing Surveillance System
Message-ID: 

The New York Times
April 24, 2003

HOW IT WORKS

Online, All the Time, an All-Seeing Surveillance System
By JEFFREY SELINGO

IN the 2001 remake of the film "Ocean's Eleven," a band of thieves 
switches surveillance cameras pointed at a Las Vegas casino's safe to 
a recorded image of a replica safe that they have built in a nearby 
warehouse. By the time casino officials discover that the safe they 
are monitoring is not the real one, the thieves are well on their way 
to making off with $150 million.
Fooling security systems always seems to work in Hollywood. But in 
real life, it's not so easy these days. Not only are surveillance 
cameras more common in this era of increased concern about security, 
but they are also much more sophisticated.

Such systems no longer depend on a limited number of analog cameras 
with dedicated fiber optic wiring and banks of monitors connected to 
video recorders. Today, so-called network cameras use digital images, 
which can be easily stored and manipulated on a computer server and 
monitored from remote locations by using the Internet. Tiny cameras 
can be added to a security system, sometimes for temporary use, by 
simply hooking them up to a computer network. It is even possible to 
route video from analog cameras through servers that turn their 
images into digital pictures.

"Two PC servers can now do all the recording that used to take 100 
VCR's," said Fredrik Nilsson, director of business development for 
Axis Communications, a Swedish company that sells network video 
cameras.

The systems have become popular with school officials and managers of 
shopping malls and convention centers and with local and state 
transportation departments, which provide live pictures that 
motorists can view over the Internet before heading out. "The biggest 
advantage is that it uses the existing infrastructure," Mr. Nilsson 
said. "It's as easy as plugging the camera into a computer network."

But the ease with which the high-tech surveillance cameras can be set 
up and used worries people who are concerned about the invasion of 
privacy. The Washington Police Department came under fire for a 
system it purchased from Axis that enables it to monitor activities 
through a network of cameras mounted at busy intersections, in the 
subway system and at tourist sites like the National Mall.

The system, which is activated during heightened terror alerts, 
allows the authorities to manipulate the cameras so they can, for 
instance, pan and zoom in on activity they consider suspicious. The 
remote access also means that officers can view images on computer 
monitors installed in squad cars.

Axis also supplied cameras to the Salt Palace Convention Center in 
Salt Lake City for the 2002 Winter Olympics. Bart Allen, director of 
operations at the convention center, which continues to use the 
system, said the cameras were economical and improved security. With 
the center's old analog system, he said, security guards could record 
the images from only 5 of the 80 cameras located around the center at 
any one time. "So if something happened in an area we weren't 
recording, we didn't have a record of it," Mr. Allen said. Now, 
images at all 80 locations can be recorded.

What's more, because cameras can easily be added or moved anywhere a 
network connection is available, the system can cover much more 
ground than an analog system. If a vendor brings valuable equipment 
to a trade show at the convention center, for example, Mr. Allen 
said, he can set up a camera to watch it. Network cameras can be 
programmed to record only when there is movement in the field of 
vision so that no computer memory is wasted on monitoring empty 
rooms. And it is easier to find a specific moment on a digitized 
video, as anyone who has tried to locate a specific scene in a movie 
on a DVD or a videotape knows.

The new system has already foiled burglaries at the convention 
center, Mr. Allen said. "We put a camera on a bunch of laptops in a 
room and we ended up catching one of our own security guards helping 
himself to a few of them," he said. "Big Brother is everywhere."

Sean Grogan, vice president for operations for Springfield Food 
Court, a company that operates food courts in shopping malls and 
airports, said he was attracted to the network cameras because they 
can store a digital archive at little cost. With his old analog 
system, he had a videotape for each day of the week. Each Tuesday, 
for instance, he taped over the previous Tuesday's tape.

When the company was sued recently by an employee who claimed to have 
fallen at work four months earlier, Mr. Grogan was able to find the 
digital images from that day on his computer server. It showed that 
no one had fallen, he said. "If we had the old system," he said, "it 
would have been my word against theirs."



From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in  Sat Apr 26 06:37:16 2003
From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=)
Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2003 02:07:16 +0100 (BST)
Subject: [Reader-list] Conference: The World Looks at America, April 30-May 1
In-Reply-To: 
Message-ID: <20030426010716.37866.qmail@web8005.mail.in.yahoo.com>

The World Looks at America, April 30-May 1

If after September 11 2001 the United States garnered
considerable global sympathy, the war that began on
October 7th, together with intensified US government
aspirations for global military and economic
supremacy, now leave the United States largely
isolated on the global stage.  Never has it been more
important to look critically at U.S. military,
economic and political dominance along with American
cultural hegemony.  Never has it been more important 
to understand how the rest of the world views the
United States.  
To that end, the Center for Place Culture and Politics
at the Graduate Center, City University of New York,
is hosting a two day conference for scholars from
around the world and at home converge to assess global
views of the United States amidst war.

The World Looks at America
April 30-May 1

Wednesday, April 30 Proshanksy Auditorium, CUNY
Graduate Center

Introduction:  Bill Kelly (Graduate Center Provost,
CUNY), Neil Smith (Center for Place, Culture and
Politics, CUNY)

4:00-5:30  Keynote: Arif Dirlik, (History, University
of Oregon):  
Empire? Some Thoughts on Colonialism, Culture and
Class in the Making of Global Crisis and War in
Perpetuity

5:45 -7:45  Empires, Wars, Borders

Andrew Ross (American Studies, New York University):  
Is Anti-Americanism the Anti-imperialism of Fools

Matt Sparke (Geography and International Studies,
University of Washington): Empire's Geography: The War
and Globalization

Salim Tamari (Institute of Jerusalem Studies, New York
University): Between Two Empires: Little Syria in New
York.

Respondent: Moustafa Bayoumi (English, CUNY)

7:45  Reception

Thursday, May 1 Proshanksy Auditorium, CUNY Graduate
Center

9.30-11.30  Imperial Lenses

Vandana Shiva: (Research Foundation for Science,
Technology and Ecology, New Delhi): From a Permanent
War Economy to Economy of Peace and Permanence

David Harvey (Anthropology, CUNY): TBA

Respondent:  Ida Susser (Anthropology, CUNY)

Lunch break

1:00-3.15  Global Parallax

Margit Mayer (North American Studies, Free University
of Berlin) The German View: Elites, Intellectuals,
Social Movements (dis)united in Anti-Americanism?

Lisa Law (Geography, National University of
Singapore): A view from the 'second front':  Post-911
perspectives on the enduring fiction of Southeast Asia

Ibrahim Aoude (Ethnic Studies, University of Hawaii): 
National Liberation and US Empire: The Palestinian
Struggle in a Regional Context

Respondent:  Jeff Derksen (Center for Place, Culture
and Politics,CUNY)

3:30-5:45  Surveillance at Home

Christian Parenti (Center for Place Culture and
Politics, CUNY): Today's Crackdown in Historical
Context: Surveillance and Resistance Under the Chinese
Exclusion Act, 1882 to 1942

J.C. Salyer (American Civil Liberties Union of New
Jersey): Illegal People: The Government's Targeting of
Immigrants after September 11.

Chris Dunn (American Civil Liberties Union of New
York): TBA

Respondent: Cindi Katz (Environmental Psychology,
CUNY),          


________________________________________________________________________
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       visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com


From aiindex at mnet.fr  Mon Apr 28 10:21:46 2003
From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor)
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2003 05:51:46 +0100
Subject: [Reader-list] In Defence of the Indian Historian Romila Thapar
Message-ID: 

South Asia Citizens Wire Alert !
28 April 2003

[ Groups of the Hindu Supremacist Right are now attacking Dr. Romila 
Thapar one of India's most distinguished and best known historians. 
The Library of Congress in Washington recently named Romila Thapar as 
First Holder of the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the 
South. Activists of the Hindu Right are currently running a petition 
against her appointment. Romila Thapar like many of her colleagues 
from Indian intelligentsia have written and spoken against the 
systematic onslaught on the secular foundations of the educational 
system by the forces of the Hindu right. Here is some information and 
background information below for those who may want to take this 
issue up and write about the implications of the ongoing cabal by 
Hindutva propagandists to promote "rewriting" of history text books 
and to target India's well known historians and intellectuals who 
question these moves.]

Contents:

#1. Romila Thapar's appointment to Library of Congress opposed (News 
report on Rediff.com)
#2. Text of the slanderous Online Petition by Hindu Fundamentalists 
Against Dr. Romila Thapar
#3. Romila Thapar as First Holder of the Kluge Chair in Countries and 
Cultures of the South News from the Library of Congress April 17, 2003
#4.  List of well known books by Romila Thapar
#5. Two recent Book reviews of 'In Early India, Romila Thapar'  (by 
Sanjay Subrahmanyam and K.M. Shrimali
#6. URLS of some lectures and interviews with Romila Thapar
#7. URLS of documentation on assault on established historical 
research and on intellectuals and artists in India


____________


#1.

Rediff.com (India)
25 Apr 2003
http://www.rediff.com/us/2003/apr/25us1.htm

Romila Thapar's appointment to
Library of Congress opposed

April 25, 2003 05:33 IST

A petition is circulating on the Internet against the appointment of
Professor Romila Thapar as First Holder of the Kluge Chair in
Countries and Cultures of the South at the Library of Congress. 

The petitioners allege that she is a Marxist and anti-Hindu and it is
a waste of US money to support a Leftist. 

The Librarian of Congress, James H Billington, appointed Thapar
last week and she has already started work, Robert Saladini, a
spokesperson for the library, said. He said he has no information
on the petition. 

The petition can be viewed at:
http://www.petitiononline.com/108india/petition.html 

The holder of the chair, which is located in the John W Kluge
Center of the Library of Congress, pursues research on the regions
of Africa, Latin America, West Asia, South and Southeast Asia, or
the islands of the Pacific including Australia and New Zealand,
using the immense foreign language collections in the specialised
reading rooms of the Library of Congress. 

Thapar will spend ten months at the John W Kluge Center
pursuing 'Historical Consciousness in Early India' as her area of
research. 

Thapar, emeritus professor of Ancient Indian History at Jawaharlal
Nehru University in New Delhi, who has served as visiting
professor at Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania,
is an authority on Indian history.

The author of many seminal works on the history of ancient India,
her volume of the 'Penguin History of India' has been continuously
in print since 1966. Her latest publication is 'Early India: From the
Origins to AD 1300'. Other recent works are 'History and Beyond'
and 'Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History'.

She has held many visiting posts in Europe, the United States and
Japan. She is an Honorary Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford,
and at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of
London. She has honorary doctorates from the University of
Chicago, the Institute National des Langues et Civilisations
Orientales in Paris, the University of Oxford and the University of
Calcutta. 

Through a generous endowment from John W Kluge, the Library
of Congress established the center in 2000 to bring together the
world's best thinkers to stimulate, energise, and distil wisdom from
the library's rich resources and to interact with policy makers in
Washington, DC.

The center houses five senior Kluge Chairs.

The petitioners say: "It is a great travesty that Romila Thapar has
been appointed the first holder of the Kluge Chair. 

"In regards to India, she is an avowed antagonist of India's Hindu
civilization as a well-known Marxist. She represents a completely
Euro-centric worldview. I fail to see how she can be the correct
choice to represent India's ancient history and civilization.

"She completely disavows that India ever had a history. The
ongoing campaign by Romila Thapar and others to discredit Hindu
civilization is a war of cultural genocide. By your unfortunate
selection of Thapar, America is now aiding and abetting this
effort." 

The petition has 133 signatures already. One of the signatories,
Hari Singh, said: "The comments from Ms Thapar are disgusting
and are reflection of her ignorance of Indian History." 

Venkatesh, another signatory, commented, "It's a shame to the
USA & Indian govt. that a Communist like Romila Thapar is
having a free run."

o o o


#2.


[TEXT OF THE PETITION  BY HINDU FUNDAMENTALISTS AGAINST DR. ROMILA THAPAR]

o o o

Protest US Supported Marxist Assault Against Hindus

To:  US Library of Congress

It is a great travesty that Romila
Thapar has been appointed the first holder of the Kluge Chair in
Countries and Cultures of the South at the Library of
Congress.

In regards to India, she is an avowed antagonist of
India's Hindu civilization. As a well-known Marxist,
she represents a completely Euro-centric world view.
I fail to see how she can be the correct choice to
represent India's ancient history and civilization.
She completely disavows that India ever had a history.

Just as the Europeans discredited the American
Indian's land claims by ignoring that they represented
a unique civilization with a wholesome variety of
distinct linguistic and cultural traits, Thapar has
long expounded the same ignorant view of India's
unique history and civilization.

The ongoing campaign by Romila Thapar and others to
discredit Hindu civilization is a war of cultural
genocide. By your unfortunate selection of R.Thapar
for the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the
South at the Library of Congress, America is now aiding and
abbeting this effort.

The result of her "Historical Consciousness in Early
India" is already a foregone conclusion. She will of
course attempt to show that Early India had no
historical consciousness.

Why waste our American resources on a
Marxist idealogical assault on Hindu
civilization?Hinduism is the world's most ancient,
ongoing and largest cultural phenonmenon. Such a long
lived civilization surely has alot to teach the world.
So why support its denigration? As a Friend of India, I
protest this appointment.

Sincerely,


_____


#3.

http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2003/03-068.html
News from the Library of Congress
Public Affairs Office
101 Independence Avenue SE
Washington, DC
20540-1610
tel (202) 707-2905
fax (202) 707-9199
e-mail pao at loc.gov

April 17, 2003

Contact:
Helen Dalrymple (202) 707-1940
Robert Saladini (202) 707-2692
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Romila Thapar Named as First Holder of the Kluge Chair in Countries 
and Cultures of the South at Library of Congress

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has appointed Romila Thapar 
as the first holder of the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of 
the South at the Library of Congress. The holder of this chair, which 
is located in the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, 
pursues research on the regions of Africa, Latin America, the Middle 
East, South and Southeast Asia, or the islands of the Pacific 
including Australia and New Zealand, using the immense foreign 
language collections in the specialized reading rooms of the Library 
of Congress.

As occupant of the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the 
South, Thapar will spend ten months at the John W. Kluge Center 
pursuing "Historical Consciousness in Early India" as her area of 
research.

Romila Thapar, emeritus professor of Ancient Indian History at 
Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Dehli, who has served as visiting 
professor at Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania, 
is a recognized authority on Indian history. The author of many 
seminal works on the history of ancient India, her volume of the 
Penguin History of India has been continuously in print since 1966. 
Her latest publication is "Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300." 
Other recent works are "History and Beyond," "Cultural Pasts: Essays 
in Early Indian History," and "History and Beyond." In her published 
works, Thapar has pioneered both the study of early Indian texts as 
history and the integration of the critical use of archaeology with 
written sources.

During her illustrious career, Thapar has held many visiting posts in 
Europe, the United States and Japan. She is an Honorary Fellow at 
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and at the School of Oriental and African 
Studies (SOAS), University of London. She has honorary doctorates 
from the University of Chicago, the Institut National des Langues et 
Civilisations Orientales in Paris, the University of Oxford and the 
University of Calcutta.

Through a generous endowment from its namesake, the Library of 
Congress established the John W. Kluge Center in 2000 to bring 
together the world's best thinkers to stimulate, energize, and 
distill wisdom from the Library's rich resources and to interact with 
policymakers in Washington, D.C. The Kluge Center houses five senior 
Kluge Chairs (American Law and Governance, Countries and Cultures of 
the North, Countries and Cultures of the South, Technology and 
Society, and Modern Culture); other senior-level chairs (Henry A. 
Kissinger Chair, Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in American History and 
Ethics, and the Harissios Papamarkou Chair in Education); and nearly 
25 post-doctoral fellows.

For more information about the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures 
of the South or any of the other fellowships and grants offered by 
the John W. Kluge Center, contact the Office of Scholarly Programs, 
Library of Congress, 101 Independence Avenue S.E, Washington, DC 
20540-4860; telephone (202) 707-3302, fax 202-707-3595, web: 
http://www.loc.gov/loc/kluge/.

# # #

PR 03-68
04/17/03
ISSN 0731-3527

_____


#3.

[Writings by Dr. Romila Thapar are too numerous to list, but most of 
her well known books are listed below]

- Cultural Pasts - Essays in Early Indian History
by Romila Thapar
Oxford University Press  2003
http://www.oup.co.uk/isbn/0-19-566487-6

-The Penguin History of Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300
by Romila Thapar
http://www.penguinbooksindia.com/Books/aspBookDetail.asp?ID=5164

- Sakuntala: Texts, Readings, Histories
Romila Thapar
Kali for Women, (1999 / 2000)

- Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas
With a New Afterword Bibliography and Index
by Romila Thapar
Oxford University Press, May 1998

- Recent perspectives of early Indian history. Thapar Romila. (ed).
Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1995.

- Interpreting Early India
by Romila Thapar
Oxford University Press 1994

- Ancient Indian Social History.by Romila Thapar
New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1979.

- History of India, Vol. 2
by Percival George Spear and Romila Thapar
Penguin

- A History of India, Vol. 1
by Romila Thapar
Penguin (1966)

_____


#4.

[ 2 Recent Book Reviews of 'Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300'  ]

The Hindu
Sunday, Apr 06, 2003
Literary Review
http://www.hinduonnet.com/lr/stories/2003040600110200.htm

Monumental history

In Early India, Romila Thapar attempts the grand sweep, reconciling 
diverse trends and adjudicating between rival positions. SANJAY 
SUBRAHMANYAM, though appreciative of the balanced tone, would have 
preferred some fireworks thrown in too.

A CERTAIN Indian social scientist living in New York, who shall 
naturally remain unnamed here, is believed to have boasted to his 
colleagues that he was "like the Taj Mahal - everyone who visits the 
city has to come and see me." Romila Thapar, who is today a very 
young 72 and rather more modest than the person mentioned above, is a 
monument of sorts too in the Indian historiography, though the 
appropriate comparison may be to the Jantar Mantar rather than to the 
Taj Mahal. By this I mean that with her work, the emphasis is on 
utility rather than pure aesthetic appeal, even though a certain 
residual enigmatic quality remains. And to push the metaphor to its 
conclusion, like that monument located on Sansad Marg, she has 
managed to be both centrally located and to maintain a distance from 
the Connaught Place hurly-burly of the Indian history establishment.

Romila Thapar's reputation does not rest on a single work, but on the 
capacity to have adapted herself decade after decade to changing 
trends and tendencies, and to have continued nevertheless to produce 
work of a consistent quality. Most Indian historians of her 
generation either were one-monograph wonders (effectively the case of 
the demi-god of medievalists, Professor Irfan Habib), incapable of 
mounting a fresh project once their doctoral thesis was done; or 
otherwise they were specialists of the "one-note samba", producing 
fresh books on Indian feudalism every two years which effectively 
said the same thing again, again and still again. Romila Thapar on 
the other hand has moved from her early work on the Mauryas, to a 
general consideration of early state-formation that is much 
influenced by the marriage of Marxism and structuralism, to 
reflections on the epics, historiography and a host of other 
subjects. In this vast output, an early book does stand out: this is 
her History of India, first published by Penguin in 1966, and which 
has been used since in countless classrooms by numberless students. 
Written when the author was in her early thirties, the book is a 
prime example of chutzpah, and what is remarkable is that it easily 
upstaged the second volume of that same series, written by the 
"senior scholar" Percival Spear. The work under review here is a much 
revised version of the same text, written some four decades later, 
and has expanded from about 350 pages to over 550 pages in the newer 
version.

The work is organised as 13 chapters, which - after an introductory 
set of two, on historiography and on "landscapes and peoples" - 
follow a broadly chronological trend, although there is occasionally 
a shift to a more thematic organisation (as in Chapters 11 to 13, all 
of which deal with the centuries from about 800 to 1300). Political 
history in the sense of state-formation continues to dominate as a 
theme, but this is of course no mere dynastic history. Rather the 
emphasis is solidly on questions of socio-political history, and the 
interaction between state and society; questions of trade and 
agrarian economy are of course present, though cultural themes do lag 
noticeably behind and are often treated as appendages of social 
history. In each chapter, the evidence from secondary literature is 
carefully weighed, and a mix of the author's own prose and citations 
from the primary sources serves to give the reader a sense of the 
"style" of each epoch. Obviously, the author is more comfortable with 
certain periods than others, and the discomfort is clear when we move 
from the middle chapters (which are certainly the strongest) to 
either the early ones or the later ones. The problem though is that 
every reviewer will have his or her axe to grind. Early historians 
will find archaeology underplayed, while historians of the Delhi 
Sultanate will find that their period is treated in a somewhat 
schematic fashion. But this is really neither here nor there. The 
real question is how this work compares with others of a similar 
scope and ambition.

Here, only two serious rival candidates exist, namely Kulke and 
Rothermund's work, and the posthumously published History of India by 
Burton Stein. The former does possess some notable virtues in its 
first half, namely a closer attention to sources and to the 
nitty-gritty of history. On the other hand, it is also rather weak on 
the later centuries of the first millennium of the Christian era. 
Stein's work takes a somewhat different tack, by assuming the 
explicit burden of a schematic argument, which Romila Thapar largely 
eschews. She attempts the grand sweep which also reconciles diverse 
trends, and attempts to adjudicate between rival positions. Those who 
like their history written in a sober and balanced tone will hence 
much prefer her volume, though it is a sad commentary on the popular 
perception of ancient Indian history today that even this even-handed 
work will be tarred by some as being "sectarian". My own chief 
complaint against the work is quite different: namely, that there are 
not enough fireworks in it. We have had an "Aligarh School", a 
"Cambridge School", an "Allahabad School" and even a "JNU School" in 
Indian history. I am inclined, especially for the southern readers of 
The Hindu, to suggest that it is high time to promote the existence 
of a "Sivakasi School".

Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300, Romila Thapar, London, 
Allen Lane, 2002, p. xxx + 556, £30, Indian Price £8.75.

Sanjay Subrahmanyam is Professor of Indian History and Culture in the 
University of Oxford.

SANJAY SUBRAHMANYAM

o o o

Outlook Magazine (India)
May 05, 2003
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20030505&fname=Booksb&sid=1

REVIEW
Not Quite The Satanic Verse
Hopefully, the work would be read not only by all those who are 
interested in understanding essential strands of early India's 
cultural dynamics, but more importantly, also by those who are fast 
emerging as Satan
K.M. SHRIMALI

EARLY INDIA: FROM THE ORIGINS TO AD 1300
by Romila Thapar
PENGUIN INDIA
PRICE: 395; PAGES: 592

This thoroughly-revised version of the author's classic A History of 
India, Vol I must be welcomed for its timely arrival when the country 
is battling with renewed attempts to mythify history and redefine the 
parameters of the Indian nation. The new version closes at c. AD 1300 
instead of AD 1526 as in the earlier version. Considering the space 
devoted to this period in the two versions, the present edition has 
almost been doubled.

More maps and figures; a reasonably comprehensive, up-to-date and 
more systematically arranged bibliography add to its freshness.

The earlier version gave an impression that the whole text was 
planned in a broad political frame, though material and cultural 
developments through the millennia were never ignored. A 
nomenclature-related rethinking is now visible in formulations 
seeking to focus on broad contours of socio-economic and 
politico-cultural developments. The post-independence writing on 
early Indian history has been enriched through analyses of the lives 
of commoners. Thapar familiarises the reader with the emerging new 
vocabulary. A thrust on archaeology providing tangible data in the 
form of artifacts and material remains; the study of oral 
traditions-distinguishing between 'frozen' (Vedic) and 'more open' 
(epic poetry)-along with fieldwork; the use of linguistics as a tool 
for historical reconstruction, particularly to question the notion of 
communities and their identities being 'static': all this has made 
history-writing challenging, its reading fascinating.

The fourth chapter ('Towards Chiefdoms and Kingdoms, c 1200-600 BC') 
is an effective refutation of many fanciful ideas that are being 
touted around about the indigenous origins of the 'Aryans'; and how 
the glorious 'Aryan culture' is identical with the Harappan culture. 
Here, by carefully sifting data from linguistics, the vast corpus of 
Vedic literature and archaeological evidence, Thapar presents a 
nuanced construction of two different historical processes: invasion 
and migration.

Thapar devotes considerable space to several issues involved in the 
socio-political formations during the millennium stretching from AD 
300 to 1300. After all, paradigms of 'Indian feudalism' and its 
alternatives such as segmentary state and integrative polities' have 
been the focus of writings in the last five decades. Thapar, while 
making her positions clear, is never dogmatic. To illustrate, while 
she is unconvinced about the sustainability of segmentary state and 
integrative polities as pan-India phenomena, she wants a 
reconsideration of the long-forgotten hypotheses of the two phases of 
Indian feudalism ('feudalism from above' and 'feudalism from below').

Further, amidst all the excitement about agrarian expansion during 
this millennium, she provides a timely reminder about "diverted 
attention from pastoralism", which was quite important in the 
"interstices of agrarian areas and in some hill states". She stresses 
on the transformation of pastoral clans into castes of cultivators. 
This, indeed, is just one of the many perceptive observations on 
mutations of varna and jati through India's long history that is a 
running theme of the book.

Barring a few typographical errors, this competently produced volume 
is marked by Thapar's lyrical narrative. She writes, "A fundamental 
sanity in Indian civilisation has been due to an absence of Satan." 
Hopefully, the work would be read not only by all those who are 
genuinely interested in understanding essential strands of early 
India's cultural dynamics, but more importantly, also by those who 
are fast emerging as Satan.

______


#5.

[URLS to some recent lectures and interviews with Romila Thapar]

Webcast: Romila Thapar: History and Contemporary Politics in India

Running Time: 1 hour, 32 minutes
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/events/replay.html?event_id=35

o o o

[PDF]Two Lectures by Romila Thapar
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
Two Lectures by Romila Thapar Professor Emeritus of History, 
Jawaharlal Nehru University,
Delhi Monday, November 4, 2002
http://ias.berkeley.edu/southasia/thapar.pdf


o o o

BBC Audio
Historian Professor Romila Thaper "There is an attempt to suggest the 
only history and civilisation that matter are Hindu" - BBC (May 10, 
2002)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1970000/audio/_1974980_history22_thaper.ram

o o o

In defence of history
ROMILA THAPAR
Text of Lecture delivered at Thiruvananthapuram on 2 March 2002
http://www.india-seminar.com/2003/521/521%20romila%20thapar.htm


o o o

Secular Education and the Federal Polity
Romila Thapar
text of her address at the 'National Convention Against 
Saffronisation of Education', organised by SAHMAT (August 4-6, 2001, 
New Delhi, India)
http://www.ercwilcom.net/~indowindow/sad/godown/edu/rtsefp.htm


o o o

Hindutva and history
Why do Hindutva ideologues keep flogging a dead horse?
ROMILA THAPAR  (October 2000)
http://www.flonnet.com/fl1720/17200150.htm

o o o

An Interview with Romila Thapar (4 February 1999)
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/thaparFeb99.html

______


#7.

[ URLS of documentation on assault on established historical research 
and on intellectuals and artists in India ]

- 'It is a fear of history'
Interview with K.N. Panikkar.
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1705/17050240.htm

- Manufacturing Myths
K N PANIKKAR
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?art_id=8391199

The Rediff Interview/ Professor Irfan Habib
http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/jan/05inter.htm

- Rewriting history - I
By R. Champakalakshmi
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2002/03/25/stories/2002032500041000.htm

- History As Told by Non-Historians
by Anjali Mody.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/stories/2001121600961300.htm

- On Rewriting History in India: The problem
by Neeladri Bhattacharya
http://www.india-seminar.com/2003/522.htm

- Righting or rewriting Hindu history
By Ann Ninan
http://www.atimes.com/ind-pak/BB23Df01.html

- A saffron offensive
R. KRISHNAKUMAR
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1924/stories/20021206002504900.htm

- Assault on art
The bizarre attack by Hindutva forces at the home of M.F. Husain in 
Mumbai has once again brought the issue of freedom of artistic 
expression into focus.
http://www.flonnet.com/fl1510/15100210.htm


-- 



From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in  Tue Apr 29 09:46:26 2003
From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=)
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 05:16:26 +0100 (BST)
Subject: [Reader-list] Operation Strangelove:Show your dissent. Show the movie.
Message-ID: <20030429041626.85181.qmail@web8005.mail.in.yahoo.com>

>Dear friends, family, etc. --
>
>Stop cowboy diplomacy:  “Operation Strangelove” has
>arrived!
>
>Be part of a national action of dissent on May 14,
>2003.  This may be the easiest, and funniest,
anti-war
>protest you’ll ever be involved in.  All you have to
>do:  Put on a screening of "Dr. Strangelove" ­ in
your
>living room, at the local theater, on campus, on your
>laptop, anywhere you can.
>
>It’s as simple as that.  And if you want, you can
also
>raise money for groups still working hard for peace,
>justice and relief in Iraq.  We have large theaters
>booked in New York and Los Angeles already.  Check
out
>our web site
>http://www.operationstrangelove.org
>for a complete do-it-yourself event kit—no screening
>is too small to count.  Pass it on.  The only way
this
>works is if we get the word out quickly!
>
>Keep checking our web site for added features.  If
you
>can’t register your screening yet, come back soon.
>Life is a work in progress.  The rest of this message
>is more info on “Operation Strangelove,” but let me
>know if you have any questions, and most important if
>you’re gonna host a screening.  Thanks!
>-- Patrick, Lizzy, Jen and the folks at Operation
>Strangelove
>_______________________________
>
>Pre-emptive strikes. Cowboy diplomacy. Men conspiring
>in the War Room, bent on world domination. Weapons of
>mass destruction. And most terrifying of all, an
>invasion begun for one overwhelming reason: precious
>fluids.
>
>Forty years after its filming, the dark and
>explosively funny "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped
>Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb" seems like a
>satirical time bomb planted by Stanley Kubrick and
>Terry Southern, set to detonate on Bush’s doctrine of
>unilateral warfare, anytime, anywhere.
>
>As the war on Iraq winds down (at least on TV), as
the
>perils (and profits) of occupation loom, and as the
>Bushies plot the next pre-emptive strike, Operation
>Strangelove aims to show the lunatic warmongers in
>their true light.
>
>On May 14, put on a screening of "Dr. Strangelove" ­
>in your living room, at the local theater, on campus,
>on your laptop, anywhere you can ­ and say no to
>unilateral invasions, to endangering our troops for
>the sake of oil, to flouting international law and
the
>world community in the name of empire. Follow the
film
>with discussions, forums, debates. Keep talking. Keep
>acting. Let’s give new meaning to the old Strategic
>Air Command motto: "Peace Is Our Profession."
>_______________________________
>
>Operation Strangelove grew out of the Lysistrata
>Project which inspired more than 1,000 groups to
stage
>readings of Aristophanes’s bawdy anti-war play in 59
>countries and all 50 US states early this March and
>raised more than $100,000 for peace and humanitarian
>groups.
>
>Now, more than ever, it’s critical that we raise our
>voices above the din and keep our message focused.
>
>Remember:  "War is too important to be left to
>politicians."
>
>http://www.operationstrangelove.org


________________________________________________________________________
Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV.
       visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com


From avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in  Tue Apr 29 09:46:56 2003
From: avishek_ganguly at yahoo.co.in (=?iso-8859-1?q?Avishek=20Ganguly?=)
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 05:16:56 +0100 (BST)
Subject: [Reader-list] Operation Strangelove:Show your dissent. Show the movie.
Message-ID: <20030429041656.50520.qmail@web8001.mail.in.yahoo.com>

>Dear friends, family, etc. --
>
>Stop cowboy diplomacy:  “Operation Strangelove” has
>arrived!
>
>Be part of a national action of dissent on May 14,
>2003.  This may be the easiest, and funniest,
anti-war
>protest you’ll ever be involved in.  All you have to
>do:  Put on a screening of "Dr. Strangelove" ­ in
your
>living room, at the local theater, on campus, on your
>laptop, anywhere you can.
>
>It’s as simple as that.  And if you want, you can
also
>raise money for groups still working hard for peace,
>justice and relief in Iraq.  We have large theaters
>booked in New York and Los Angeles already.  Check
out
>our web site
>http://www.operationstrangelove.org
>for a complete do-it-yourself event kit—no screening
>is too small to count.  Pass it on.  The only way
this
>works is if we get the word out quickly!
>
>Keep checking our web site for added features.  If
you
>can’t register your screening yet, come back soon.
>Life is a work in progress.  The rest of this message
>is more info on “Operation Strangelove,” but let me
>know if you have any questions, and most important if
>you’re gonna host a screening.  Thanks!
>-- Patrick, Lizzy, Jen and the folks at Operation
>Strangelove
>_______________________________
>
>Pre-emptive strikes. Cowboy diplomacy. Men conspiring
>in the War Room, bent on world domination. Weapons of
>mass destruction. And most terrifying of all, an
>invasion begun for one overwhelming reason: precious
>fluids.
>
>Forty years after its filming, the dark and
>explosively funny "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped
>Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb" seems like a
>satirical time bomb planted by Stanley Kubrick and
>Terry Southern, set to detonate on Bush’s doctrine of
>unilateral warfare, anytime, anywhere.
>
>As the war on Iraq winds down (at least on TV), as
the
>perils (and profits) of occupation loom, and as the
>Bushies plot the next pre-emptive strike, Operation
>Strangelove aims to show the lunatic warmongers in
>their true light.
>
>On May 14, put on a screening of "Dr. Strangelove" ­
>in your living room, at the local theater, on campus,
>on your laptop, anywhere you can ­ and say no to
>unilateral invasions, to endangering our troops for
>the sake of oil, to flouting international law and
the
>world community in the name of empire. Follow the
film
>with discussions, forums, debates. Keep talking. Keep
>acting. Let’s give new meaning to the old Strategic
>Air Command motto: "Peace Is Our Profession."
>_______________________________
>
>Operation Strangelove grew out of the Lysistrata
>Project which inspired more than 1,000 groups to
stage
>readings of Aristophanes’s bawdy anti-war play in 59
>countries and all 50 US states early this March and
>raised more than $100,000 for peace and humanitarian
>groups.
>
>Now, more than ever, it’s critical that we raise our
>voices above the din and keep our message focused.
>
>Remember:  "War is too important to be left to
>politicians."
>
>http://www.operationstrangelove.org


________________________________________________________________________
Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV.
       visit http://in.tv.yahoo.com


From rmazumdar at vsnl.net  Wed Apr 30 10:09:29 2003
From: rmazumdar at vsnl.net (Ranjani Mazumdar)
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 10:09:29 +0530
Subject: [Reader-list] film screening
Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20030430100851.021cf040@mail.vsnl.net>

An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
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From lachlan at london.com  Wed Apr 30 15:44:10 2003
From: lachlan at london.com (Lachlan Brown)
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 10:14:10 +0000
Subject: [Reader-list] Operation Strangelove:Show your dissent. Show
    the movie.
Message-ID: <20030430101410.24619.qmail@iname.com>

What a great idea. I wonder what Kubrick (and Peter 
Sellers) would make of the present dramas of 
globalization. Cynical British empire building
under the paranoid world beating Vandalism of a steroid
crazed and completely ignorant Global Power, the USA.
Like a mad wrestler led by a latter day Kipling. It
is all completely nuts. Who wrote this script?

Surely America can top its best satire of the 60s
with work on the 'end times' dramas of the 00s or
noughties. The world they present is so bleak
and unsustainable one can only cry, or laugh, despair 
or defy with all the creativity we can muster. 

One of the purposes of the present 'new great game' is 
to coopt media content and attention away from the 
absurdities of national and local government, with 
their new repressive laws that seem designed to cover 
up their slight understanding of how the world works, 
and what motivates people to make culture.

In Toronto we are presently dealing with a new
phenomenon, 'globalization protesting against you'
with the sudden arrival of SARS from Hong Kong by
airliner last month and the World Health Organisation's 
travel advisory inclusion of Toronto, which became 
pariah in North America overnight. The media and mayor 
suggest every one go out for lunch to help the local 
entertainment and tourist industry which was hit immediately. 
Not the best advice obviously when dealing with a potential 
pneumonic plague that could, unless isolated, spread 
through the North American continent. 

I wonder how Sellers or say vim Venders would cope with
the comic potential of such government and such media. 

Otherwise it looks like the disease has been controlled here
by patient caring Health work - half of the sufferers are health 
care workers and their families - their professional altruism 
stands in sharp contrast with the quality of media advice and 
the government of idiots. Nice people perhaps but they should 
be doing something else, less dangerous, like delivering the 
newspaper to peoples homes or cleaning the washrooms in government 
buildings, and let journalists and editors make news, and real 
politicians make government.

It seems to me that this disease has been proof with the way 
ordinary people have coped with the situation that there is 
indeed something called society and that without it there would 
be no individual men or women, or their families.



George Lachlan Brown
Toronto


> >Dear friends, family, etc. --
> >
> >Stop cowboy diplomacy:  “Operation Strangelove” has
> >arrived!
> >
> >Be part of a national action of dissent on May 14,
> >2003.  This may be the easiest, and funniest,
> anti-war
> >protest you’ll ever be involved in.  All you have to
> >do:  Put on a screening of "Dr. Strangelove" ­ in
> your
> >living room, at the local theater, on campus, on your
> >laptop, anywhere you can.
> >
> >It’s as simple as that.  And if you want, you can
> also
> >raise money for groups still working hard for peace,
> >justice and relief in Iraq.  We have large theaters
> >booked in New York and Los Angeles already.  Check
> out
> >our web site
> >http://www.operationstrangelove.org
> >for a complete do-it-yourself event kit—no screening
> >is too small to count.  Pass it on.  The only way
> this
> >works is if we get the word out quickly!
> >
> >Keep checking our web site for added features.  If
> you
> >can’t register your screening yet, come back soon.
> >Life is a work in progress.  The rest of this message
> >is more info on “Operation Strangelove,” but let me
> >know if you have any questions, and most important if
> >you’re gonna host a screening.  Thanks!
> >-- Patrick, Lizzy, Jen and the folks at Operation
> >Strangelove
> >_______________________________
> >
> >Pre-emptive strikes. Cowboy diplomacy. Men conspiring
> >in the War Room, bent on world domination. Weapons of
> >mass destruction. And most terrifying of all, an
> >invasion begun for one overwhelming reason: precious
> >fluids.
> >
> >Forty years after its filming, the dark and
> >explosively funny "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Stopped
> >Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb" seems like a
> >satirical time bomb planted by Stanley Kubrick and
> >Terry Southern, set to detonate on Bush’s doctrine of
> >unilateral warfare, anytime, anywhere.
> >
> >As the war on Iraq winds down (at least on TV), as
> the
> >perils (and profits) of occupation loom, and as the
> >Bushies plot the next pre-emptive strike, Operation
> >Strangelove aims to show the lunatic warmongers in
> >their true light.
> >
> >On May 14, put on a screening of "Dr. Strangelove" ­
> >in your living room, at the local theater, on campus,
> >on your laptop, anywhere you can ­ and say no to
> >unilateral invasions, to endangering our troops for
> >the sake of oil, to flouting international law and
> the
> >world community in the name of empire. Follow the
> film
> >with discussions, forums, debates. Keep talking. Keep
> >acting. Let’s give new meaning to the old Strategic
> >Air Command motto: "Peace Is Our Profession."
> >_______________________________
> >
> >Operation Strangelove grew out of the Lysistrata
> >Project which inspired more than 1,000 groups to
> stage
> >readings of Aristophanes’s bawdy anti-war play in 59
> >countries and all 50 US states early this March and
> >raised more than $100,000 for peace and humanitarian
> >groups.
> >
> >Now, more than ever, it’s critical that we raise our
> >voices above the din and keep our message focused.
> >
> >Remember:  "War is too important to be left to
> >politicians."
> >
> >http://www.operationstrangelove.org
> 
> 
> ________________________________________________________________________
> Missed your favourite TV serial last night? Try the new, Yahoo! TV.
>        visit http://in.tv.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: 
> 



Lachlan Brown

T+VM: +1 416 666 1452
eFax: +1 435 603 2156
                                       

-- 
__________________________________________________________
Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com
http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup



From sougata_28 at rediffmail.com  Wed Apr 30 23:51:51 2003
From: sougata_28 at rediffmail.com (sougata  bhattacharya)
Date: 30 Apr 2003 18:21:51 -0000
Subject: [Reader-list] Aurora
Message-ID: <20030430182151.26855.qmail@webmail17.rediffmail.com>

To the reader list : This is the fourth episode of my research work that
I'm working under the Sarai independent Research Grant.  
Comments and suggestions are cordially welcome ....Sougata.

Aurora in the Post Independence era
	
The Second World War and its afterward situation was another turning point of movie business. From this time, the control over the industry had passed from the studio owning producers to a new set of investors and the earlier system of production, distribution and exhibition network began to change. In Eastern India, film industry was seriously affected due to the partition of Bengal.
Aurora had to leave their all cinema halls which remained under the territory of East Pakistan. After Independence, their exhibition business was restricted only in three cinema halls of West Bengal. 
Aurora's distribution business was also shattered when, after Independence, they had to loose their foreign market due to export regulation. As, from this time, Bengali cinema began to defeat in the competition with Hindi cinema, being a distribution company of Bengali films Aurora also lost the other parts of Indian market except Bengal and its surroundings. The only foreign market of Bengali cinema was East Pakistan. But Aurora sent very few films there because, to get those films back, Aurora had to pay an import duty to Indian Government far exceeding the value of the print.

From genecamp at vsnl.com  Sat Apr 26 14:21:40 2003
From: genecamp at vsnl.com (Gene Campaign)
Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2003 14:21:40 +0530
Subject: [Reader-list] World Intellectual Propertiy Day
Message-ID: <025201c30bd1$1d6da060$0d36a8c0@node5>

Friends,

Today, 26th April, 'World Intellectual Property Day' Gene Campaign reiterates its demand for recognition of the intellectual property of adivasi and farming communities. We urge you to join us in this demand. 

Sincerely,

Gene Campaign

J-235A, Sainik Farms

New Delhi - 110 062

Ph: +91-11-2651 7248/ 2685 6841

Telefax: +91-11-2696 5961

Em: genecamp at vsnl.com 



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From snitch at paradise.net.nz  Wed Apr 30 03:23:34 2003
From: snitch at paradise.net.nz (Mitch)
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 09:53:34 +1200
Subject: [Reader-list] Grace News
Message-ID: <001f01c30e99$cbf322c0$89664fcb@analog>


Grace News (znet)
By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

The U.S. government this week launched its Arabic language satellite TV
news station for Muslim Iraq.

It is being produced in a studio -- Grace Digital Media -- controlled by
fundamentalist Christians who are rabidly pro-Israel.

That's Grace as in "by the Grace of God."

Grace Digital Media is controlled by a fundamentalist Christian
millionaire, Cheryl Reagan, who last year wrested control of Federal
News Service, a transcription news service, from its former owner,
Cortes Randell.

Randell says he met Reagan at a prayer meeting, brought her in as an
investor in Federal News Service, and then she forced him out of his own
company.

Grace Digital Media and Federal News Service are housed in a downtown
Washington, D.C. office building, along with Grace News Network.

When you call the number for Grace News Network, you get a person
answering "Grace Digital Media/Federal News Service."

According to its web site, Grace News Network is "dedicated to
transmitting the evidence of God's presence in the world today."

"Grace News Network will be reporting the current secular news, along
with aggressive proclamations that will 'change the news' to reflect the
Kingdom of God and its purposes," GNN proclaims.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the U.S. government agency
producing the television news broadcasts for Iraq, likes to say it is
the BBC of the USA.

BBG runs Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, and Radio Sawa -- Arabic
language radio for the Middle East.

"Our mission is clear," BBG's Joan Mower told us. "To broadcast accurate
and objective news about the United States and the world. We don't do
propaganda, leafleting -- we are like the BBC in that respect."

Well, then why hook up with Grace?

BBG's Joan Mower said that Grace Digital Media is a mainstream
production house used by all kinds of mainstream news organizations.

"Grace will have nothing to do with the editorial side of the news
broadcast," she said. "They are renting us equipment, space, studio. The
Grace personnel we use include technicians, production people but no
editorial people."

But Mower said she couldn't get us a copy of the contract between BBG
and Grace Digital media. Nor could she say how Grace Digital was chosen
as the production studio.

Grace News Network proclaims that it will be a "unique tool in the
Lord's ministry plan for the world."

"Grace News Network provides networking links and portals to various
ministries and news services that will be of benefit to every Christian
believer and seeker of truth," according to the company's mission
statement.

The CEO of Grace News Network is Thorne Auchter.

The same Thorne Auchter who began the dismantling of the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) under Presidents Reagan and
George Bush I.

Auchter did not return our calls seeking comment for this story.

While it's unclear whether Grace News Network actually produces any
news, it has produced a documentary movie titled "Israel: Divine
Destiny" which it showed at the National Press Club in September 2002.

The film is about "Israel's destiny and the United States' role in that
destiny," according to Grace News Network.

Grace News said that it could not make a copy of the film available to
us at this time, since it is now undergoing post-production editing. Nor
could it provide a transcript.

The mainstream media has documented strong and growing ties between
right-wing Republican Christian fundamentalists and right-wing Sharonist
Israeli expansionists.

This alliance is personified in Ralph Reed's Stand Up for Israel, a
group formed to "mobilize Christians and other people of faith to
support the State of Israel."

President Bush has very strong ties to fundamentalist Christians, most
notably Franklin Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham.

Last week, Franklin Graham delivered a Good Friday message at the
Pentagon, despite an uproar over his previous slander of Islam as "a
very evil and wicked religion."

Don Wagner, a professor of religion and director of the Center for
Middle Eastern Studies at North Park University, an evangelical
Christian college in Chicago, has written extensively about what he
calls Christian Zionism, whose leaders he identifies as, among others,
Ralph Reed, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer, and Franklin
Graham.

"Christian Zionists have historically pointed to Genesis 12:3 - I will
bless those who bless you. And the one who curses you, I will curse,"
Dr. Wagner said. "They have interpreted this to mean that individuals
and nations who support the state of Israel will be blessed by God. It
has come to mean political, economic, and moral support, often
uncritically rendered to the state of Israel."

Grace News Network seems to fit the mold.

Joan Mower says that BBG is currently producing and transmitting six
hours of news into Iraq including a dubbed version of the daily evening
news from ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and PBS, plus three hours of original news
programming from BBG.

BBG says it sees no problem in having Grace produce the evening news
broadcast for Iraq.

Given the brewing anti-American revolt through all sectors of Iraqi
society, maybe it should reconsider.

We called Grace Digital Media to speak with Cheryl Reagan.

Her secretary told us that she has been away in extended vacation for
more than a month -- in Israel.

When will she back? we asked.

No one knows, the secretary said.

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime
Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor, http://www.multinationalmonitor.org. They are
co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the
Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press;
http://www.corporatepredators.org).

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman



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From announcer at pukar.org.in  Sat Apr 26 19:43:08 2003
From: announcer at pukar.org.in (PUKAR @ Kitab Mahal)
Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2003 19:43:08 +0530
Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] CORRECTION: DORKBOT on WEDNESDAY 30 APRIL
Message-ID: 

Dear Friends:

NOTE: THE LAST E-MAIL SENT HAD THE WRONG DATE. THE CORRECT DATE FOR 
"DORKBOT" IS THIS COMING WEDNESDAY 30 APRIL 2003. PLEASE EXCUSE THE 
ERROR!

PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research) and Aragon 
Services invite you to "DORKBOT: People Doing Strange Things with 
Electricity", an irregular meeting of artists, technicians, students 
and other interested people to discuss the production of electronic 
art, new and alternative media.   See http://www.dorkbot.org and 
http://www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotmumbai.

In this meeting, two media presentations will be followed by a live/DJ set.

BEATRICE GIBSON is a new media artist and researcher based in Mumbai. 
She has received commissions from Rhizome.org and the Daniel Langlois 
Foundation, and has worked with the Media Lab at SARAI, Centre for 
the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi. Her work has featured 
in exhibitions and festivals in New York, London, Sao Paolo and 
Berlin. She founded the web-site http://www.nungu.com/ with Vishal 
Rawlley and Vishwas Kulkarni. She has also developed 
http://www.gaisecurity.com/ in collaboration with Sheifali Chad and 
Vivek Sasikumar, and http://www.humancapitalsoftwaresolutions.com/ 
with Sejal Chad and Adrian Ward.

SHAINA ANAND has been working independently in film, video and other 
media for the past four years. She has worked with Saeed Mirza on 
screenplays and a documentary series, with the Indian Peoples Media 
Collective (IPMC) on anti-nuclear campaigns and the Concert for 
Peace. She is currently working on the video and web documentary 
Tellavision Mumbai: *Infinite Justice - Ensuring Freedom* on the 
changing landscapes of Mumbai between September 11th and the Gujarat 
violence. For more information, see http://www.chitrakarkhana.net/.

MUKUL DEORA is an electronic musician, and with Qusai Kathawala is 
part of the sonic duo Transmit Audio Lab, which is pushing new and 
hybrid forms of electronic sound/music. Mukul and Qusai have been 
DJ-ing since 1996, and have held experimental audio-visual sound art 
events across Mumbai. Transmit Audio Lab had a Saturday night 
experimental radio show on 93.5 RED FM. For more information, see 
http://www.transmitaudio.com/.


Date:
WEDNESDAY 30 APRIL 2003
7.00 p.m. onwards


At:
PUKAR
c/o Aragon Services
4th Floor, Kitab Mahal
Dr Dadabhai Naoroji Road
Mumbai 400001

Kitab Mahal is next to New Excelsior Cinema, and is near VT Station. 
Entrance to Kitab Mahal is from the New Book Company on Dadabhai 
Naoroji Road. Lift is available to the third floor.


About PUKAR @ Kitab Mahal:

PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research) is a 
cross-sectoral research collective based in Mumbai. For more 
information, contact .

Aragon Services is a space for curated activities in the arts, 
culture and education. For more information, contact Niloufer Kapadia 
at .

For more information about DORKBOT, contact Beatrice Gibson at 
.

_____

PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research)
P.O. Box 5627, Dadar, Mumbai 400014, INDIA

E-Mail 
Phone +91 (022) 2207 7779, +91 98200 45529, +91 98204 04010
Web Site http://www.pukar.org.in
_______________________________________________
announcements mailing list
announcements at mail.sarai.net
http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements


From announcer at pukar.org.in  Fri Apr 25 22:02:55 2003
From: announcer at pukar.org.in (PUKAR @ Kitab Mahal)
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003 22:02:55 +0530
Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] DORKBOT: Doing Strange Things with Electricity
Message-ID: 

Dear Friends:

PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research) and Aragon 
Services invite you to "DORKBOT: People Doing Strange Things with 
Electricity", an irregular meeting of artists, technicians, students 
and other interested people to discuss the production of electronic 
art, new and alternative media.   See http://www.dorkbot.org and 
http://www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotmumbai.

In this meeting, two media presentations will be followed by a live/DJ set.

BEATRICE GIBSON is a new media artist and researcher based in Mumbai. 
She has received commissions from Rhizome.org and the Daniel Langlois 
Foundation, and has worked with the Media Lab at SARAI, Centre for 
the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi. Her work has featured 
in exhibitions and festivals in New York, London, Sao Paolo and 
Berlin. She founded the web-site http://www.nungu.com/ with Vishal 
Rawlley and Vishwas Kulkarni. She has also developed 
http://www.gaisecurity.com/ in collaboration with Sheifali Chad and 
Vivek Sasikumar, and http://www.humancapitalsoftwaresolutions.com/ 
with Sejal Chad and Adrian Ward.

SHAINA ANAND has been working independently in film, video and other 
media for the past four years. She has worked with Saeed Mirza on 
screenplays and a documentary series, with the Indian Peoples Media 
Collective (IPMC) on anti-nuclear campaigns and the Concert for 
Peace. She is currently working on the video and web documentary 
Tellavision Mumbai: *Infinite Justice - Ensuring Freedom* on the 
changing landscapes of Mumbai between September 11th and the Gujarat 
violence. For more information, see http://www.chitrakarkhana.net/.

MUKUL DEORA is an electronic musician, and with Qusai Kathawala is 
part of the sonic duo Transmit Audio Lab, which is pushing new and 
hybrid forms of electronic sound/music. Mukul and Qusai have been 
DJ-ing since 1996, and have held experimental audio-visual sound art 
events across Mumbai. Transmit Audio Lab had a Saturday night 
experimental radio show on 93.5 RED FM. For more information, see 
http://www.transmitaudio.com/.


Date:
SATURDAY 30 APRIL 2003
7.00 p.m. onwards


At:
PUKAR
c/o Aragon Services
4th Floor, Kitab Mahal
Dr Dadabhai Naoroji Road
Mumbai 400001

Kitab Mahal is next to New Excelsior Cinema, and is near VT Station. 
Entrance to Kitab Mahal is from the New Book Company on Dadabhai 
Naoroji Road. Lift is available to the third floor.


About PUKAR @ Kitab Mahal:

PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research) is a 
cross-sectoral research collective based in Mumbai. For more 
information, contact .

Aragon Services is a space for curated activities in the arts, 
culture and education. For more information, contact Niloufer Kapadia 
at .

For more information about DORKBOT, contact Beatrice Gibson at 
.

_____

PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research)
P.O. Box 5627, Dadar, Mumbai 400014, INDIA

E-Mail 
Phone +91 (022) 2207 7779, +91 98200 45529, +91 98204 04010
Web Site http://www.pukar.org.in
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From mklayman at leonardo.info  Wed Apr 30 23:49:17 2003
From: mklayman at leonardo.info (Melinda Klayman)
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 11:19:17 -0700
Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Ascott & Shanken event - May 10
Message-ID: 

Roy Ascott and Edward Shanken to speak at SFAI


Date: Saturday, May 10, 2003
Time: 5-7pm
Location: San Francisco Art Institute, Quad, 800 Chestnut Street, SF


Description: Leonardo and the San Francisco Art Institute invite you to the
Bay Area book launch and signing for Roy Ascott's new book, Telematic
Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness, edited by
Edward Shanken (University of California Press, 2003). Both Ascott and
Shanken will give a brief talk, and answer your questions about the book.
Books will be available for sale and signing.

Learn more about the book at http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8867.html

For general information, please call 510.642.4701


--
Leonardo began international publication of its print journal in 1968, and
has continued for 35 years to focus on writings by artists who work with
science- and technology-based art media. The International Society for the
Arts, Sciences and Technology was founded in 1982 to further the aims of
Leonardo by providing avenues of communication for artists working in
contemporary media. Leonardo/ISAST serves the international art, science,
and technology communities through its publications Leonardo and Leonardo
Music Journal and its compact disc series; the Leonardo Book Series; the
Leonardo On-Line web site and the web journal Leonardo Electronic Almanac,
both accessible via the Internet. All of our publications are produced in
collaboration with the MIT Press. We have a sister organization in France,
the Association Leonardo, which publishes the Observatoire Leonardo
(OLATS)Web Site. We have a number of other activities including an awards
program. While encouraging the innovative presentation of technology-based
arts, Leonardo/ISAST also functions as an international meeting place for
artists, educators, students, scientists and others interested in the use of
new media in contemporary artistic expression.


Since its founding in 1871 the San Francisco Art Institute has provided an
innovative and stimulating educational environment to thousands of
artists-both students and faculty. From Ansel Adams to Catherine Opie; Mark
Rothko to Barry McGee;  Rube Goldberg to Jason Rhoades, Art Institute
faculty and students have had enormous impact on American art and culture.
Other notable alumni include filmmakers Lance Accord, Kathryn Bigelow, Menno
Meyjes, and Scott Kramer; painters Nina Bovasso, Enrique Chagoya, Richard
Diebenkorn, Chris Johanson, and Kehinde Wiley; 2002 MacArthur Awardees Toba
Khedoori and Liza Lou; performance artists Karen Finley, Tony Labat, and
Paul McCarthy;  photographers Aziz&Cucher, Lewis Baltz, Annie Liebovitz, and
Sharon Lockhart;  sculptors Jason Middlebrook, Manuel Neri, and Richard
Shaw; and digital artist Paul Pfeiffer, winner of the 2000 Whitney
Biennial's Bucksbaum Award. The Art Institute offers BFA, MFA, and  MA
degree programs, Post-Baccalaureate Certificates, as well as Pre-College and
non-degree courses for youths and adults.

-- 
www.leonardo.info


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From marnoldm at du.edu  Tue Apr 29 21:16:22 2003
From: marnoldm at du.edu (Michael Arnold Mages)
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 09:46:22 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] May on -empyre-: Electronic Poetry with Jim Andrews and Hazel Smith
Message-ID: 


May 2003 on -empyre- soft skinned space:


-empyre- is pleased to welcome two new guests...

Jim Andrews (CA) and Hazel Smith (AU) : Electronic Poetry



Jim Andrews (May 1-15)

has published http://vispo.com since 1995. It's the centre of his work as
a writer, programmer, critic, visual and audio guy. His work typically
focuses  on language, drawing it into relation with other media, other
arts, and programming. He conceives reading and writing as activities
synthetic through media, arts, and programming. His interactive audio work
NIO opened on turbulence in 2001

http://turbulence.org/Works/Nio



Hazel Smith (May 16-31)

works in the areas of poetry, experimental writing, performance,
multi-media work and hypertext, online at http://www.australysis.com
She has published two poetry volumes, the most recent of which is "Keys
Round Her Tongue: short prose, poems and performance texts", Soma
Publications, 2000. A theorist in literature, performance and hypermedia,
she edits InfLect, a multimedia journal that launches this month at

http://www.ce.canberra.edu.au/inflect





----------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.subtle.net/empyre

-empyre- is a soft space dedicated to an open, ongoing conversation on
media arts and culture. Subscribe to -empyre- at:
http://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/empyre

--
Michael Arnold Mages
mailto:marnoldm at du.edu

Electronic Media Arts Design
School of Art and Art History
University of Denver, USA
--

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