From aiindex at mnet.fr Wed Jul 2 05:02:54 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 00:32:54 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] India: Gujarat Massacre Cases Sabotaged Message-ID: India: Gujarat Massacre Cases Sabotaged (New York, July 1, 2003) - The ringleaders of massacres committed in 2002 are still roaming free in Gujarat, Human Rights Watch charged in a new report released today. The 70-page report, Compounding Injustice: The Government's Failure to Redress Massacres in Gujarat, examines the record of state authorities in holding perpetrators accountable and providing humanitarian relief to victims of state-supported massacres of Muslims in February and March 2002. Human Rights Watch urged the federal government to take over cases of large-scale massacres where the state government has sabotaged investigations. On June 27, a Gujarat state court acquitted twenty-one people accused of burning alive twelve Muslims in a bakery in Vadodara. Thirty-five of the seventy-three witnesses reportedly retracted in court the statements they had given to the police identifying the attackers. "The government's record on the massacres is appalling," said Smita Narula, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch and author of the report. "Sixteen months after the beginning of the violence, not a single person has been convicted." More than one hundred Muslims have been charged under India's much- criticized Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) for their alleged involvement in the train massacre in Godhra. No Hindus have been charged under POTA in connection with the violence against Muslims, which the government continues to dismiss as spontaneous and unorganized. Although the Indian government initially boasted of thousands of arrests following the attacks, most of those arrested have since been acquitted, released on bail with no further action taken, or simply let go. Police regularly downgrade serious charges to lesser crimes - from murder or rape to rioting, for example - and alter victims' statements to delete the names of the accused. Even when cases reach trial, Muslim victims face biased prosecutors and judges. Hindu and Muslim lawyers representing Muslim victims, and doctors providing medical relief to them, have also faced harassment and threats. Hundreds of women and girls were brutally raped, mutilated, and burnt to death in Gujarat. The police have refused to pursue these cases. In numerous instances, and in an effort to cover up their own participation in the violence, the police have instituted false cases against men and women injured in police shootings. Living conditions for more than 100,000 people displaced by the violence continue to be grossly inadequate. For months they resided in makeshift relief camps with little support from the state. By the end of October 2002, the government had closed most of the camps, forcing some families back into neighborhoods where their attackers still live and where their security is continuously threatened. Most people interviewed by Human Rights Watch received negligible amounts to compensate for the destruction of their homes, ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand rupees, or less than one hundred dollars. Hindus in Gujarat have suffered as well, Human Rights Watch said. Thousands of small businesses owned by Hindus closed down during the violence. The relatives of the Hindus killed in Godhra have been denied redress and some face economic destitution. The Human Rights Watch report also documents and strongly condemns the September 2002 massacre of Hindus at Akshardham in Gandhinagar, Gujarat's capital. Hindu nationalist groups continue to arm civilians in Gujarat and many other Indian states. Instead of cracking down on these groups, the Gujarat state Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has included the distribution of arms as part of its election manifesto. In December 2002, the BJP won by a landslide in Gujarat state elections. Using posters and videotapes of the Godhra massacre, and rhetoric that depicted Muslims as terrorists intent on destroying the Hindu community, the party gained the most seats in areas affected by the communal violence. In states that go to the polls later this year, such as Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, potentially explosive campaigns are already in full swing. Members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, VHP) are distributing weapons similar to those used in Gujarat, as well as literature depicting Muslims as sexual deviants and terrorists. Members of both communities live in fear that a simple altercation could become the pretext for large-scale violence. The Human Rights Watch report also examines the recruitment of Dalits (so-called untouchables) and tribals (indigenous peoples) in the violence against Muslims in Gujarat, and the subsequent scapegoating of these communities in police arrests. Since the events of last year, Christians in the state have also come under renewed administrative, legislative, and physical attack. The Human Rights Watch report includes forty detailed recommendations to Indian authorities and the international community. Human Rights Watch called on the Indian government to act immediately to prevent further attacks, end impunity, and deliver meaningful assistance to those displaced and dispossessed by the violence. For Human Rights Watch's original report on the 2002 massacres of Muslims and Hindus in Gujarat, "We Have No Orders to Save You," please see http://hrw.org/reports/2002/india/. The new report is available at: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003//india0703/. To read more on human rights issues in India, please see: http://www.hrw.org/asia/india.php For more information, please contact: In New York, Smita Narula: (English, Hindi/Urdu, French): + 1 917 209 6902 (c), +1 212 216 1253 (w) In New York, Joe Saunders: +1 212 216 1216 In London, Urmi Shah: +44 207 713 2788 From aiindex at mnet.fr Wed Jul 2 05:03:34 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 00:33:34 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] India and Pakistan - The dance of the courtesans Message-ID: Dawn (Pakistan) June 27, 2003 The dance of the courtesans By Ayaz Amir For all their differences and minor jealousies it's heart-warming to see the two great self-respecting republics of India and Pakistan agreed at least on one particular: their furious desire to worm themselves into the good graces of the United States. Balancing the scales between a willing Pakistan--let no one accuse us of ever being unwilling--and a cantankerous India, that is when India rode the high horse of moral rearmament, was tricky enough. How much trickier when both parties are almost wrestling the US to the ground in order to plant their favour upon it. Spare a thought for the embarrassment of riches on America's hands. When the Twin Towers of New York, hit by the fury of Al Qaeda (or so the world has been told to believe), came tumbling to the ground, both India and Pakistan tried to beat each other to the draw to win American favour. Without bothering about terms and conditions, Pakistan quickly said yes when Colin Powell called (in these parts saying yes and not haggling over details being called old-world chivalry). India too was quick off the mark and even before anyone had raised the subject was offering all kinds of assistance, including the use of military bases, to the US. Geography dictated America's choice. As the US got ready to make Afghanistan safe for democracy--by first razing everything to the ground, the same process that we are seeing at work in Iraq--contiguity to Afghanistan is what it wanted, something which in the best measure only Pakistan could provide. India's chagrin at its advances being ignored (not rejected) should not be hard to imagine. Hell hath no fury--you get the picture. The US is facing a much trickier situation in Iraq, the occupation and policing of Iraq proving far more difficult than anyone around Secretary Rumsfeld's war table had envisioned. So difficult in fact that the number one problem before the US right now is not to undermine the ayatollahs, contain North Korea's nuclear programme or discover weapons of mass destruction. All these can wait. The most urgent problem is recruiting soldiers for hire, mercenaries who can do its dirty work in Iraq. Thus freeing the US military from a task beginning to tax its fortitude and resolve. Colin Powell has gone to the extent of asking Bangladesh for hired soldiery, the US capable of any stooping in a jam. While the BD reaction is not known, the two great republics of India and Pakistan have left few doubts about where they stand. It is not just that they are willing; they seem desperate to be taken on board. Pakistan's soldier-president being under no obligation to consult anyone--this being the beauty of one-man rule--has said in no uncertain terms that Pakistan was ready to send troops, for which read mercenaries, to Iraq. His only condition is the UN flag or the auspices of the OIC or the Gulf Cooperation Council. In other words, he is not objecting to the thing in principle. The willingness part is thus settled. He just wants the proper fig leaf. India's position is not much different. Through winks and nods the BJP government has signified its readiness to perform guard duty in Iraq. In this it has the support of big business which thinks that with troops in Iraq, India's chances of winning fat 'reconstruction' contracts would improve. But there is stiff domestic opposition to the idea of pandering to American wishes. Since the Indian government lacks the advantage of Pakistan's soldier-president who has to consult only his own wishes, a decision on this issue appears to be stalled. However, when it comes to bartering individual or national honour, the key thing is the initial willingness. Once that is secured, only the details remain to be sorted out. In other words, once you say yes, the rest is negotiable. This summer then there should be no spectacle more fascinating than our two republics looking silly on the question of Iraq. Here's the whole world saying the Americans have got themselves into a quagmire and a mess. And here India and Pakistan, fretting to beat each other at the game, and ignoring every aspect of honour or long-term interest, are itching to fling themselves into the same mud. Courting universal ignominy for a stash of dollars: more than being impressed, even our American friends are likely to be bemused. Far from smarting at Indian competition, Pakistan should feel happy it has someone to give it company. All the more so when who should be giving it company but high-minded India. Trafficking in the same goods, vying for the same favours, walking up and down the same promenade. Welcome to the club. Meanwhile of course, the Camp David spectacle is behind us. Ah, what to make of it. Our talent for selling ourselves cheap is by now so well established that it's no use crying. Three billion dollars over five years--which comes to about $600 million a year, divided equally between military and economic lollipops. This is such a damp squib, such an anti-climax to the pre-Camp David hype and hoopla, that even Pakistani officialdom has been reduced to incoherent muttering if not embarrassed silence. Central Command itself--that is, where the gods reside-- has revealed (in a report carried briefly on its website but then quickly withdrawn when it was threatening to turn into a scandal) that the economic loss to Pakistan for carrying America's bags in Afghanistan came to roughly $10 billion. Far from getting anywhere near that figure, Pakistan's soldier-president has been rewarded with another bag of peanuts. But he got the visit to Camp David, didn't he? Lunch and a bit of a chat at the US president's private mountain retreat. Wow, what an honour. And then to be extolled by the US president for "brave leadership". The story line never varies. Pakistani leaders, right from the Republic's infancy, have always fallen for morsels of comfort from the US, small certificates of approval which very briefly puff up their insecure egos. Two years ago, remember, when America was still bombing Afghanistan, General Musharraf was almost lionized when he visited New York. Soon thereafter when the Taliban melted away and the pounding of Afghanistan stopped, much of that enthusiasm evaporated. A brief moment in the sun soon gone. Not that Musharraf's usefulness is over. By God, what sentry duty, what yeoman service, the Pakistani military is performing along the Afghan border. The American military command has only to murmur something and a loud clicking of heels can be heard all across the mountains. But aren't we getting paid for our pains and our smart snapping to attention? We are but, in truth, not much. Our load is heavy, our recompense small. Actually, for no real fault of the Americans because right at the beginning Pakistan's military rulers surrendered whatever leverage they could have exercised. Leverage comes from a gift deferred or a gift left hanging in anticipation. It is the prospect of what you can give that defines your worth and sets a price on your expected cooperation. But when the gift - in this case, Pakistani assistance - is delivered without any questions asked, precious little leverage remains. But perhaps the whole point of such excursions as the visit to Camp David has more to do with form than substance--with symbolism rather than tangible benefits. Many Third World leaders feel themselves blessed when they get a pat from an American president, feeling their standing at home enhanced. It never works like this and when storm waters rise no amount of American backslapping is enough by itself to rescue a leader in trouble. But Pakistani leaders, prey to infantile notions, have always felt otherwise and if Musharraf is proving to be no exception, if he feels washed and revivified by his helicopter flight to Camp David, who's to blame him? From dfontaine at fondation-langlois.org Tue Jul 1 01:20:57 2003 From: dfontaine at fondation-langlois.org (Dominique Fontaine) Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 15:50:57 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Recent news from the Daniel Langlois Foundation - JULY 2003** Message-ID: Pour la version française : http://www.fondation-langlois.org/f/nouvelles/index.html [ Apologies for cross-posting / veuillez excuser les envois multiples ] **************************************************************************** *** **RECENT NEWS - JULY 2003** -Grant Program for Researchers in Residence -Digitization and online launch of RADICAL SOFTWARE -New projects supported by the Daniel Langlois Foundation -Please note that the Research Grant Program for Individual Artists or Scientists is currently being revised -Other projects supported by the Foundation -New acquisitions at the CR+D and this month's selection **************************************************************************** *** GRANT PROGRAM FOR RESEARCHERS IN RESIDENCE: AUGUST 2003 DEADLINE As part of its international competition open to historians, conservators, critics, independent scholars, artists and scientists, the Daniel Langlois Foundation is offering the chance for two researchers to work at the Centre for Research and Documentation (CR+D) in Montreal, specifically in its documentary and archival collections. Research projects must be directly related to one of the Foundation's archival collections. A description of the collections is available at: http://www.fondation-langlois.org/e/CRD/index.html Guidelines for the Grant Program for Researchers in Residence: http://www.fondation-langlois.org/e/programmes/bourses.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RADICAL SOFTWARE In order to shed light on the history of artistic practices using electronic and digital technologies, the Foundation, in partnership with project leader Mr. Davidson Gigliotti, has digitized and processed the entire contents of the legendary independent magazine RADICAL SOFTWARE. Notably, the Foundation indexed the magazine and created search tools to facilitate access to the publication's extraordinarily rich material. RADICAL SOFTWARE, published by the Raindance Corporation, produced eleven issues between 1970 and 1974. During that short span, the magazine was witness to the birth of the video movement and to the emergence of intellectual currents underpinning the intersection of video, cybernetics, computing, social activism, counterculture and art. Our online version of RADICAL SOFTWARE includes a historical overview by Davidson Gigliotti and an introduction by David A. Ross. The RADICAL SOFTWARE Web site: http://www.radicalsoftware.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NEW PROJECTS SUPPORTED BY THE DANIEL LANGLOIS FOUNDATION The Foundation is pleased to announce the 16 recipients of grants for 2003 under the Research Grant Program for Individual Artists or Scientists. The list of projects supported in 2003 can be found at: http://www.fondation-langlois.org/e/nouvelles/ind_2003.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Please note that the RESEARCH GRANT PROGRAM FOR INDIVIDUAL ARTISTS OR SCIENTISTS is currently being revised. Although the deadline for submitting proposals remains January 31, 2004, we suggest that you return to our site after the beginning of December 2003 to consult the new program guidelines. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- OTHER PROJECTS SUPPORTED BY THE FOUNDATION Among the projects supported in previous years that are now producing results, the Foundation is pleased to highlight the following three: - GHANA'S HIGHLIFE MUSIC: A DIGITAL REPERTOIRE OF RECORDINGS AND POP ART Ghana's Gramophone Records Museum and Research Centre opened in 1994. Its mission is to provide ready access to the audio and visual documents in its collection. http://www.fondation-langlois.org/e/projets/1272-3-2002/index.html - LES USAGES DES NOUVELLES TECHNOLOGIES DE L'INFORMATION ET DE LA COMMUNICATION (NTIC) DANS LE DOMAINE DES ETUDES INTERMEDIATIQUES After two years of collaborative work, *Les usages des nouvelles technologies de l'information et de la communication (NTIC) dans le domaine des études intermédiatiques* [The uses of new information and communication technologies in intermedia studies] is now online. This research project was led by the Collectif étudiant du Centre de recherche sur l'intermédialité (CECRI) at the University of Montreal. http://www.fondation-langlois.org/e/projets/759-2-2001/index.html - KER THIOSSANE, DAKAR In 2001, the Daniel Langlois Foundation awarded a grant in the The Program for Organizations from Emerging Regions to the Ker Thiossane project. Located close to downtown Dakar in a neighbourhood called Sicap Liberté II, this new space is intended to be a place of initiation and discovery of new media, with the aim of incorporating them into other forms of artistic creation (music, dance, theatre, visual arts). http://www.fondation-langlois.org/e/projets/849-3-2001/index.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NEW CR+D ACQUISITIONS AND SELECTION OF THE MONTH As we do every month, we are publishing a bibliography of the latest acquisitions available at the Foundation's Centre for Research and Documentation. To view the list: http://www.fondation-langlois.org/e/CRD/acquisitions/index.html Our selection of the month is TELEMATIC EMBRACE: VISIONARY THEORIES OF ART, TECHNOLOGY, AND CONSCIOUSNESS by Roy Ascott. More information can be found here: http://www.fondation-langlois.org/e/CRD/acquisitions/selection.html **************************************************************************** *** About the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology http://www.fondation-langlois.org/ The Daniel Langlois Foundation's purpose is to further artistic and scientific knowledge by fostering the meeting of art and science in the field of technologies. The Foundation seeks to nurture a critical awareness of technology's implications for human beings and their natural and cultural environments, and to promote the exploration of aesthetics suited to evolving human environments. The Centre for Research and Documentation (CR+D) seeks to document history, artworks and practices associated with electronic and digital media arts and to make this information available to researchers in an innovative manner through data communications. **************************************************************************** *** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030630/5db699ab/attachment.html From bswofford at snet.net Wed Jul 2 17:38:20 2003 From: bswofford at snet.net (William Swofford) Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 08:08:20 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] SATURNALIA ONLINE: July 5th & 6th, 2003 Message-ID: SATURNALIA JUBILEE III MUSIC FESTIVAL JULY 5th and 6th 2003 Featuring Henry Grimes, Pauline Oliveros, Daniel Carter, Daniel Abd-al Hayy Moore, Samir Chatterjee and many others ATTN those in cyberspace!!! LIVE INTERNET RADIO BROADCAST (of entire festival, 1pm-9pm EST each day) availible at www.BirdlandNorthMadison.com if you can't join us in CT, please log on to our simulcast both 56k and high baud audio in Windows Media Format streaming format including stage webcam! DON'T MISS THIS ONE~!~~~!~~~!!!~~ ---------------------------------------- ***celebrating the spirit of freedom*** with 2 days of music performance FREE ADMISSION experimental electronic improvisation futurejazz funk space rock sacred sound --------------------------------------------------- SATURNALIA JUBILEE III MUSIC FESTIVAL JULY 5th and 6th 2003 birdland north madison connecticut 546 summer hill rd madison ct 06443 contact WILL SWOFFORD bswofford at snet.net (our history & archive) --> www.ghaymaneinblitz.org --------------------------------------------------- SATURDAY JULY 5 1pm ORCHESTRA DE FOU conquerers of time/space Al Margolis Geoff Meyer Chris Burchell 2 pm INCIDENTAL BLISS http://www.incidentalbliss.com/ 3pm ANDREW JONES & cats 4pm OROBORUS afrodub rockers Dave Freeburg Jason Villani Clark Kasheta 5pm EXIT TERRA subambient space rock http://www.exploresound.com/ 6pm Kesh jazz punk DANIEL CARTER JETON ADEMAJ KEVIN SHEA WILL SWOFFORD 7pm CUL DE SAC psyche-rock legends! http://www.aural-innovations.com/issues/issue20/culdesac 8-10 PM MUTANT BREEDS & COLLABORATIONS OPEN MIC --------------------------------------------------- SUNDAY JULY 6 12pm sacred sound program RICHARD RUDIS GONG BATH http://www.buddhistartifacts.com/sacred_sound_workshops.cfm 1pm poet Abd-al Hayy Moore 2 pm electro set DOUG VAN NORT vs. MBUOTYE mmathcore electronoise AVERY BROOKS CARLOS ESTEVAN 3PM GHAYMAN EINBLITZ JEB DENNIS pianist 4PM POET Steve Dalachinsky 5 PM KALI Z FASTEAU SABIR MATEEN *HENRY GRIMES* WARREN SMITH free jazz www.henrygrimes.com 6:30 PM playwright & composer IONE + *PAULINE OLIVEROS* http://www.deeplistening.org/pauline/ 8PM an evening of indian classical music w/ MITALI BANERJEE (voice) Pt. SAMIR CHATTERJEE (tabla) http://www.tabla.org/ ----------------------------------------------------- ALL ARE WELCOME FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT WILL SWOFFORD BIRDLAND NORTH MADISON 203-421-9399 www.birdlandnorthmadison.com BSWOFFORD at SNET.NET From aiindex at mnet.fr Thu Jul 3 03:48:32 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 23:18:32 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Gujarat: On line Letter to NHRC re Best Bakery case Message-ID: Please sign on and send your own letters/e-mails to the chair of the National Human Rights Commission. In the last 10 hours of so it seems the NHRC has swung into action but we should keep the pressure on. Trial of the murderers of Gujarat. Letter to NHRC re. the Best Bakey Case http://www.PetitionOnline.com/NHRCbbc/petition.html Harsh ------ [ Full text of the letter below:] To: The National Human Rights Commission of India [Please join us in sharing concern about a free investigation into the Gujarat pogrom followed by a fair trial of the accused. Append your name to the below letter. On the 21th of July 2003 we will send this the National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRC). We would encourage all to also write and send similar letters which can be E-mailed / Faxed and snail mailed to the chair of the NHRC. [E-mail: chairnhrc at nic.in / Fax: (91) + 11-23340016.] We also invite you to use the telephone [ 91-11-23340891] and speak to the officials of NHRC to press them to move on the Gujarat Bakery Case.] ------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 July 2003 The Chairperson National Human Rights Commission Sardar Patel Bhavan Sansad Marg New Delhi - 110001 Dear Sir or Madam, Your Commission recorded the evidence of several persons in connection with the violence in Gujarat in 2002. One of these was Sheikh Zahira Habibullah of Vadodara, later to become the chief witness in the trial of the Best Bakery case. This witness turned hostile and denied the testimony which she had given to your Commission and to several others and which was widely reported. Like her, many other witnesses in the case turned hostile. In the judgment pronounced in the Best Bakery case last week, all the accused were held to be not guilty for want of evidence. Many reports in the media have clearly said that the prosecution and investigation in this case did not do their duty on account of sectarian considerations. It is also widely believed that pressure in some form was the reason for the surprising number of prosecution witnesses' turning hostile. Possibly anticipating just such an eventuality, your Commission had recommended that several cases, including the Best Bakery case, be handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation. The Government of Gujarat did not act on this recommendation. We urge you to take such action as you see fit to right the wrong which apparently has been done. The matter is clearly one of human rights and therefore within your jurisdiction: because the violence in Gujarat in 2002 was directed against the entire Muslim community and because that community continues to be the victim of organised and sustained discrimination and may legitimately fear that its human rights will be infringed in and through sham trials in the many cases which remain to be tried. Yours truly, Mukul Dube (New Delhi) and Harsh Kapoor (France) Sincerely, From sunil at mahiti.org Thu Jul 3 11:43:51 2003 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: 03 Jul 2003 11:43:51 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Weapons of mass destruction Message-ID: <1057212831.23774.23.camel@sunil> Go to google.com Type "weapons of mass destruction" and hit the "I am feeling lucky" button. Now, READ THE ERROR MESSAGES VERY CAREFULLY. ;-) -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org 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 "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw Shaw From zarinehabeeb at yahoo.com Fri Jul 4 12:04:04 2003 From: zarinehabeeb at yahoo.com (zarine habeeb) Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2003 23:34:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] delhi-just a cluster of villages? Message-ID: <20030704063404.21725.qmail@web12906.mail.yahoo.com> Hi everyone, I am new to this list and thought it was only proper that I introduce myself. I am Zarine Habeeb, who is presently in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United states but will be moving to Budapest, Hungary soon. I lived in Delhi for some time and was very intrigued by how neatly divided the city was. Is there a comparison between the posh South extension and the Kidwai Nagar? My little "theory" was that Delhi is not a city but a cluster of several villages. Of course, each village needed the other. So, you would go to chandni chowk from south delhi for jewellery and those yummy parathas but otherwise, chandini chowk is dubbed as dirty and polluted and riksha wallah "infested".I would love to hear what others have to say about this. peace, zarine --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030703/9d10eee0/attachment.html From sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com Wed Jul 2 20:43:40 2003 From: sagnik_chakravartty at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?q?Sagnik=20Chakravartty?=) Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 16:13:40 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Appointment of Lecturers in Assam University, Silchar (A Central University)-Employment Notification Message-ID: <20030702151340.15022.qmail@web20303.mail.yahoo.com> Employment Notification No.102/1/2003-Pers/3 date: 18.6.2003 In supersession of the Employment Notifications No.102/1/2000 dt. 21.2.2001 and No.102/1/2000-Pers dt. 23.3.2002, Assam University, Silchar invites applications in the prescribed form for filling up various faculty, administrative and technical positions as mentioned below:- Faculty Positions 1. (a) Professor: 10 posts : One each in Economics, Arabic, Sanskrit, Manipuri, Mathematics, Physics, Mass Communication, Hindi, Social Work & Computer Science. 1. (b) Professor(Leave vacancy): 3 posts : One each in Life Science, Business Administration & Education. 2. (a) Reader : 4 posts : One each in Fine Arts, Social Work, Life Science and Philosophy. 2. (b) Reader(Leave vacancy): 7 posts: One each in Fine Arts, Mass Communication, Education, Economics, English, Business Administration and Philosophy. 3. (a) Lecturer : 35 posts : Four posts in English(one reserved for ST); three each in Physics, Chemistry, Arabic, Mathematics & Commerce; two each in Computer Science, History, Economics, Bengali, Political Science, Business Administration; and one each in Mass Communication, Sociology, Social Work and Manipuri. 3. (b) Lecturer(Leave vacancy): 6 posts : One each in Social Work, Education, Computer Science, English, Bengali and Political Science. N.B.: 1) Reservation for physically handicapped will be as per rules. 2) Some of leave vacancy posts are likely to continue. Administrative and other technical posts 4. (i) Registrar (ii) Finance Officer At Professor’s Grade (iii) Controller of Examinations (iv) Librarian (v) Director, Netaji Subhas Research Centre (vi) Director, Centre for Women Studies At Professor/Reader’s Grade (vii) Head, Computer Centre (viii) Medical Officer (ix) Junior Engineer Scale of pay and gross emolument at the minimum of the scale are as under: S.No. Post Scale of pay Gross monthly emolument at the minimum 1. Professor/Registrar/Finance Officer/Controller of Examinations/Librarian/Director/Head Rs.16,400-450-22,400/- Rs.27,500/- 2. Reader/Director/Head Rs.12,000-420-18,300/- Rs.20,350/- 3. Lecturer/Medical Officer Rs.8,000-275-13,500/- Rs.13,810/- 4. Junior Engineer Rs.4,500-125-7,000/- Rs.7,750/- 5. (a) Date of commencement for issue of application form : 27.6.2003 (b) Last date for issue of application form : 9.8.2003 (c) Last date for receipt of application form : 6.9.2003 (d) Cost of application form with details of eligibility criteria: Rs.75.00 (e) Application fee (non-refundable): Rs.200.00 (Rs.100.00 for SC/ST/ Physically handicapped) Interested applicant(s) can obtain the prescribed form of application with details of eligibility criteria on payment of the prescribed fee by draft drawn in favour of Finance Officer, Assam University payable at UCO Bank, Assam University Extension Counter from the office of the Registrar, Assam University . Outstation applicant(s) intending to receive the application form with eligibility criteria are to send self addressed stamped envelope of size 28x12 cm along with draft of Rs.75.00. Application form can also be downloaded from the University website – www.assamuniversity.nic.in. Candidates applying in downloaded application form shall have to pay Rs.275/- as application fee. The applications in prescribed form complete in all respect supported by attested copies of certificates/marksheets, experience certificates and details of research and publications in support of eligibility are to be sent to the Registrar, Assam University, Silchar-788 011, Assam. Candidates already in service are to submit their applications through proper channel. Advance copy may, however, be sent directly. Applications received after stipulated date or incomplete in any respect will be rejected and no correspondences will be made or entertained for such cases. The University reserves the right to negotiate with suitable candidates who may not have formally applied. The University also reserves the right to fill up or not to fill up any post or to call only shortlisted candidates for interview. Sd/- (Prof N.S.Rao) Registrar-in-charge ________________________________________________________________________ Send free SMS using the Yahoo! Messenger. Go to http://in.mobile.yahoo.com/new/pc/ _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Sun Jul 6 22:23:05 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 6 Jul 2003 16:53:05 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Victims of December 13 Message-ID: <20030706165305.8960.qmail@webmail8.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030706/894250ca/attachment.pl From faizan at sarai.net Tue Jul 8 17:22:25 2003 From: faizan at sarai.net (Faizan Ahmed) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2003 17:22:25 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: [sada_amu] Points to ponder Message-ID: <200307081722.25636.faizan@sarai.net> ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: [sada_amu] Points to ponder Date: 2 Jul 2003 08:01:41 -0000 From: "Nadim Asrar" To: sada_amu at yahoogroups.com DAWN July 1, 2003 Indira's Emergency vs Advani's democracy By Jawed Naqvi Mrs Indira Gandhi locked up India's so-called strongman, Mr Lal Krishan Advani, on June 26, 1975, the day she declared her controversial Emergency rule. He was picked up in Bangalore and later lodged in the Rohtak Jail in Haryana, a veritable hellhole, for much of his imprisonment. Mr Advani was one of several opposition leaders who spent all or most of the 19 months of Mrs Gandhi's authoritarian rule in different prisons across the country. Every year since then, Mr Advani has found a ruse to remind us of his undemocratic ordeal. This year too, on June 26, he visited the Rohtak Jail with the usual media ensemble in attendance. He also got state TV to narrate the sequence of events that led to the suspension of civil liberties by Mrs Gandhi. The programme lasted an entire day. It's election time and these things count. After he was freed from prison, Mr Advani became information and broadcasting minister in the Janata Party government that removed Mrs Gandhi from power. She had miscalculated the national mood and called elections in mid-1977. She lost. It was a big day for Indian democracy. It had narrowly survived what could have been a close call. But what did Mr Advani do next? He promptly did as a democrat what Mrs Gandhi hesitated to do as a dictator. Within days of its inauguration, his government banned four school textbooks that were written by world acclaimed professors, including Messrs Bipan Chandra, R.S. Sharma and Romila Thapar. Hindutva is an ideology that equates the demolition of desolate mosques with national awakening. But in some ways Mr Advani came to practise his ideology years before his fanatical followers tore down the Babri Mosque in Dec 1992. Banning the books was one such. Before he became a politician Mr Advani was a film critic. He seemed to know his subject when as information minister he chose to show on Doordarshan one of the most brazenly communal films made in Hindi cinema, Swayam Siddha. It is a 1950s film about a Hindu woman's zeal to drive out Christian missionaries from her village to purify her motherland. As bonus, in the process of her exorcism, her deaf and mute husband is cured. The issue became one of several that drove a wedge between Mr Advani's loyalty to his ideology and his commitment to democracy via the Janata Party experiment. He chose the former. The government collapsed. How do Mr Advani's democratic precepts that he always takes care to wear on his sleeves compare with Mrs Gandhi's straight from the heart, unpretentious fling with dictatorship? Mrs Gandhi overrode parliament and jailed her foes. She then used her contrived majority in parliament to shape the constitution to suit her purposes such as they were. It is rumoured that she also influenced the Supreme Court to vacate her indictment by the Allahabad High Court, which had set aside her election from Rae Bareily, an issue that prompted the Emergency. Mrs Gandhi had used a cocktail of draconian laws to hunt her quarries. They included MISA (Maintenance of Internal Security Act), COFEPOSA, a law ostensibly to track and check smuggling, and the Defence of India Rules. Of these MISA was the most notorious. Mr Advani in his turn had no need for the multiplicity of laws, so he reduced them to just one, POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act). Mrs Gandhi had manipulated the provisions of parliamentary democracy to push her way past the opposition. Mr Advani used parliamentary loopholes to reach there. He got Prime Minister Vajpayee to summon a joint session of parliament after the Congress blocked the passage of POTA in the Rajya Sabha. Mr Advani got the bill passed. Nowadays, Mr Advani's allies are using POTA freely to fix their rivals. The chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are prime examples of this abuse, not to speak of Gujarat. If Mrs Gandhi used her political power to tame the Supreme Court, Mr Advani used the street power of his hordes to reduce the apex court to a helpless bystander. That is how the mosque was demolished in Ayodhya. Of course there is not a trick in the legal armoury that he has not apparently used to delay and deny justice in the matter. He is one of the accused in the demolition trial. Mrs Gandhi's minions used the Emergency to harass their rivals. Mr Advani's cohorts are so brazen they do not need the cover of an emergency. Nor do they stop at mere harassment. They rape, burn, kill in the name of saving democracy as they did in Gujarat. They then seek shelter under the law of the land. That is how a day after Mr Advani took his ritual walk down memory lane inside a jail, a local court in Baroda allowed 21 men accused of mass murder inside a bakery during the February-March pogroms in Gujarat last year to walk free. The reason? The key witness, a Muslim woman, had turned hostile because she was reportedly too frightened to stand by her charge. This was the first case among several that are dealing with the carnage. They are all hanging fire. The outcome is cynically known. When Mr Advani was imprisoned, he had been a leading participant in a nationwide campaign to topple Mrs Gandhi. She accused the press also of collusion against her and therefore jailed several journalists and imposed strict censorship. But Mr Advani says he believes in democracy. So he allows two hapless journalists, Iftikhar Gilani and Kumar Badal, to rot in prison over allegations that they had abused their privilege as free citizens under his dispensation to harm the interests of the state. Iftikhar was picked up in June last year on fake charges of espionage and Kumar was next in July for allegedly poaching animals. They were freed earlier this year. Mr Advani's experiment with his peculiar form of democracy is not over yet. His government has caused the closure of the Tehelka website, the only news medium that dared to expose the government's corrupt ways with hard evidence. Offices of the Outlook magazine were raided ostensibly to discipline the editor. And so the experiment trundles on. And it has lasted more than Mrs Gandhi's 19 months. _____ #7. The Hindu (India) July 01, 2003 Fixing witnesses? THE ACQUITTAL OF all the 21 accused in the Best Bakery fire, which was part of the post-Godhra Gujarat carnage, is the culmination of a sloppy prosecution marred by interference from members of the ruling establishment. After crucial witnesses turned hostile during the trial in the fast-track court in Vadodara, the Best Bakery case was perhaps fated to fail. But the intervention of a BJP member of the Assembly, Madhu Shrivastava, who escorted the main complainant, Zahira Sheikh, to the court on the day she went back on her charges, raises apprehensions about intimidation of witnesses having played a decisive role in the outcome of the trial. Mr. Shrivastava, who claimed he was only "protecting" Zahira Sheikh and her family from anti-social elements, was present in the court through the trial. Indeed, he showed a more than ordinary interest in clearing the accused of the charges originally made by those in his "protection". The trial took on a farcical character with some of the witnesses describing as "saviours" the very same persons whom they had initially identified as the perpetrators of the crime. The facts and circumstances of the fire, which claimed at least 12 human lives, were well documented with the survivors recounting their ordeal before the National Human Rights Commission, the Government-appointed Commission of Inquiry, the Concerned Citizens Tribunal and the national media. However, everything changed the moment Mr. Shrivastava came on the scene and took the witnesses in his "protective" custody. The acquittal aside, what is disconcerting is that the sessions judge, H.U. Mahida, made no comment about the conduct of the witnesses. The prosecution was faulted, not for its inability to fix the charges on the accused, but for "fabricating" the accounts of the witnesses. Investigation of any riot case is difficult, as the police have to rely almost entirely on the accounts of the witnesses. In the Bakery case, Zahira Sheikh had voluntarily deposed against the accused in several public fora before retracting her deposition in court. That should have been sufficient cause for suspecting manipulation of the judicial process. To add to the intrigue, Zahira Sheikh was not immediately traceable after the verdict. In an already terrorised atmosphere, as in post-Godhra Gujarat, the witnesses are no doubt susceptible to intimidation and influence. Unfortunately, this aspect does not appear to have received the required attention during the trial stage. If such a high-profile case can collapse so easily, there is reason to believe that other cases registered in connection with the Gujarat riots might go the same way. If anything, the interference of the ruling establishment would be more in cases on the Naroda-Patiya and Gulmarg Society incidents, in which ruling party MLAs and VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders have been listed as accused. As the former Union Minister and National Conference leader, Omar Abdullah, has pointed out, the acquittal contrasts sharply with the detention, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, of the accused in the Godhra train-burning case. In the end, the verdict in the Bakery case has only contributed to scepticism about a free investigation of the riots followed by a fair trial of the accused. Thus, it is imperative for the Government legal department to take steps to appeal against the acquittal. Otherwise, allegations of State complicity in the post-Godhra pogroms will stand confirmed, and the Bakery case will be a dangerous precedent for witnesses and investigators. ___________________________________________________ Click below to experience Sooraj R Barjatya's latest offering 'Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon' starring Hrithik, Abhishek & Kareena http://www.mpkdh.com - ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Get A Free Psychic Reading! Your Online Answer To Life's Important Questions. http://us.click.yahoo.com/Lj3uPC/Me7FAA/ySSFAA/BwowlB/TM - ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: sada_amu-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ - ------------------------------------------------------- From narender224 at rediffmail.com Tue Jul 8 20:42:18 2003 From: narender224 at rediffmail.com (narender kumar thakur) Date: 8 Jul 2003 15:12:18 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: Sarai Independent Fellowship Presentations Message-ID: <20030708151218.21923.qmail@webmail16.rediffmail.com> Dear Ranita, I am sending a copy of research proposal for synopsis of PhD, please mail it to reader-list.I need suggestions on it through reader-list. I will be obliging your help. With regards, Narender Thakur #224 Sutlej Hostel JNU · Globalisation of Indian Professional Manpower: Interlinkages between Education, Productivity and Migration · Globalisation of India’s Human Capital: Interlinkages between Education, Productivity and Migration Introduction Productivity is the key to maintain higher level of competitiveness and efficiency in an economy. In the present economic environment, the competitiveness and efficiency are potential indicators not only of economic development but also of human development as well, in the long run. According to the Global Competitiveness Report (1999), in terms of competitiveness index, India stands at 52nd position out of total 56 countries surveyed. Being the second largest country in terms of population, India is endowed with a vast labour force possessing a wide variety of educational qualifications and skills. However, in terms of average labour productivity, India is among the lowest, when compared with other developing economies. Further, in a forty-seven country ranking of brain drain and labour productivity, India stands on 42nd position and the GDP per employee per hour (average productivity of labour) is US$ 0.37 and in terms of purchasing power parity it comes to $2.15. These values are the lowest of total 47 surveyed countries (World Competitiveness Yearbook, 2000). These figures reveal that the labour productivity is significantly low in India. Not only in terms of absolute level of labour productivity but the growth rate of labour productivity is also low. As a result, the impact of low labour productivity (absolute value and its rate of growth) in India is getting worse over time. For instance, during the period 1986-1995,the growth of labour productivity per annum in Thailand was 9 percent, in China 7 percent, in Singapore 6.4 percent, in South Korea 6.4 percent, in Indonesia 6.3 percent, in Malaysia 5.8 percent .In India it was only 3.4 percent (Khader, 2002), which is quite low in comparison to the growth rates of these other developing countries in the region. On the contrary, few noted economists and government sources have estimated that the labour productivity has increased in the 1990s.Sundaram estimates the productivity on the basis of NSS 55th Round data for the year 1999-2000. These estimates reveal that all sectors of Indian economy have experienced 6 percent annual increase in labour productivity (GOI, 2002). These inter-source differences between the estimates on labour productivity may lead one to an indepth analysis of the parameters. It may be because of the methodological difference, for in India labour productivity is estimated as a simple ratio of ‘value added in output’ to ‘total labour force’ whereas the World Competitiveness Yearbook uses the ratio of ‘value added in GDP’ to ‘employee work hours’ (GDP per employee per hour), i.e., in the estimation of labour productivity, the World Competitiveness Yearbook included ‘time factor’ (working-hours) also. This argument related to the inclusion of ‘time factor’ or working hours of employee/labour force must be cross-checked by the declining figures of the work-participation rates in India as whole. Work-participation rate (WPR), which was quite low in the early 1990s declined further. For example, in 1993-94 at All-India (rural and urban) level it was 444 per thousand for the rural sector and 347 per thousand for the urban sector and came down to 417 and 337 respectively in 1999-2000 (NSSO, 2000). However, the formula used in the estimation of WPR is not capturing the ‘real’ participation rate of workforce; it would be better if estimation is based on the parameter of ‘time’ factor. In other words, the real hours are devoted to the work by a worker can provide best estimate of work participation rate. However the problem of availability of data on work participation hourly basis is prevailed in India. World Competitiveness Yearbook (2000) applied this method in estimation of the GDP per employee per hour for a sample of 47 countries including India. The low productivity in India as well as in other developing economies is a feature of their underdevelopment. The Indian economy is trapped by vicious circle of poverty even in recent years, due to various push and pull factors. After 55 years of independence from the clutches of colonialism, the poverty ratio in India remains at 26.10 percent in 1999-2000(NSS 55th Round). However, the estimates of poverty for 1999-2000 are not strictly comparable with earlier estimates of poverty because of the methodological differences (GOIL, 2002) . When compared in terms of human development index (HDI), India’s rank is 115th in the total 162 countries (UNDP, 2001). Further, Human Development Report (1997) introduced the concept of Human poverty Index , in which India stands at very high rank, indicating the prevalence of vicious circle of poverty in the economy. The value of Human Poverty Index (HPI) of India is 34.5 in 1999 whereas value of HPI of Pakistan is 39.2 the rank of HDI is 127 in the same year. In the comparison of other developed economies, the Norway’s rank of HDI is 1 and its HPI is 7.5 and the values of same indexes of Canada are rank 3 and 12.1 respectively. The above discussion reveals that Indian economy is facing the problem of underdevelopment, more than one-quarter of its population is living under the poverty line, absolute labour productivity as well as its rate of growth is quite low so as the work-participation rate. Labour Productivity depends inter alia upon a number of factors, availability of other inputs, which are combined with labour in the production process, health, education and skill of workers, motivation for work and institutional set up. The two inputs, viz., capital and managerial skill when combined with labour in the required quantity raise its productivity substantially. The question is how to use the labour with other factors of production so that each and every factor of production can be used in a complement and efficient way to raise the average productivity of labour per hour. In other words, perfect complementary between factors of production results in the efficiency and high labour productivity in the pace of economic development. If India has to raise the productivity of labour, it will need to augment the level of education and health, work participation rates. Hence, there are clear linkages between the poverty of workers and work-participation rate, their health and skill, which determine the labour productivity. Therefore, the vicious circle of poverty is an important issue to be addressed for raising the productivity of labour, which in turn will determine the human as well as economic development. Education and Productivity Education enhances human capital formation in the economy, which determines the human development as well, particularly through qualitative improvement and efficiency of labour. In other words, education/training plays a very crucial role in labour productivity, which positively affects the human capital formation. The labour productivity as part of the ‘total factor productivity’ , also increase the value of total factor productivity. The productivity of labour is really important to be addressed in developing economies, which despite having huge surplus of labour are lingering with high poverty-ratio, low work-participation-rate, low literacy and inadequate services of health, water, electricity, sanitation etc. If quality and efficiency of surplus labour could be improved in developing economies, it would be proved a vital determinant of the human and/or social development. All the great classical economists, including Adam smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo and, Karl Marx identified the role of labour in the production process in an economy. For instance, Adam Smith introduced the concept of increasing returns in the process of production in late 19th Century and the notion of increasing returns based on the division of labor. He explained that the division and specialisation of labor are the very basis of a social economy; otherwise everyone might as well be their own Robin Crusoe producing everything they want for themselves (Thirwall, 1997). Solow (1957) identified the share of human capital (technological progress) as an exogenous factor in the production function, which was left unexplained in earlier economic growth models. This unexplained share in the economic growth was identified as the contribution of human capital (investment in education/expenditure on education), which is termed as the residual factor of production function. Since 1950,it was a shift in paradigm of economic growth, i.e., shift of physical capital approach towards human capital approach. Schultz (1961) and Denison (1964) analysed the investment in education / human capital as an important factor of production function which results higher rate of economic growth in the economy. The capabilities acquired by human beings are also identified as a major endowment for economic development as well as human development (Drez, and Sen, 1999). The Solow growth model shows that such persistent growth must come from technological progress. “But where does technological progress come from? In the Solow model, it is just assumed” (Mankiw, 2000). The ‘endogenous growth theory’ or ‘new growth theory’ rejected the Solow model’s assumption of exogenous technological change. Although the field of endogenous growth theory is large and sometimes complex, but a technological factor in production factor is clearly explained in this endogenous growth theory. Since the mid 1980s there has been an outpouring of literature and research on the applied economics of growth attempting to understand and explain the differences in the rates of growth of output and growth of per capita income across the world. In the ‘new’ models of endogenous growth pioneered by Robert Lucas (1988), Paul Romer (1986,1990), and Jones (1998) assumed that the positive externalities associated with human capital formation, for example education /training and research development prevent the marginal product of capital from falling and the capital-output ratio from rising, and increase in the labour productivity through ‘efficiency’ factor in production function which is in turn lead to high level of economic development. It is accepted that the human capital enhances economic development and the prevailing GDP-differentials between North and South are due to differences between the endowments of skill and education. Therefore the developed countries are investing more in education/training and research and development as compare to developing countries. Notwithstanding, developing countries are making substantial expenditure on education and other forms of human capital formation but they are still legging behind in comparison to their developed counterparts. For instance, India spends 3.8% of its GNP on education in 2000(MHRD, 2001) which is low as compare to other developed economies and few developing economies as well. Although the emigration of ‘finished and semi-finished human capital’ (professionals and students) overseas has minimised their expected benefits from educational expenditure to the economy which guide to low human capital formation .At the same time, a large number of professionals, e.g., IT professionals, doctors, nurses, engineers, teachers, and students etc. are migrating overseas more importantly for better remuneration package, better job opportunities and/or highly qualitative education/training. On the one side, emigration of professionals and students incurs huge loss of public resources and skill-transfer, which is called as ‘brain drain’. But on other side of this emigration raises the hope for remittances and return migration of professional with better-acquired skill and education/training, which could be used in national development. This kind of return migration and remittances can be proved a driving force in the process of economic development of India. However the issue to be addressed here is - whether the role of remittances as expected, is quite similar to the physical return migration for the national development of developing economies like India. With physical return migration of professionals and students, an improvement in health and education in developing economies can be expected/formulated, which leads to more externalities and higher potentiality for human development. Because this type of national development will increase the living standard or quality of life and quality of work of remained masses of the home country. The use of ‘knowledge-bank’ (acquired by return and out-migrants) in the health and education standards in developing economies can raise the average productivity of labour or workers’ attitude towards high work participation rate. In the present phase of globalisation, the movement of natural persons is relatively free; emigration and return-migration of labour especially of professionals in developing economies like India have an important role to trickle-down for a big push in its national development. Migration and Productivity In the era of globalisation, the free movement of natural persons across borders is becoming easier as compared to earlier phases of economic development due to the minimizing/eliminating the economic boundaries of nation-states. In the presence of convenient and efficient means of transportation, flexible economic and migration policies of sending as well as destination countries, easy access for communication and information are important factors, which have been facilitated/availed the comparatively open environment for international mobility of capital and labour .The ‘export-promotion policy’ is being implemented to promote the free mobility of labour in the global labour market along with international trade of goods and services. However WTO-GATS framework advocates the free movement of labour especially for immigration countries have more demand for professional manpower rather than semi-skilled and unskilled manpower. Moreover the globalisation of labour inherits itself the feature of less conditions for free movement of goods and services as well as free mobility of factors of production. The WTO-GATT framework demands the efficiency and productivity in the process of production. This framework argued that there is a need of competitiveness and efficiency in the ‘global village’. As witnessed from above discussion that developing economies including India inherit the problems of low productiveness and competitiveness. Besides having low productivity including low labour productivity, the developing economies like India are facing the problem of brain drain. Therefore drain of knowledge and free movement of goods and services and factors of production have posed a challenge for India, that how can it outweigh the cost of brain drain in the presence of free mobility of professionals under the guidelines of WB-IMF-WTO-GATT nexus. Therefore each and every economy is now under pressure to accept the diktats of these international economic giants of the free global market. In the context of high-poverty-ratio and high mobility of professionals , the economic policies are required to offset the problems of underdevelopment, which have cause-effect relationship with low work-participation and labour productivity. Therefore developing economies need to concentrate on productivity-issue of its surplus labour. It implies that the efficient and productive labour can raise the level of production as well as meet the need of time to increase the level of total factor productivity through increase in labour productivity and in the same time compete with in free-global market. However the World Labour report (2000) admits that the benefits of globalisation are not reaching to enough people. The same document asserts that the increased global competition has led to the loss of job and temporary employment arrangement that are often less secure and provide fewer social benefits than regular jobs. Therefore the doubt has created whether globalisation of labour increase the average productivity or decline . The labour productivity gaps between the North and the South determine the income inequalities among the countries and poverty within the country. Moreover the impact of globalisation of labour need to be analysed especially, in case of India where ‘Globalisation has created opportunities for some people, regions and countries that have not even dreamt of three decades ago. But, it has also contributed to increased impoverishment, inequality and insecurity for many others’ (Nayyar, 2002). In the perspective of international economics, Hecksher-Ohlin theorem (1933) states that the physical capital-rich country will have the comparative advantage in the production of capital-intensive goods and the labour-rich country will have the comparative advantage in the labour-intensive goods. However, Leontief (1953) refuted the Hecksher-Ohlin theorem on the basis of his study on US data for the year 1947 that US exports were less capital-intensive and more labour-intensive than US imports.. The reason behind the failure of this theorem that US has exported products those were more skilled labour-intensive than its imports as measured by average years of education. More recently, economists have attempted to test the Hecksher-Ohlin model using data for a large number of 27countries and 12 factors (Bowen et al., 1987). They also refuted the Hecksher-Ohlin theorem, on the ground of their empirical results and confirm that the developed economies, those are capital-abundant exporting skill- intensive goods and importing the capital-intensive goods. In other words that Leontief paradox accepted on a broader level and rejected the Hecksher-Ohlin theory . Leamer (1999) uses a variable factor to show the role of work-participation rate in the production function, which is known as ‘effort’ into a traditional two sectors, and factors of Hecksher-Ohlin model of international economics. The empirical results proved, on the basis of data related to Japanese, US, UK economies, that ‘effort’ enters in a production function as the total factor productivity because ‘effort of a labour’ matters in the GDP growth. Brain Drain, Return Migration and Productivity The emergence of human–capital theory paradigm (1957) in late 1950s and comparatively flexible immigration policy of the US in 1960s were two important landmarks have affected the patterns of international migration. The advent of human capital theory encouraged the nation-states to enhance the proportion of their budgetary allocation/expenditure on education/training and investment in ‘human capital’ has been recogonised as an important tool for economic growth. As a result of flexible immigration policy the US has emerged as an epicenter for the migration of highly skilled labour not only from the developed countries such as UK, Canada but also from the developing countries, viz., Mexico, India, etc. These factors led to a paradigm shift in international migration of professionals and technically skilled personnel across the countries, especially to the US. This paradigm-shift attracted a large number of semi-skilled and skilled professionals from India to US rather than UK (Khadria, 1999,2001). However in past, UK was an important destination country for Indian emigrants including professionals due to colonial bonding. (Khadria, 1990; Commander et al., 2002). Presently a large number of professionals and students are in the US for example 35 thousand to 45 thousand Indian were granted emigrant visas (i.e. Permanent residency) by the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service per year between 1996 and 1998 (Khadria, 2001). The presence of Indian IT professionals in Silicon Valley is familiar to all. About 3 percent of Indian doctors emigrated from India to the US in the 1980s. In addition, a large proportion of medical graduates, i.e., 56 percent in 1956-80 and 49 percent in the 1990s emigrated from AIIMS to the US (Khadria, 1999; The Economist, 2002). The emigration of such a large number of professionals was termed as ‘brain–drain’ for the country of origin, i.e., India, because it was the loss of financial resources to State exchequer (in terms of subsidies on higher education) as well as drain of human capital, i.e., productive potential. Many professionals are migrating to developed economies, after getting their education/training from the premier and quality educational institutions of medical sciences, management and technology, viz., AIIMS, IITs, IIMs, University of Delhi, JNU, BHU etc. The purposes of professionals to migrate are better remuneration packages, better job opportunities and other reasons etc. A study of the fiscal effects of the Indian brain drain, by Mihir Desai and two of his colleagues, point out that the 1 million Indians in the United States accounted for a mere 0.1% of India’s population but earned the equivalent of a staggering 10% of India’s national income . However, the loss of the skilled and educated may do more harm than emigration in general because this type of finished and semi-finished human capital includes higher social cost in terms of national skill-wastage and fiscal resources of sending economy. Different economists have suggested some solutions to offset the cost of brain drain to source country. Jagdish Bhagavati suggested in 1970s that a rational-tax-system must be levied on the professionals and students who are leaving the home country to compensate the brain drain. But it is pending work for the policy-makers to frame for such a tax proposal for professionals or students staying abroad. A policy framework suggests that the cost of brain drain can also be minimised if destinations economies finance the education of professionals, which they have demand for professionals in their economies (The Economist, 2002). This type of policy would at least eliminate the fiscal loss of sending countries of professionals. No country now tries to stop its people from leaving in the global-world and human-freedom cannot be restricted or prohibited. A few, such as China, lean heavily on the families of students studying abroad to ensure that return. However, WTO-GATS through the clause of mode4 related to natural movement of persons also emphasized on the temporary-migration, even developed economies are framing their immigration polices towards temporary-migration friendly. It is an important proposition to anlayse that developed countries are controlling and diverting their economic and immigration policies in favour of temporary migration (7 years of stay – maximum limit in destination country). If developed counties are limiting the permanent migration of professionals and other occupational workers, the return of professionals could be beneficial to developing countries in terms of their role in enhancing the productivity and efficiency of labour in the country of origin. However, a contradiction/dichotomy has emerged from this temporary-immigration policy undertaken by developed countries and GATS. The dichotomy has emerged between the laws of nation that restrict the movement of people across borders and the economics of globalisation that induces the movement of people across borders. (Nayyar, 2000) In the ‘global village’, an economy cannot bear the cost of being isolated itself from the international economy. It would be very expensive for such an ‘isolated’ economy to maintain an adequate level of relationship with in the changing scenario of international economy. In the framework of WTO-regime, each and every player (economy) has to play in the ‘game’ (free international economy) to try to its fate for comparative gain or win over other player(s) (countries). In the framework of GATS-movement of natural persons mode 4, mobility of labour cannot be restricted with in the economic boundaries of nation-state. It is interesting to examine that temporary migration is an emerging phenomenon rather permanent migration in the arena of international mobility of skilled professionals or service providers. Migrants today increasingly come from poor counties, and their stay in the host counties is becoming shorter (UNESCO, 1999). However, poor countries are not the only ones affected by outward migration. There are some developed countries, which lose their manpower, for example, professionals from Australia and Canada are migrating to the United States (The Economist, 2002). Developed economies also find the problem of brain drain as; skilled immigrants use them as entrepot countries, acquiring citizenship and education before moving on to the largest and richest job market in the world. A separate class of visas in GATS framework (GATS visa) has been established for service professionals who are temporarily working overseas. The GATS visa would facilitate comparatively free international mobility of labour mainly the mobility of professionals (Chanda, 1999). The emphasis on the temporary migration can offset the cost incurred in the brain drain of developing economies. In other words, such type of migration may lead to ‘brain gain’ through ‘brain exchange and/or brain circulation’ in terms of ‘higher probability of return migration’ of service providers who have potential ‘knowledge-bank’ acquired from the experiences and on- the- job training overseas. The challenge before the developing economies including India that in what way an outflow of skilled workers bring a reward in the terms of remittances and most importantly physical return migration of professionals .The professionals who have acquired ‘knowledge-bank’ which they gained in the highly technological, efficient, productive and competitiveness environment of the developed countries. However it is a necessary condition for the economic development that return migration of skilled labour must take place but sufficient condition would be the use of acquired-skill/training in overseas in raising the level of productivity of remained masses of the home country. Formulation of Research problem The low average labour productivity and work participation rate determine the Indian underdevelopment. However surplus of labour is an important characteristic of Indian economy. But the Indian skilled labour is performing efficiently in global labour market, which is precipitating for higher demand for Indian professionals overseas. There is a significant role of Indian semi-finished and finished human capital in developed economies like US, UK, Australia etc. As trends of migration, a large number of skilled mobility from India has taken place in the past and is still prevailing. This phenomenon incurs huge losses in terms of wastage of fiscal resources as well as skill-transfer from India due to the large-scale emigration of persons belonging to the category of brain drain. In the era of globalisation, free movement of natural persons (or service providers) cannot be restricted to the boundaries of nation-states. A challenge is there before the Indian economy, to rationalize the policies (economic and migration) to ensure the contribution of skilled labour in the national development. The emigrated skilled labour has the potential of increasing productivity, competitiveness and efficiency that can be used a main driving force to boost the pace of economic development of India. Therefore an issue is to be addressed here on the role of India’s migrant professionals to raise labour productivity, which can offset possible adverse effects of skilled mobility and even leverage the flow into positive outcomes for source countries. The problems of underdevelopment are severely prevailed in India, viz., and the general level of education, health of the population. The low literacy and inadequate health services have a cause-effect relationship with poverty and eventually it guide low work-participation rate. Low levels of skills and work- participation rate maintain average levels of productivity, which in turn hinder national development and welfare. A long-term strategy is required to promote the economic and human development of developing countries. It is not only a question of retain and return their highly skilled manpower but also make them to offset the cost of brain drain in India, i.e., brain gain for national economy. The migrants themselves can play an important role in this task of national development through their remittances; networks and their physical return-at least temporarily-to exchange their skills and contribute towards economic and human development. The research problem can be written in the following equation as under: Q L =f (K, L, E, Mo, Mr, R, Ep, WTO-gats) Q/L-Average Productivity of Labour Q-Production Level, L-Labour, K-Capital, E-Effort, (Efficiency)-Work Participation Rate Mo- Out-Migration, Mr- Return, Migration, R-Remittances, Ep-Economic Policies, WTO-Clause of Most favoured Nation for Movement of Natural Persons Objective of the Study The major aim of the present study is to find out the interlinkages between education, productivity and migration in the context of globalisation of India’s human capital. For the sake of clarity and precision the above-mentioned aim can be stated in terms of the following specific objectives: 1. To identify the parameters of average productivity of labour in India. 2. To find out the impact of New Economic Policy, 1991 on average productivity of labour in India. 3. To find out the impact of out-migration of professionals on average productivity of labour in India. 4. To find-out the impact of educational background of migrant professionals on average productivity of labour in India. 5. To find out the impact of return migration of professionals on average productivity of labour in labour. 6. To identify and anlayse the kinds of policies which are being formulated and implemented to increase the average productivity level in India and in other countries. 7. To identify the economic policy framework in the phase of globalisation of labour for developing economies. 8. To identify the forms of remittances are significantly useful to increase the average labour productivity Research Questions: 1. What are the parameters of average productivity of labour in India? 2. What is the impact of New Economic Policy 1991 on the average labour productivity in India? 3. What is the impact of out-migration of professionals on the average labour productivity in India? 4. What is the impact of educational background of migrant professionals on average productivity of labour in India? 5. What is the impact of return migration of professionals on average productivity of labour in India? 6. What kinds of economic-policies are being formulated and implemented to increase the average productivity level in India and in other country? 7. What is the economic-policy framework in the phase of globalisation of labour for India? 8. What forms of remittances are significantly useful to increase the average labour productivity? Important Terms and Concepts Labour Productivity The term expresses the degree to which labour is utilized effectively. Labour Productivity is the sum of use values produced (products or material services) per worker employed in production. It is generally calculated with reference to some unit or time (hour, day, month, or year). Generally output per man-hour is used as a measure of productivity in view of, and as approximation to, output per unit of total input, because the latter is not available or cannot be calculated within a reasonable margin of error. Labour Force (Economically Active Persons) Labour Force is defined as the total persons working (or employed) and seeking or available for work (unemployed). The group of persons within a minimum and maximum age group willing to be engaged in some economic activity. Thus, both the employed and unemployed within a specified age and time period constitute the labour force. Migration Migration implies the geographical movement of individuals or groups of individuals. Thus migration is a form of across specified boundaries (i.e., between on geographical unit and another) generally involving a change of residence from the palace of origin or the place of departure to the place of destination or the place of arrival with the object of establishing a new permanent residence. It is of two kinds- international migration (or migration between counties) and internal migration (or migration within a country). Occupational Classification Systematic grouping of occupations- of each group or sub-group representing an aggregation of specific tasks. Some of the standard occupational classifications are: International Standard Occupational classifications (ISCO)-1966 and 1988, International Labour organization), National Classification of Occupational (NCO) 1958 and 1968(DGE&T) India; Standard Occupational classification (SOC) 1958(CSO) India. The NCO, 1968 gives classification of occupation in 5 digits-in 3 digit families and 2-digit groups, there by implying that the more detailed the level of sub-division, the more homogeneous will be the content of occupation in a family or group from the point of view of ‘type of work performed’. An Occupational Division is essentially a convenient basis for combining homogenous group of occupations. In the NCO, 1968 for example there are 8 Divisions, further classified into 95 groups, 462 families and 2,464 occupations. The Occupational Divisions are as follows: 01- Professional, technical and related workers. 02- Administrative, executive and managerial workers 03- Clerical and related workers. 04- Sales workers 05 Service workers 06- Farmers, fishermen, hunters, loggers and related workers. 07,08&09- Production and related workers, transport equipment operators, labourers. X- Workers are not classified by Occupations Participation Rate The number of persons in working age expressed as a percentage of the total population. The term is generally used in conjunction with labour force. The labour force participation rate (LFPR) is the percentage of population in the labour force (either employed or unemployed) at a given period of time. The age-specific participation is the percentage of population in different age groups of the labour force to the total population in corresponding age- groups. Professionals The term refers to persons who apply in a professional activity the scientific knowledge and methods to a variety of technological, economic, social, industrial and governmental problems. This category includes such persons as scientists, engineers, architects, physicians dentists, professors, economists, and statisticians, who are characterized by their long formal education and training.(IAMR) Professionals are people with high levels of education, experience and qualifications whose skills are in demand everywhere and can move from country to country, temporarily or permanently, as immigration laws are not restrictive for them. Transnational corporations employ most of them. But some of them circulate in their professional capacities or through systems of education and research. (Nayyar, 2000) Work Participation Rate Total Employed persons/Total Labour force Work participation rate is defined as the proportion of workers in the population In other words, percentage of workers to the total population. Workforce Participation Rate It can be defined as the number of persons/person-days employed per thousand persons-days is referred as the work-force participation rate (WFPR) or the worker population ratio (WPR). According to NSSO 55th Round’ document, of the three approaches, the usual principal status approach is best suited as a measure of economic activity in an economy with seasonal fluctuations in the employment. This because, in this approach the criteria used is the pattern of activities followed by the person for a relatively long period of time. By considering also persons with some subsidiary employment, certain transient component of employment is also netted in. Need of the Study The present study will focus on the average productivity and globalisation of labour and their impact on economic development of India. In the era of globalisation, comparatively free movement of the factors of production, viz., and capital and labour is minimizing/eliminating the economic boundaries across the countries. The movement of natural persons has also been dealt by the WTO and its constituent agencies/organizations such as GATS, which are now emphasizing on the temporary-migration of service-providers. Most of the immigrant nations of the developed world are trying to limit the number of permanent immigrants However, in order to reverse the impacts of brain drain, developing economies are making efforts to gain from the export of skilled labour particularly in terms of remittances and investment in education, health and other important sectors of human and social development. Indian Prime Minister also speaks, in the Indian Science Congress, that there is a need of bringing-back the Indian ‘brain-bank’ staying overseas, for the process of rapid national development of India. The endogenous growth theory of economics of development in 1990 explained that human capital is an important factor to raise the level of average productivity. Leontief Paradox (1953) also analysed that US economy gained from the export of high-skilled labour-intensive goods. Because of the lower work participation rate and comparatively very low levels of average productivity of labour in India, Indian migrants professionals are vital factors to be analysed and formulate the national economic policies on the base of these constraints. Several studies have estimated the ‘total factor productivity’ of indusial sector especially in manufacturing sector (Mitra and Goldar, 2002; Mitra 1999: Golder 1992; Ahluwalia 1991; Goldar 2001, Agrawal 2002). But they have not estimated average productivity per employee per hour, which is very crucial to improve the work participation rate and low average productivity of Indian labour. Indian economy as a labour abundant country must concentrate on average labour productivity per hour along with other levels of factors productivity. As a whole there is no concentration on GDP/employee per hour-productivity of labour. All these above mentioned facts and assertions provide a need to evolve the role of Indian emigrant professionals in the process of economic development of India. Research Methodology The present study will use both macro and micro empirical methods. The macro empirical analysis will be based on the available primary and secondary data on the level of value-added output in different-industries/sectors, labour force, workforce, stock and flow data of professionals as occupational and educational classification level (ISCO-1996/1997 and NCO-1967). Further, the secondary data of international migration of professionals and remittances will be collected from different Indian and international sources. Besides, various policy documents and annual reports of the concerned agencies of India, Countries of Indian Emigrants Professionals and WTO, WB etc. will be looked into. The information for this study will be collected from following documents (the data/information each document contains is given along with the source): · Census of India 2001,1991-Stock data of number of professionals in India from Economic Tables (Division 0-1 and 2) · NSSO-Different round surveys on Employment and Unemployment-Stock data of Work participation rates and labour force in India. · Annual Survey of Industries. Value-added Output in different industries of India (NIC-1987) · Reports and Documents of Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of External Affairs, Ministry of Labour, Indian Council of Cultural Relations, IAMR, Planning Commission, Reserve Bank of India- Stock and flow data on employment, education and migration. Report on Currency and Finance of RBI will provide stock and flow data on remittances of NRIs. · Reports and Documents of IMF, WTO, WB, GATS, GATT, UNCHR, IOM, UNCTAD. - Stock and flow data, and literature of Indian professionals, conditions and policies of GATS, WTO, IMF etc. for India · Reports and Documents of National Productivity of Council, Asian Productivity Council. – Data and literature related Labour Productivity of India and of other countries as well. · Censuses of Different Countries of Immigration. -Data on Indian immigrant professional and students. For the micro empirical study-sample survey, the information will be collected on different dimensions of return migrant professionals and their possible role in the economic development of India, including increasing the average productivity of labour. The target group of the sample–survey will be migrant IT and medical professionals. The sample size will be 100. The information is to be collected with self-prepared questionnaire. On the basis of our micro-sample–survey we will extrapolate our results with the results of macro-secondary data based study. Tentative Chapterisation Chapter-1: Introduction § Globalisation of Labour and Productivity § Education and Productivity § Migration and Productivity § Research Methodology § Review of Literature Chapter-2: Globalisation of Human Capital: Migration of Indian Professionals · Interlinkges between Education and Labour Productivity in India · Interlinkges between Migration and Labour Productivity in India Chapter-3: Labour Productivity in India: Affecting Factors and Economic Reforms § Return migration and Labour Productivity § Out migration and Labour Productivity § Remittances and Labour Productivity § Work Participation Rate § New Economic Policy, 1991 Chapter-4: Micro-Sample Survey on migration of professionals: Macro Vs. Micro Analysis on Labour Productivity in India. § Differences and Similarities between results of Macro-Sample Survey and Macro-Secondary data based Analysis Chapter-5: Concluding remarks: · Conclusion and Summary · Policy Implications and Suggestions References 1. Agiomigianakis, George, M.(1999)The Macroeconomics of open economies under labor mobility, Ashagate Publishing Company, Vermont, USA 2. Borjas, G.J. (2001) Does Immigration Grease the Wheels of the Labor Market? Brooking Papers on Economic Activity, Brooking Institution, Washington, D C. Vol.1 3. Bratsberg, Bernt and Jr. Ragan, James F. (2002) The impact of host-country schooling on earnings, a Study of male immigrants in the United States Journal of Human Resources, Vol.xxxvii No.1, Winter, pp.63-103. 4. Commander, S., et al. (2002) The Brain Drain: Curse or Boon? A Survey of the Literature, The paper presented in CEPR/NNBER/SNS International Seminar on International Trade, Stockholm, 24-25 May. 5. Deodhar, S.Y. (2002) Educational Services-Issues for India in WTO Negotiations, Economic and Political Weekly, May 11, pp. 1791-1795. 6. Dolinskaya, I.(2002) explaining Russia’s Output Collapse, IMF Staff Papers,Vol.49, No.2,pp.155-174 7. Feldman, Maryann P. (2002) How States Augment the Capabilities of Technology-Pioneering Firms, Growth and Change, Vol.33, No.2, Spring, pp.173-195. 8. Harry P. Bowen, Edward E. Leamer, and Leo Sveikauskas (1987), “Multicountry, Multifactor Tests of the Factor Abundance Theory,” American Economic Review, Vol.77, pp791-809, December 9. Jones, I.J. (1998) Introduction to economic Growth, Norton Publisher, New York 10. Khader, SA (2000) Strategic Perspective for Building Productivity Culture, Yojana, vol. 44, no.5, May, pp10-17. 11. Khadria, B. (1999) The Migration of Knowledge Workers, Second Generation Effects of India’s Brain Drain, Sage Publications, New Delhi 12. Khadria, B. (2001) Shifting Paradigms of Globalisation: The Twenty-first Century, Transition towards Generics in skilled Migration from India, International Migration-Quarterly review, Vol. 39, No.5, pp.45-72 13. Lipton, Michael (1981) Migration from rural areas of poor countries; 14. Lucas, R.E (1988) On the Mechanics of Economic Development, Journal of Monetary Economics 22, pp3-42. 15. Mankiw, N.G. (2000) Macro Economics –fourth edition, Macmillan Worth Publishers, Hampshire 16. Ministry of Labour (2002) Report of the Study group on Globalisation and its impact, Second National Commission on Labour, February. 17. Mountford, A. (1997) Can a Brain Drain be good for growth in the source economy? Journal of Development Economics, Vol.52, No.1 Feb., pp.-287-303. 18. Miyagiva,K.(1991) Scale Economies in education and brain drain problem International Economic review, Vol.32, No. 3, pp. 743-759,August. 19. National Sample Survey Organisation (2000) Employment and Unemployment in India, 1999-2000,NSS 55th Round, July1999-June2000. 20. Nayyar, D (2000) Globalisation and Migration: Retrospect and Prospect, Yojana, vol. 44, no.5, May, pp18-27. 21. Nayyar D. (1994) Migration, Remittances and Capital Flows- The Indian Experiences, Oxford University Press, New Delhi. 22. Prakash, B.A. (2000) Exodus of Gulf Emigrants, Return Emigrants of Varkala Town in Kerala, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXXV No.1, December 16-22. 23. UNESCO (1996) Report to UNESCO of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty First Century Learning: The Treasure With In, Paris 24. Romer P.M. (1986) Increasing Returns and Long-run Growth, Journal of Political EconomyVol94, pp 1002-1037 25. Satyanarayan,A.(2002)Birds of Passage: Migration of south Indian Laborers to South Asia,Critical Asian Studies, Vol.34,No.1,pp.89-128, March. 26. Stark, O, et. al. (97) a brain gain with brain drain, Economic Letters, Vol.55, Nos.1-3, pp 227-234 27. Oosterbeek, H. (1997) Returns from computer Use: A simple test on the productivity interpretation, Economic Letters, Vol.55, Nos.1-3, pp 273-277 28. Galore. and Stark, O. (19900 Migrants’ savings, The Probability of Return Migration and Migrants’ Performance, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 31, No.2, May, pp. 463-467. 29. Mankiw et. al. (1992) A contribution to the empirics of economic growth, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. cvii, Issue 4, , pp. 407-436. 30. Fan, S. and Zhang (2002) Production and Productivity Growth in the Chinese Agriculture: New National and regional Measures Economic Development and Cultural Change Vol.50, Number 4, July 2002. 31. The Economic Times (2003) Labour productivity rising as India Inc cuts flab in bug way, 32. The Economist (2002) Outward Bound-Special Report on Emigration, September 28th –4th October. 33. Thirwall, A.P. (1999) Growth and Development, Macmillan Press Limited, London; 34. Tian, Xiaowen and Lo Io, Vai (2002) Property Rights, Productivity Gains and Economic Growth: the Chinese Experience, Post-Communist Economies, Vol.14, No. 2,June, pp.245-258. 35. World Employment Report (2001) Life at Work in the Information Economy, International Labour Office, Geneva Naren ___________________________________________________ Click below to experience Sooraj R Barjatya's latest offering 'Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon' starring Hrithik, Abhishek & Kareena http://www.mpkdh.com From paul at waag.org Tue Jul 8 21:55:56 2003 From: paul at waag.org (Paul Keller) Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2003 18:25:56 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Manifesto on the role of Open Source Software for Development Cooperation Message-ID: The following manifesto was finalized during a recent workshop on the role of Open Source software in the context of Development cooperation that was held in the context of the Waag Sarai exchange programme at Waag Society in Amsterdam. The Manifesto has been presented to Dutch members of parliament on July 1st. It is also available in its original layout at http://sarai.waag.org/display.php?id=28 /paul Manifesto on the role of Open Source Software for Development Cooperation Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS)[1] represent a new and growing phenomenon, which is much discussed these days as it implies a radically new method of production, co-operation and exchange. In this paper we argue that Open Source Software has a special importance when viewed, used and produced in the context of development cooperation. With this paper we want to encourage all stakeholders in the sector to pay more attention to Open Source Software, employ it wherever possible and to learn from the principles embedded in it. This manifest that has been produced during a workshop[2] on the role of Open Source Software in the development cooperation context that was organized by Waag Society and Hivos contains a number of recommendations aimed at increasing the use of Open Source Software in this sector. The philosophy behind open source software The knowledge that is embedded in operating systems and software programs to make them run, also known as the source code, can be either 'closed' and proprietary, or 'open', that is public and shared. Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) is software of which the source code is available, that may be used, copied, and distributed with or without modifications, and that may be offered either with or without a fee. Although the open source movement goes back almost forty years, Open Source Software has become a mainstream-topic only recently. Worldwide more and more businesses, organizations and governments are using Open Source Software. This ongoing adoption can be attributed to two reasons, namely the maturing of some key open source products like GNU/Linux and Office production software (Open Office) and the increased resistance to the effective monopoly of Microsoft on the worldwide software market. The choice for either the open or the closed concept has very different and far-reaching consequences for users, developers and producers of software alike. The (still dominant) closed format of software seems to suit corporate interests well, but at the same time it appears to be increasingly at odds with the current shift of Œtangible' (concrete products and services), towards 'intangible'’ (i.e. knowledge-based) production. Since the immaterial, in the digital age, is also very easily duplicable, the efforts to 'proprietarize' it have resulted in severe legal and political conflicts around the disputed concept of 'intellectual property rights'. Open Source Software by putting knowledge (the source code) in the public domain’ offers much more opportunities for sharing and co-operation between all players in the field, reduces dependencies, hinders the rise of monopolists, and fosters healthy competition. Contrary to widespread beliefs, Open Source Software is not adverse to commerce and business as Open Source based products and services can be sold by anyone. Open Source Software and Development Cooperation -The most significant advantage is the right to view and modify the source code as it enables anyone with the required skills to improve or modify such applications thus creating the possibility to tailor Open Source Software applications according to individual, regional or special needs. In the context of development cooperation this means that applications can be adapted to country specific circumstances (language or other special needs) regardless of the fact if this is profitable for a vendor or not. -As Open Source Software applications are not the property of a single entity, using them makes the user less dependent. This is especially important in the South were organisations running on subsidised or pirated software face the risk of becoming dependent on essential infrastructure they cannot sustain should the subsidies end or intellectual property laws be enforced. Additionally Open Source Software does ensure that specialized knowledge that was generated with public resources is not kept as a protected secret of the North. The use of Open Source Software implies a willingness to share knowledge between North and South -While it is disputed if Open Source Software is less expensive to run than proprietary software, it is undisputed that the acquisition costs are lower (some studies claim higher administration and training costs). In the context of development cooperation this means that little or no money has to be spend for goods imported from the North while local personnel in the South can carry out training and maintenance tasks. This effectively reduces the allocation of development cooperation resources to the North. Additionally Open Source Software solutions can be at the base of local distribution and support networks that can create autonomous economic activity in the South. Open Source Software also has some weaknesses. The focus of most FLOSS-products is more on the technical user; this can be a hindrance for the inexperienced user. However, Open Source Software is gradually improving in this area. Furthermore, due to the fact that not a lot of people are using Open Source Software, in some places there might be a lack of training opportunities and support, although this lack of support is compensated by an extensive amount of Open Source Software-support on the Internet. The relatively small user base of Open Source Software also might give organizations some compatibility problems with organizations that use the Œstandard¹ proprietary software. In the context of international co-operation and development, Open Source Software is a very promising approach, because it is far more conducive to its stated goals of non-dependent development, fostering of local knowledge, diversity and sustainability. Successful Open Source Software projects have shown that cooperation on an equal basis is possible between organizations and individuals independent of origin. This hints at the potential of the methods of production, co-operation and exchange pioneered by Open Source Software developers for cooperation in other realms. Therefore, we believe that it is essential to consider, and if found appropriate, to advocate, and support the use of FLOSS and the philosophy that belongs to it. Politics and Open Source Software At the end of this year Geneva hosts the World Summit on the Information Society that is to result in a declaration and an action plan by governments on how to achieve a information society that is of benefit to us all. Numerous drafts have been published, some people centred, some market centred, all mentioning Open Source Software. It is mentioned for example as Œbasic elements in the development of a more affordable access to ICTs¹. And also Œthe development and use of open standards are particularly important for developing countries. In this regard the increased use of Open Source Software can contribute to increasing access and to adding to the diversity of choice of software for consumers¹. Open Source Software development has already been recognised by Dutch Parliament as the way forward. In November 2002 Parliament accepted a motion on open source software. It stated that the current market conditions are not optimal (concentrated suppliers and high costs of switching) and that software plays a crucial role in a knowledge society. The motion called upon the government to make sure that all software used by the Dutch public sector in 2006 meets the open standards, stimulate the production and distribution of open source software in the Dutch public sector and set concrete and ambitious standards for this. The Dutch political party GroenLinks proposed a strategy based on four elements: Œbuy open¹, Œmake open¹, Œstimulate open¹ and Œwith(in) the EU if possible¹. We would like to adapt these elements, and internationalise them, link them to the WSIS and present them with a development angle. Use open - Organisations working in the development sector, both nationally and internationally (e.g. World Bank) and governments should start implementing FLOSS wherever possible. - Organisations working in the development sector, both nationally and internationally (e.g. World Bank) and governments should be able to exchange documents in open (file-) formats. Buy open - By 2008 organisations working in the development sector, both nationally and internationally (e.g. World Bank) and governments should only buy software using open (file-) formats. - In the meanwhile development projects and organizations that receive funding for software should whenever possible spend this on FLOSS. Make open - By 2008 organisations working in the development sector, both nationally and internationally (e.g. World Bank) and governments should set up a fund for southern initiatives for the production of FLOSS. - The action plan that will be agreed upon at the WSIS should contain funding for southern FLOSS development. - Software made with development funds, should be available within the public domain (and comply with OSI guidelines). Stimulate open - The action plan that will be agreed upon at the WSIS should contain concrete actions for knowledge sharing and training on FLOSS. (An international knowledge centre could be an option) - By 2008 organisations working in the development sector, both nationally and internationally (e.g. World Bank) and governments should always advocate the use of FLOSS and other modes of knowledge production and sharing Internationally - The declaration and action plan that will be agreed upon at the WSIS should refer to FLOSS as a key element in developing an 'information society for all¹ - Organisations working in the development sector, both nationally and internationally (e.g. World Bank) and governments should not wait for international consensus with using, buying, making and stimulating FLOSS but start right now. inline text box 1: Free as in speech While this manifesto focuses on the practical advantages of Open Source Software in the context of development cooperation it is important to stress that the FLOSS movement also has an ideological component. This includes that anyone should have the freedom to run, change, distribute and study software independent of outside interferences and limitations. In the context of development cooperation this ability to operate independent of external interests and interferences helps ensure that the focus is kept on the more important issues. inline text box 2: FLOSS and the link with Good Governance and Local Ownership In the field of development cooperation 'good governance' and Œlocal ownership¹ have become important criteria for allocating resources. In contrast to proprietary software, key elements of what is considered to be 'good governance' and Œlocal ownership¹ can be found in the FLOSS approach to software development, distribution and implementation: The principles of transparency and participation for example are embodied within FLOSS. This means that FLOSS provides tools that are in line with the goals and intentions of development cooperation projects The Hague, 25 June 2003 Waag Society Hivos [1] ŒFree, Libre and Open Source Software¹ and ŒFLOSS¹, as well as ŒOpen Source Software¹ and ŒOSS¹ are all used in this document and are interchangeable. FLOSS is more correct, OSS more commonly used. [2] Organized by Waag Society and Hivos, 2-4 June 2003 in Amsterdam, with guests and speakers from The Netherlands, Costa Rica, India, Uganda, Italy and Iran. From menso at xs4all.nl Tue Jul 8 16:05:49 2003 From: menso at xs4all.nl (Menso Heus) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2003 12:35:49 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Post-PATRIOT Magnetic Motto Maker Message-ID: <20030708103549.GB23558@xs4all.nl> http://deprogramming.us/ppmmm/ -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- I just want all of you to know I have weapons of mass destruction -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From faizan at sarai.net Tue Jul 8 17:28:48 2003 From: faizan at sarai.net (Faizan Ahmed) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2003 17:28:48 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: [AMUNetwork] Shahryar's Poetry Message-ID: <200307081728.48420.faizan@sarai.net> ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: [AMUNetwork] Shahryar's Poetry Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2003 08:06:28 +0530 From: AMU PRO To: amunetwork at yahoogroups.com> THROUGH THE CLOSED DOORWAY: A new translation of Shahryar's nazms The much-loved Urdu poet, Shahryar, will now reach out to a larger audience through a new English translation of his poetry. Published by the prestigious publishing company, Rupa & Co. and translated into English by Rakhshanda Jalil, a collection of hundred nazms is due to hit bookstalls in all major cities across India by September. Entitled Through the Closed Doorway; these nazms explore the joys and sorrows of ordinary, lived experiences, the complexities and ambivalences of city life, the oppressive sense of melancholy and dislocation of the urban milieu. Shahryar's songs for popular Hindi films such as "Umrao Jaan", "Gaman", "Anjuman" and "Faasle" enjoy and enduring mass appeal. Taxi drivers in Mumbai are still apt to play Seene mein jalan aankhon mein toofan sa kyoon hai/Is shehr mein har shaqs pareshan sa kyuoon hai decades after the film's release. Popular Hindi film playback singer, Asha Bhonsle, is still known to open many a concert with those haunting lines from "Umrao Jaan" Yeh kya jagah hai doston, yeh kaun sa dayar hai/Hadd-e-nigah tak jahan ghubar hi ghubar hai. Equally respected by the connoisseurs of Urdu poetry, Shahryar today enjoys a formidable reputation as one of the foremost poets of his generation. Spanning over 40 years, his voice has remained compelling, insightful and completely unaffected. Despite early critical acclaim and commercial success, Shahryar has consistently refused to become a performer playing to the gallery at mushairas, or merely a successful wordsmith churning out hits from a plush Bollywood studio. Practically from the beginning of his career, he has been straddling two worlds with consummate ease - that of academia and poetics. Honoured with several prestigious national and international awards including the Sahitya Akademi award, Shahryar retired as Chairman and Professor of Urdu from the Aligarh Muslim University in 1996. His first collection of poems, sme-Aazam was published in 1965. Since then he has published four others: Saatvan Dar, Hijr Ke Mausam, Khwab Ka Dar Band Hai and Neend Ki Kirchein. He has also published five collections in Devanagri script, thus bridging the Urdu-Hindi divide and reaching out to those who appreciate Urdu poetry but cannot read the Urdu script. His latest collection, brought out by the Sahitya Akademi, is entitled Dhund Ki Roshni. What sets apart Shahryar's poetics from that of other modern Urdu poets is the sheer lyricism, the sweet melodiousness that is all the more striking because it is garbed in an everyday, conversational idiom. The relentless probing of his own heart and the human predicament is viewed through the prism of his intensely personal experiences. At the same time, there is none of the stridiency and militant ideological onslaught of any particular school of thought that mars much of the modern poetry coming out of India, irrespective of language. Instead, there is a collage of images that tell a story of their own. Sensual, multi-coloured, delicately filigreed, these word pictures - tumbling out of a kaleidoscope of the known and the familiar - capture the pathos and alienation of the urban individual with just a few deftly dawn strokes. Unabashedly personal, Shahryar's nazms, such as the ones chosen here for translation, reach out to form an immediate bond claming a sense of kinship, touching a chord somewhere, evoking the tremulous wonder of dreams. Rahat Abrar PRO - ------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/defanged-326691 Size: 7587 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030708/f1803f2d/attachment.bin From competitiva14 at videobrasil.org.br Tue Jul 8 20:59:26 2003 From: competitiva14 at videobrasil.org.br (videobrasil) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2003 12:29:26 -0300 (EST) Subject: [Reader-list] 14 Videobrasil: trabalhos selecionados / selected works Message-ID: <20030708152926.2AA9C1C03F3@far.insite.com.br> Contund�ia marca Competitiva do Sul A contund�ia experimental das m�as na arte, que muitas vezes traduz a tens�pr�a do nosso contexto, marcado por conflitos econ�os, �icos e religiosos, � que distingue os 97 trabalhos selecionados para a Mostra Competitiva do 14� Festival Internacional de Arte Eletr�a � Videobrasil. A lista completa (leia abaixo) acaba de ser anunciada pela comiss�que escolheu os trabalhos de 20 pa�s, formada por Andr�rasil, professor da PUC-MG, Christine Mello, pesquisadora de artem�a pela PUC-SP, e Solange Farkas, presidente da Associa� e curadora do Festival. �A sele� reflete um momento pol�co e social pouco prop�o aos formalismos�, diz Solange. �Nosso olhar se voltou para as imagens que nos afetaram, produzindo deslocamentos de pensamento e linguagem, expl�ta ou implicitamente pol�cos.� O aumento quantitativo e qualitativo da produ� do circuito sul imp�m rigor ainda maior na escolha. Ao todo, foram analisadas 765 obras de 40 pa�s. O uso t�co e subversivo da m�a, as estrat�as modernas de controle (como c�ras de vigil�ia , o GPS e o olhar onipresente dos reality shows) e as novas formas de nomadismo na contemporaneidade s�alguns dos temas recorrentes entre os selecionados. ---------------------------------------------------------- Pungency prevails in the Southern Competitive Show The experimental pungency of the media in art, which often translates the tension characteristic of our context, marked by economic, ethnic and religious conflicts, is what distinguishes the 97 works selected for the Competitive Show of the 14th International Electronic Art Festival � Videobrasil. The complete list (read below) has just been announced by the committee which selected the works from 20 nations, composed of Andr�Brasil, professor at PUC-MG, Christine Mello, media art researcher by PUC-SP, and Solange Farkas, president of the Associa� and curator of the Festival. �The selection reflects a political and social moment not propitious to formalisms,� says Solange. �Our regard was directed to the images which have affected us, producing displacements in thoughts and language, explicitly or implicitly political.� The quantitative and qualitative increase of the southern circuit production imposed still more rigor to the choices. A total of 765 works of 40 nations was analysed. The tactic and subversive use of the media, the modern strategies of control (such as surveillance cameras, the GPS and the omnipresent eye of reality shows) and the new forms of nomadism in the contemporaneousness are some of the recurrent themes among the selected works. ---------------------------------------------------------- Contundencia marca Competitiva del Sur La contundencia experimental de la media en la arte, que muchas veces traduce la tensi�ropia de nuestro contexto, marcado por conflictos econ�os, �icos y religiosos, es lo que distingue los 97 trabajos seleccionados para la Muestra Competitiva del 14� Festival Internacional de Arte Electr�a � Videobrasil. La lista completa (lee abajo) acaba de ser anunciada por la comisi�ue ha escogido los trabajos de 20 pa�s, formada por Andr�rasil, profesor de la PUC-MG, Christine Mello, investigadora de arte media por la PUC-SP, e Solange Farkas, presidente de la Associa� y curadora del Festival. �La selecci�efleja un momento pol�co y social poco propicio a los formalismos�, dice Solange. �Nuestro mirar se volvi�cia las im�nes que nos afectaron, produciendo desplazamientos de pensamiento y lenguaje, explicita o impl�tamente pol�cos.� El aumento cuantitativo y cualitativo de la producci�el circuito sur impuso un escogimiento a lo m�riguroso en la escoja. En total, fueron analizadas 765 obras de 40 pa�s. El uso t�ico y subversivo de la media, las estrategias modernas de control (como c�ras de vigilancia, el GPS y el mirar omnipresente de los reality shows) y las nuevas formas de nomadismo en la contemporaneidad son algunos de los temas recurrentes entre los seleccionados. ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- Mostra Competitiva do Sul: os selecionados Southern Competitive Show: selected works Muestra Competitiva del Sur: los seleccionados 04.11.02 / Sagi Groner / Israel / Video 11 de Septiembre / Claudia Aravena / Chile/Germany / Video 6=36 / Miodrag Krkobabic / Servia / Video A Revolu� n�ser�elevisionada � Epis� 1 / Andr�ontenegro, Daniel Lima, Daniela Labra and Fernando Coster / Brazil-SP / Video A.M.N. (All My Nightmares) / Ethem Ozguven / Turkey / Video About / Eusebio Ba�os Gonz�z / Mexico / Video Abry / Joel Pizzini, L�Rocha and Paloma Rocha / Brazil-SP / Video A� e Dispers�/ Cezar Migliorin / Brazil-RJ / Video Apocalyptic Man / Sebastian Dias Morales/ Argentina/Mexico / Video Aqui de Novo / Lucas Bambozzi / Brazil-SP / Video Aurora / Jurandir M�and Kiko Goifman / Brazil-SP / Video Being / Derek HUI / China / Video BMX / Alexandre da Cunha / Brazil/United Kingdom / Video Bolinhos / Marcia Antabi / Brazil-RJ / Video Cachorro Louco / C�r Meneghetti / Brazil/Italy / Video Capit�a / Danillo Barata / Brazil-BA / Video Carta a Minha M�/ In�Cardoso / Brazil-SP / Video Cinepolis, The Movie Capital / Ximena Cuevas / Mexico / Video Ciranda / Leandro HBL and Ana Siqueira / Brazil-MG / Video Cole� / Orlando Maneschy / Brazil-SP / Video Cows / Gabriela Golder / Argentina/Germany / Video Cyberzoo / Gustavo Romano / Argentina / Net Das Kapital v.07: Moral and economic division from the digital dissolution over the bla bla bla... / Marcello Mercado / Argentina/Germany/France / Video Das ligd Von Der Erde / Marcelo Machado / Brazil-SP / Video Days of my Life / Shrin Kouladjie / Iran/Canada / Net Deleuze Enquanto Modelo Vivo / Marcellvs L. / Brazil-MG / Video Desenho / Juliana Alvarenga Freitas / Brazil-MG / Video Diary V3.2 / Dirck de Bruyn / Australia / CD-ROM DiS cOn NeC tEd / Marcelo Garcia / Brazil/United Kingdom / Video Dormentes / In�Cardoso / Brazil-SP / Video Eintauchen (Diving In) / Jovan Arsenic / Yugoslavia/Germany / Video El Ticket que Explot�Gustavo Galuppo / Argentina / Video Est�o-escape (V�o) 2 / Daniel Trench / Brazil-SP / Video Eu Nunca Esqueci / Lucila Meirelles / Brazil-SP / Video Eu sou o Filho do H�o Oiticica / Carlo Sansolo / Brazil-RJ / Video Face A Face B / Rabih Mrou� Lebanon / Video Fic� Cient�ca / Wagner Morales / Brazil-SP / Video Geopolix / Pedro Adolfo / Portugal / Video Hear / Kedy FAN Ho-ki / China / Video Hotel / Ivan Edeza / Mexico / Video How Things Work (Como as Coisas Funcionam) / Roberto Bellini / Brazil/USA / Video Humanos v.1 / Lilia P�z Romero / Mexico/Canada / Net I Love My India / Tejal Shah / India / Video Imprescind�is / Carlos Magno / Brazil-MG / Video In Deaths Dream Kingdom Net Version / Andrea Nacach, Ivan Marino and Luis Negron / Argentina/Venezuela/Spain / Net January 10th / Nabil Kojok / Lebanon / Video L� C� Nelson Enohata and Renata Rico / Brazil-SP / Video Li�s Americanas � HO HO HO / Simone Michelin / Brazil-RJ / Video Little Lake / Ethem Ozguven / Turkey / Video Mano Bob e o Diabo na Praia Pregui�/ Artur Matuck, Ricardo Matsuzawa and S�io Nesteriuk / Brazil-SP / Video Matching Four with Twelve: Mapping Vapor / Jamsen LAW Sum-Po / China / Video Mat�a dos Sonhos / Andr�mparo, Chico de Paula, Cl�io Santos, Fab�a Goiaba, F�o Ribeiro, Let�a Capanema, Marcelo Braga, Milene Migliano and Rodrigo Minelli / Brazil-MG / Video Missing Henry / WOO Ling-ling / China / Video Mpolis / Marcia Vaitsman / Brazil/Germany / Interactive video in DVD-R Mreza / Anita Bacic / Australia / CD-ROM Nanofania / Cao Guimar� / Brazil-MG / Video Napoli Centrale / Bouchra Khalili / Morocco/France / Video Neptune�s Choice / Eder Santos / Brazil-MG / Video Nodal.Info / Christian Parsons / Argentina / CD-ROM O Santinho On line / Simone Michelin / Brazil-RJ / Net Out of Fear / Bettina Frankham / Australia / Video Papilas / Renata Alencar / Brazil-MG / Video Paz Final / Man�ral / Brazil-RJ / Video Personal? ID? Card / Miodrag Krkobabic / Servia / Video Pesar / Tadeu Jungle / Brazil-SP / Video Projeto Telepatia / Daniel S� / Brazil-SP / Net Pure Reality / Gert Hatsukov / Esthonia / Video Quienes Son? / Alex Stikich / Venezuela/USA / Video Ratos de Rua / Meton Jofilly and Rafael Rodrigues / Brazil-RJ / Video Replay (bis) / Lamia Joreige / Lebanon / Video Ressonancia / Lara Arellano / Argentina / Video Revoilusi�Revoillusion) / Neyeri Avalos / Mexico/Cuba / Video Rostilidades � Os Sentidos do Rosto / Patricia Moran / Brazil-MG / Video Saving Face / Jalal Toufic / Lebanon / Video Selbstfortplanzungszellenproteinstrukturanalysebericht (The unstable CD) / Marcia Vaitsman / Brazil/Germany / CD-ROM Sem T�lo / Ricardo M�Carioba / Brazil-SP / Video Seq�s de Imers�/ Paula Signorelli / Brazil-SP / Video Souvenir / Marcelo Braga / Brazil-MG / Video The Lure of Gestures / Edgar Endress / Chile/USA / Video The Measure of a Cloud / WOO Ling-ling / China / Video The Ogre / IP Yuk-Yiu / China / Video The Same Old Choice / Francisca Caporali, Joana Meniconi, Rafael Morado and Ricardo Portilho / Brazil-MG / Video Theta / Amitai Arnon / Israel / Video Topograf� Desmesuradas / Mariela Yeregui / Argentina/Spain / Net Two or Three Things I Know about Ohio / Luis Valdovino and Dan Boord / Argentina/USA / Video Underneath / Liu Wei / China / Video Unknown Zone / Katarzyna Paczesniowska-Renner / Poland/Germany / CD-ROM Untitled For Several Reasons / Roy Samaha / Lebanon / Video Very Fantastic / SO Man-yee / China / Video Vida Por Um Fio � Oum Kalsoum / Sheila Hara and Kika Nicolela / Brazil-SP / Video Volta ao Mundo em algumas P�nas / Cao Guimar� / Brazil-MG / Video Web Paisagem 0 / Gisele Beiguelman, Marcus Bastos and Rafael Marchetti / Brazil-SP / Net xx / B�ara Soalheiro, Helena Campos, Juliana Ribeiro, Marina Rezende, Milena de Almeida and Roberta Maia / Brazil-MG / Video YONG-SHIN-GUD (calling-dragon-spirit) / Semi Ryu / South Korea / Video Your Kidney Supermarket / Shilpa Gupta / India / Video Your latest track / Calin Man / Rumania / Net Zonadefault.com / Ricardo Rendon / Mexico / Net ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- Programa� paralela re�end�ias que se destacaram A comiss�anunciou a introdu� de novos programas a partir desta edi� do Festival, criados pela observa� de trabalhos inscritos que tiveram destaque especial no decorrer das discuss�do per�o de sele�. Paralelos �ompetitiva, eles ter�a fun� de apontar pesquisas emergentes e chamar a aten� para tend�ias importantes no campo da arte. S�trabalhos que transitam em contextos diferenciados do eixo curatorial do Festival, e permitem examinar vest�os instigantes daquilo que aponta linhas de pesquisa j�m andamento, al�do futuro da produ�. A id� segue a filosofia da Associa� de se mover em torno �ompreens�dos des�ios da produ� audiovisual. O 14� Festival antecipa o novo formato com �Investiga�s Contempor�as�, programa dedicado a obras que se destacam pela qualidade da pesquisa e que dizem respeito �eflex�e ao estudo da arte, tanto em seus processos de desenvolvimento de linguagem como pela maneira como articulam e inovam conte�de abordagem (leia abaixo os trabalhos inclu�s). A partir da pr�a edi� do Festival, al�de �Investiga�s Contempor�as� passa a ser oficial uma segunda mostra, �Novos Vetores�, que ter�omo objetivo incluir obras de n�s novos de trabalho, das mais variadas regi�do Brasil e de pa�s cuja produ� come�a ganhar relev�ia. ---------------------------------------------------------- Parallel programming gathers prominent trends The committee announced the introduction of new programs from this edition on in the Festival, created by the observation of the works applied which had a special prominence during the discussions in the selecting period. In parallel to the Competitive Show, they shall point out emergent researches and capture the attention to important trends in the artistic field. These works circulate in differentiated contexts of the curatorial axis of the Festival, and allow the examination of instigating signs of what points out research lines already under progress, besides the future of the production. The idea follows the philosophy of the Associa� of moving around the understanding of the designs of the audiovisual production. The 14th Festival releases the new format with �Contemporary Investigations�, a program devoted to works which were outstanding due to the quality of research and which involve the reflection and the study of art in its processes of language development, as well as regarding the way they articulate and innovate approaching contents (read below the works included). From the next edition on in the Festival, besides �Contemporary Investigations� will be official a second show, �New Vectors�, which will have the objective to include works made by new producing nuclei from different Brazilian regions and from nations whose production begins to get relevance. ---------------------------------------------------------- Programaci�aralela re�endencias que se destacaron La comisi�a anunciado la introducci�e nuevos programas a partir de esta edici�el Festival, creados por la observaci�e trabajos inscriptos que han tenido destaque especial en el transcurso de las discusiones del periodo de selecci�Paralelos a la Competitiva, ellos tendr�la funci�e puntear investigaciones emergentes y llamar la atenci�acia las tendencias importantes en el campo del arte. Son trabajos que transitan en contextos diferenciados del eje curial del Festival, y permiten examinar vestigios instigadores de aquello que puntea l�as de investigaci�a en andamiento, adem�del futuro de la producci�La idea sigue la filosof�de la Associa� de moverse en torno a la comprensi�e los designios de la producci�udiovisual. El 14� Festival anticipa el nuevo formato con �Investigaciones Contempor�as�, programa dedicado a obras que se han destacado por la cualidad de la investigaci� que dicen respecto a la reflexi� al estudio del arte, tanto en sus procesos de desarrollo de lenguaje como por la manera como articulan y innovan contenidos de abordaje (lee abajo los trabajos inclusos). A partir de la pr�a edici�el Festival, adem�de �Investigaciones Contempor�as� pasa a ser oficial una segunda muestra, �Nuevos Vectores�, que tendr�omo objetivo incluir obras de nuevos n�s de trabajo, de las m�variadas regiones de Brasil y de pa�s cuya producci�omienza a ganar relevancia. ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- Investiga�s Contempor�as Contemporary Investigations Investigaciones Contempor�as Amigos de Mr. Blowup / Andr�sn't and Cila Mac Dowell / Brazil-DF / CD-ROM Anatawa Ikaga Desuka / How Are You? / Como Vai? / Almir Almas / Brazil-SP / Video Anteontem, Ontem e Hoje / Marie Ange Bordas / Brazil/France / V�o Br�is VHS � Video Homeless System / Leandro Vieira and Mariana Meloni / Brazil-SP / Net Cave Cave Deus Videt! / Santana Dardot and Gustavo Timponi / Brazil-MG / Net Cinemarginal.com.br / Eug�o Puppo and Pablo Zurita / Brazil-SP / Net Devir / Daniela Mattos / Brazil-RJ / Video Do it Yourself / Videoart (15 Suggestions to keep in mind) / Federico Mercuri / Argentina / Video Encomenda Ao Ganso / Pablo Lobato / Brazil-MG / Video Fate (Destino) / Frederico C�ra / Brazil/United Kingdom / Video From rummanhameed at yahoo.com Wed Jul 9 14:20:13 2003 From: rummanhameed at yahoo.com (Rumman Hameed) Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2003 01:50:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Shocking!! In-Reply-To: <200307081722.25636.faizan@sarai.net> Message-ID: <20030709085013.48860.qmail@web21102.mail.yahoo.com> The story pasted below comes from Mumbai, and i found it truly shocking. Rumman ************ True Story ... A woman at a Gas nightclub (Mumbai) on Saturday night was taken by 5 men, who according to hospital and police reports, gang raped her before dumping her at Bandstand Mumbai. Unable to remember the events of the evening, tests later confirmed the repeat rapes along with traces of rohypnol in her blood. Progesterex, that is an essentially a small sterilization pill. The drug is now being used by rapists at parties to rape AND sterilize their victims. Progesterex is available to vets to sterilize large animals. Rumour has it that the Progesterex is being used together with Rohypnol, the date rape drug. As with Rohypnol, all they have to do is drop it into the girl's drink. The girl can't remember a thing the next morning, of all that had taken place the night before. Progesterex, which dissolves in drinks just as easily, is such that the victim doesn't conceive from the rape and the rapist needn't worry about having paternity test identifying him months later. The drug's effects ARE NOT TEMPORARY - They are P*E*R*M*A*N*E*N*T Progesterex was designed to sterilize horses. Any female that Takes it WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO CONCEIVE. The weasels can get this drug from anyone who is in the vet school or any university. It's that easy, and Progesterex is about to break out big on campuses everywhere. Believe it or not, there is even sites on the Internet telling people how to use it. Please forward this to everyone you know,especially girls. Be careful when you're out and don't leave your drink unattended. Please make the effort to forward this on to all you know... Guys, pls inform all your female friends and relatives. Thank You For Reading This Mail. --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030709/dd506504/attachment.html From agricola-w at netcologne.de Wed Jul 9 16:08:23 2003 From: agricola-w at netcologne.de (JavaMuseum) Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2003 12:38:23 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] [R]-[R]-[F] Festival - Version 1.0 Message-ID: [R]-[R]-[F] Festival - Version 1.0 www.newmediafest.org/rrf/ is launched online on 2 July 2003 on occasion of the participation in InteractivA '03 - Biennale for New Media Art at Museum of Contemporary Art Merida (Yucatan/Mexico)- 11 July - 28 September 2003 *************************** A short introduction to [R]-[R]-[F] - Remembering, Repressing, Forgetting > >From its structures, [R] - [R] - [F] - Festival is an experimental New Media art project in form of an online festival created, programmed and realized by Agricola de Cologne. Its central subject, abbreviated in the capital letters of the title, is "Remembering, Repressing, Forgetting". A new way of art working is practiced: networking as artworking. Experimental fields of memory are developed by inviting curators from different countries around the globe, eg directors of media festivals or curators specialized in New Media, who have to select a number of artists of their choice according the terms of the project. The dynamic of this ongoing and continously changing project, as it is set up for being presented in festivals and media exhibitions, manifests itself not only in the artistic online environment, especially created for [R] - [R] - [F] - Festival, but also progressing when for each new presentation a new project version is created, including new subject related aspects, new curators and new artists and new visualizations of the connected memory fields. Continuously expanding, these memory fields containing curators and artists of the previous project versions will be always present in the background while slowly a networking universe of collective memory comes up. The project uses the Internet not only as an artistic environment, but primarily also as a communicating medium and a data base which is closely connected to memory and loss of memory, thus the subject of the festival project. The Internet represents not only the ideal medium in many ways, but allows above that direct intercultural networking like no other medium. These invited, selecting and participating curators form the basis of Version 1.0 of [R] - [R] - [F] - Festival: *curator: Fran Ilich (Mexico, Mexico) artists: Ivan Monroy-Lopez, kdag, Judith Villamayor, Regina Célia Pinto *curator: Wilton Azevedo (Sao Paulo,Brazil) artists André Vallias, Chris Funkenhouser, Komninos Zervos, Tania Fraga *curator: Anna Hatziyannaki (Athens, Greece) artists: Makis Faros, Dimitris Zouroudis, Babis Venetopoulos Thanasis Beroutsos, Viki Betsou, Joyce Charis *curator: Branca Bencic (Pula, Croatia) artists: Lunar, Zhel, Shirin Kouladije, Elena Stanic, Olja Stipanovic, Karo Jelena Vukotic, Vanesa Turcinhodzic, Petar Brajnovic, Tomislav Brajnovic *curator: Vincent Makowski (Lille, France) artists: AL , Mauro Ceolin , Arthur X. Doyle, Wolf Kahlen, Cyril Rouge *curator: Eugeny Umansky (Kaliningrad, Russia) artists: Jevgeny Palamarchuk, Yuri Vasiliev, Alexey Tschebykin Anatoly Belov, Dmitry Bulnygin , Oleg Lystsov , Eugeny Umansky *Caterina Davinio (Rome-Milan, Italy) selected Panos Kouros, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Christina McPhee *curators: Agricola de Cologne, Melody Parker Carter (both Cologne, Germany) artists: URTICA, Trebor Scholz , Darko Fritz Ruth Catlow, Alex Dragulescu, Fernando Palmeiro, Paul Catanese, Isabel Saij, Tjader Knight Inc., Osvaldo Cibils *Leonard Latiff is the author of the essay published on occasion of [R] - [R] - [F] - Festival. All details and the artistic body of [R] - [R] - [F] - Festival can be found on [R] - [R] - [F] - Festival site: www.newmediafest.org/rrf/ [R]-[R]-[F] - Festival - 'Remembering-Repressing-Forgetting' New Media project in form of an 'online festival' - conception and realisation by Agricola de Cologne - copyright © 2003. All rights reserved. www.newmediafest.org/rrf/ General info rrf at newmediafest.org [R]-[R]-[F] - Festival represents the new festival environment of A Virtual Memorial - Memorial project against the Forgetting and for Humanity www.a-virtual-memorial.org which is a corporate member of NewMediaArtProjectNetwork, - the experimental platform for net based art - founded and created by Agricola de Cologne, media artist and New Media curator operating from Cologne/Germany. Thanks to ARTOPOS, Athens/Greece for the co-operation and hosting of the Greek art works curated by Anna Hatziyannakis, Press contacts: press at newmediafest.org *********************** ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Friday, July 04, 2003 9:16 PM Subject: Request to mailing list reader-list rejected > Your request to the reader-list mailing list > > Posting of your message titled "RRF Festival - Version 1.0" > > has been rejected by the list moderator. The moderator gave the > following reason for rejecting your request: > > " Your message was blocked because of one or more of the > following reasons: > > * It had an attachment > > * It wasn't written in plain text (i.e HTML etc) > > We generally do not accept messages with an attachment > or those which are not plain text. > > Also, please post such mails to announcements at sarai.net It will still > reach everyone on teh reader-list but will be flagged as an > annoucnement. > > best list-admin > " > > Any questions or comments should be directed to the list administrator > at: > > reader-list-admin at mail.sarai.net From trudy.lane at inet.hr Thu Jul 10 04:08:52 2003 From: trudy.lane at inet.hr (Trudy Lane) Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2003 14:38:52 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] / / A R T - e - F A C T / 02 Message-ID: / / A R T - e - F A C T / / STRATEGIES OF RESISTANCE / / A N N O U N C E M E N T / I N V I T A T I O N The first issue of ART-e-FACT, the online magazine instigated in Zagreb, Croatia, exposes the topic of illegal immigration in and around Europe through artworks, interviews, reports and other writings. These materials were developed largely through the collaborative and multi-disciplinary project, Motel Jezevo. In a similar way we are now developing the second issue around a discussion of the ideas and perceptions of Utopia. Our approach to this topic is outlined below, and we invite you to contact us with artwork or writing proposals that are rethinking and reshaping the subject of Utopia in the 21st century. Nada Beros, Editor-in-Chief Zarko Paic, Guest Editor You can visit us online at: http://artefact.mi2.hr/ or contact us at: info at artefact.mi2.hr / U T O P I A / Zarko Paic THE NEW CALL OF UTOPIA / Art-e-fact: a text of invitation for cooperation / With the theme simply entitled UTOPIA, Art-e-fact wishes to provoke an interaction between theoreticians and visual artists by posing a set of questions related to contemporary society/art. A self-confident artist in the age of conceptual-performative "upheavals" of the boundaries of social perversions of power (globalization, symbolic and real violence of capital on living labour as a subjugated substance-subject of history, bio-power of technology, terrorism and war as "transformational logic" of the new cartographies of the world) no longer has a WALL of monolith ideology in front of them. Can the utopian "being" and "thinking" from a deficiency of utopian perspectives of all our transitional, post-industrial, postmodern societies of general apathy not end up in the uncritical blindness of one ideology for the creation of "real" hope for the success of one's own utopia? How much longer can art as the new image of sub-version of social and cultural boundaries be outside the clear form of ideological discourse? Who are the relevant contemporary thinkers of utopia at all? Why does every form of opposition to the governing neoliberal system of imperial globalization have no real utopian perspective? How to oppose the international movement of "cosmopolitan internationalism of capital" more than the abstract non-power of the resurrection of the icons of the student revolution of '68 (NGO, civil society, zones of cosmopolitan culture of non-violence and peace)? The new call of utopia no longer has a reason for escaping to a deserted island. There is no reason for the late discovery of any kind of eastern exoticism. In the global world of the one and same ideology ­neoliberal fundamentalism of capital, power, new religions of pleasure ­ which now assumes the contours of the eternal, universal and "natural" civilization ­ the last escape has already been carried out. This is the escapism of spirit of unbearably shallow hybridity of culture and the so-called individual salvation in New Age ideology of the Age of Aquarius. Utopia today? Is that not real ground for live criticism, the irreducibility of anything previously utopian issued in the name of the future as the history of salvation (communism, anarchism, libertinism and last but not least ­ utopian socialism) which in the 20th century unavoidably transformed itself into its opposite? How to envision utopia, and not run away from society's real repression/depression into a ghetto or exile for fantastic outsiders? From Mark.Bowling at MediaDirection.co.nz Thu Jul 10 02:35:30 2003 From: Mark.Bowling at MediaDirection.co.nz (Mark Bowling) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 09:05:30 +1200 Subject: [Reader-list] Shocking!! Message-ID: Not to worry though as this is only a hoax.... a quick search on the net will confirm -----Original Message----- From: Rumman Hameed [mailto:rummanhameed at yahoo.com] Sent: Wednesday, 9 July 2003 8:50 p.m. To: reader-list at sarai.net Cc: Sada; DSE Subject: [Reader-list] Shocking!! The story pasted below comes from Mumbai, and i found it truly shocking. Rumman ************ True Story ... A woman at a Gas nightclub (Mumbai) on Saturday night was taken by 5 men, who according to hospital and police reports, gang raped her before dumping her at Bandstand Mumbai. Unable to remember the events of the evening, tests later confirmed the repeat rapes along with traces of rohypnol in her blood. Progesterex, that is an essentially a small sterilization pill. The drug is now being used by rapists at parties to rape AND sterilize their victims. Progesterex is available to vets to sterilize large animals. Rumour has it that the Progesterex is being used together with Rohypnol, the date rape drug. As with Rohypnol, all they have to do is drop it into the girl's drink. The girl can't remembe r a thing the next morning, of all that had taken place the night before. Progesterex, which dissolves in drinks just as easily, is such that the victim doesn't conceive from the rape and the rapist needn't worry about having paternity test identifying him months later. The drug's effects ARE NOT TEMPORARY - They are P*E*R*M*A*N*E*N*T Progesterex was designed to sterilize horses. Any female that Takes it WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO CONCEIVE. The weasels can get this drug from anyone who is in the vet school or any university. It's that easy, and Progesterex is about to break out big on campuses everywhere. Believe it or not, there is even sites on the Internet telling people how to use it. Please forward this to everyone you know,especially girls. Be careful when you're out and don't leave your drink unattended. Please make the effort to forward this on to all you know... Guys, pls inform all your female friends and relatives. Thank You For Reading This Mail. _____ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! ************************************************************************ This e-mail message and any attachments may contain privileged or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, you must not peruse, use, pass on or copy this message or any attachments to any person or company. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify us by return email, delete it immediately and destroy any printed copies. Opinions, conclusions, and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of this company shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by it. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030710/eef8c82b/attachment.html From alokrai at iitd.ernet.in Thu Jul 10 03:36:39 2003 From: alokrai at iitd.ernet.in (alokrai at iitd.ernet.in) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 03:36:39 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] Shocking!! In-Reply-To: <20030709085013.48860.qmail@web21102.mail.yahoo.com> References: <200307081722.25636.faizan@sarai.net> <20030709085013.48860.qmail@web21102.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49887.217.44.144.216.1057788399.squirrel@www.cse.iitd.ernet.in> This URL has something that complicates the story below: http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/progesterex.htm Make what you can of it. > The story pasted below comes from Mumbai, and i found it truly shocking. > Rumman > > ************ > > True Story ... > > A woman at a Gas nightclub (Mumbai) on Saturday night was taken by 5 > men, > who according to hospital and police reports, gang raped her > before > dumping her at Bandstand Mumbai. Unable to remember the events of > the > evening, tests later confirmed the repeat rapes along with > traces of > rohypnol in her blood. Progesterex, that is an essentially a small > sterilization pill. The drug is now being used by rapists at parties > to > rape AND sterilize their victims. Progesterex is available to vets to > sterilize large animals. > > Rumour has it that the Progesterex is being used together with > Rohypnol, > the date rape drug. As with Rohypnol, all they have to do is drop it > into > the girl's drink. The girl can't remember a thing the next morning, of > all > that had taken place the night before. Progesterex, which dissolves > in > drinks just as easily, is such that the victim doesn't conceive from > the > rape and the rapist needn't worry about having paternity test > identifying > him months later. > > The drug's effects ARE NOT TEMPORARY - They are P*E*R*M*A*N*E*N*T > > Progesterex was designed to sterilize horses. Any female that Takes it > WILL > NEVER BE ABLE TO CONCEIVE. The weasels can get this drug from anyone > who is > in the vet school or any university. It's that easy, and Progesterex > is > about to break out big on campuses everywhere. Believe it or not, > there > is even sites on the Internet telling people how to use it. > > Please forward this to everyone you know,especially girls. Be > careful > when you're out and don't leave your drink unattended. Please make the > effort to forward this on to all you know... > Guys, pls inform all your female friends and relatives. > > Thank You For Reading This Mail. > > > > > --------------------------------- > Do you Yahoo!? > SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! From kanti.kumar at oneworld.net Thu Jul 10 15:07:28 2003 From: kanti.kumar at oneworld.net (Kanti Kumar) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 14:37:28 +0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Communication rights, censorship, privacy issues: New discussion topics Message-ID: <118870-2200374109728414@oneworld.net> Dear Friend, Greetings from South Asia. We now have a new topic up for discussion in our forum 'Information Society: Voices from the South' on Digital Opportunity Channel. Your contributions to the discussions on the first topic of 'Knowledge Societies' had been immensely useful and have been added to our report too. Please see the report at http://www.digitalopportunity.org/fulltext/IS_summary1_knowledgesocie ty.htm The new topic is: "Issues of Rights, Freedom, Laws and Ethics: How to address these for the development of Information Society in the South?" We've split the topic into the following sub-topic so that we can proceed in a systematic way and can bring in some fruitful outcomes... 1. Freedom of expression, censorship: How do these affect the Information Society? 2. Communication rights at Individual and Country level: examples, case studies and experiences 3. Privacy issues, data protection, and surveillance: How these can be preserved? 4. Intellectual Property Rights issues, Global Information Commons: Do developing countries need to take these seriously? 5. Free/Open Source Software: Can these be alternative to development? We request your valuable inputs to the forum where we trying to configure the issues, challenges and opportunities related to rights, freedom, laws and ethics that vary from country to country in the South. You are best placed in putting in these ideas based on your diverse nature of geographical representation. Please bring in examples, views, notes, and opinions with regard to these issues and take part in the debate and discussion. Based on the inputs that you provide, we can design campaign ideas and advocacy with relevant groups so that such issues are brought into the light of pressure groups and decision makers. Even if you think, the topic isn't that important for us, please express that too and explain why you think so. If you are already in the forum, post your messages to IS at dgroups.org If you have not joined the forum yet, please sign up at http://www.digitalopportunity.org/discussion/signup Or, simply send a blank mail to join-IS at dgroups.org Hope to see you participate in the discussions in the forum at http://www.dgroups.org/groups/IS Best regards and please feel free to contact us if you need any clarification. Kanti Kumar Editor, Digital Opportunity Channel www.digitalopportunity.org OneWorld South Asia Partha Pratim Sarker Moderator, IS Discussion Forum Co-Editor, Bytes for All partha at bytesforall.org From ravis at sarai.net Thu Jul 10 16:30:25 2003 From: ravis at sarai.net (Ravi Sundaram) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 16:30:25 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] the 404 error story Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20030710162837.02168008@pop3.norton.antivirus> The war on the web Anthony Cox describes how his spoof error page turned into a 'Google bomb' for weapons of mass destruction Anthony Cox Wednesday July 09 2003 The Guardian I had always wondered how those viral emails or amusing web page addresses forwarded to me built up such momentum. Little did I know that I would be responsible for one of the most successful internet memes this year, and be accused of developing a so-called "Google bomb" of mass destruction. In early February, I was reading online a Guardian article about Hans Blix's problems obtaining cooperation in Iraq. Immediately after, I was confronted with the ubiquitous 404 error page, which usually tells the reader that a website is unavailable. With this serendipitous inspiration in mind, along with a text editor and some fiddling in a graphics package, I created a spoof 404 "weapons of mass destruction" error page. Saddam would have been proud; the page was deployed and operational well within 45 minutes. After favourable comments from friends, I posted it in the newsgroup uk.rec.humour. Within the next 24 hours, the website had had 150,000 hits and had propagated to 118 newsgroups. By the end of February, it had received more than one million page impressions. Perhaps the ultimate accolade was having the original email come back to me with a note saying: "Have you seen this?" Visits declined throughout the subsequent war, and I suspected its 15MB of fame had passed. Yet, suddenly, in the first four days of July I received nearly 4m page impressions, more than the previous five months combined. The reason? Typing "weapons of mass destruction" in Google and hitting the "I'm feeling lucky" button did not bring up Number 10's "dodgy dossier", but my spoof site. Suddenly, it was a lot funnier and accessible: even Google couldn't find the WMD. The first Google bomb was created by Adam Mathes in 2001. He exploited Google's page ranking system to return a friend's website when the words "talentless hack" were used as a search term. He used a multitude of pages linking to his friend's site, with the specific term "talentless hack". Even though his friend's site did not contain the search term itself, after calling upon others to insert such links into their sites, the Google bomb found its target. Google's page ranking treats links as votes for a website, and both the number and the importance of the link helps increase the ranking of a site. My site had steadily increased its ranking, including a link from the Channel 4 news website and the Guardian, but perhaps the majority were from personal pages, discussion boards and blogs. However, this was not a deliberate attempt to use Google to make a political point. This Google bomb was slowly and unknowingly built, and only by chance coincided with the accusations that intelligence documents had been "sexed up". Last Friday, bloggers really picked up on it and it was the highest linked to page in weblogs according to Daypop.com. On Monday, however, a search for "weapons of mass destruction" sent you to a White House strategy document, which might be seen as a step forward for Google users and perhaps the White House. Then on Tuesday my page was back at the top, so it may have been a glitch at Google, rather than a deliberate decision to drop the site. This is a problem for Google: weblogs have been accused of causing "noise" in their searches. Instead of providing good original source material, reams of musings from bloggers are returned. The success of my WMD page underlines a problem Google needs to address. Sure it's funny, but if you wanted documents on WMD, is that what you really expect from a search engine? I have received about 200 emails from such diverse sources as United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and serving soldiers in the Gulf. Even those critical of the perceived anti-war message thought it was funny. One of the more offensive messages called me a cowardly little boy and stated: "I am grateful to the almighty that not all Englishmen are slithering bottom-feeders." Ironically, I was not against the war, my views on the war being similar to those of journalist David Aaronovitch and MP Ann Clwyd. But if you are going to make a topical joke, then Bush is an obvious and easy target. · Anthony Cox is a pharmacist at the West Midlands Adverse Drug Reaction Monitoring Centre and a teaching fellow at Aston University. He also writes a blog on drug safety at www.blacktriangle.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030710/7630cf88/attachment.html From arcotpune at now-india.net.in Thu Jul 10 17:58:25 2003 From: arcotpune at now-india.net.in (geetanjali srikantan) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 17:58:25 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Shocking!! References: <20030709085013.48860.qmail@web21102.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <002a01c346de$c316ef10$3bcec3cb@comp> check out this website- seems interesting http://www.urbanlegends.com/ulz/progesterex.html > ----- Original Message ----- From: Rumman Hameed To: reader-list at sarai.net Cc: Sada ; DSE Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2003 2:20 PM Subject: [Reader-list] Shocking!! The story pasted below comes from Mumbai, and i found it truly shocking. Rumman ************ True Story ... A woman at a Gas nightclub (Mumbai) on Saturday night was taken by 5 men, who according to hospital and police reports, gang raped her before dumping her at Bandstand Mumbai. Unable to remember the events of the evening, tests later confirmed the repeat rapes along with traces of rohypnol in her blood. Progesterex, that is an essentially a small sterilization pill. The drug is now being used by rapists at parties to rape AND sterilize their victims. Progesterex is available to vets to sterilize large animals. Rumour has it that the Progesterex is being used together with Rohypnol, the date rape drug. As with Rohypnol, all they have to do is drop it into the girl's drink. The girl can't remembe r a thing the next morning, of all that had taken place the night before. Progesterex, which dissolves in drinks just as easily, is such that the victim doesn't conceive from the rape and the rapist needn't worry about having paternity test identifying him months later. The drug's effects ARE NOT TEMPORARY - They are P*E*R*M*A*N*E*N*T Progesterex was designed to sterilize horses. Any female that Takes it WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO CONCEIVE. The weasels can get this drug from anyone who is in the vet school or any university. It's that easy, and Progesterex is about to break out big on campuses everywhere. Believe it or not, there is even sites on the Internet telling people how to use it. Please forward this to everyone you know,especially girls. Be careful when you're out and don't leave your drink unattended. Please make the effort to forward this on to all you know... Guys, pls inform all your female friends and relatives. Thank You For Reading This Mail. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030710/2ec7e842/attachment.html From faizan at sarai.net Thu Jul 10 21:22:51 2003 From: faizan at sarai.net (Faizan Ahmed) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 21:22:51 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: [AMUNetwork] IALI Political Training Conference - San Francisco Message-ID: <200307102122.51111.faizan@sarai.net> ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: [AMUNetwork] IALI Political Training Conference - San Francisco Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2003 20:56:08 -0000 From: AMUNetwork To: AMUNetwork at yahoogroups.com "The mission of the Indian American Leadership Initiative is to identify, train and fund Indian American leaders for elected and/or appointed office. Our ten year plan calls for a transformation of the community from general political awareness to activism at all levels of the political spectrum." ====================================================================== To learn more and to register for this conference, please go to: http://www.ialipac.org/Conference%20Invitation.htm ====================================================================== Three days remaining for early bird pricing for the San Francisco Indian-American Political Training & Networking Conference. WHEN: Saturday, July 26, 2003, 8a.m.-5p.m. WHERE: Practicing Law Institute (PLI), 685 Market, San Francisco, CA REGISTRATION: Only $50 if register online by July 10. Limited to 175 registrants. To learn more and to register for this conference, please go to: http://www.ialipac.org/Conference%20Invitation.htm Whether you have ever thought about running for office yourself, or want to get more involved with political campaigns, you should consider attending this Political Training and Networking Conference sponsored by the Indian American Leadership Initiative (IALI). Feel free to forward this message to others you think might be interested. This promises to be a great conference with speakers and attendees from all across California and the country. - ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Inkjet cartridges up to 80% off. HP, Epson, Lexmark--we have your brand. Free shipping on every order to the U.S. and Canada! Excellent service. http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5510 http://us.click.yahoo.com/QWB0QC/.eUGAA/ySSFAA/sUXolB/TM - ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> When posting a message please include the Subject heading and your full name, highest degree from Aligarh, year of graduation, and present location. Messages without this information will not be approved and no further reminders will be sent. Visit us at: http://www.aligs.org Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ - ------------------------------------------------------- From faizan at sarai.net Thu Jul 10 21:36:01 2003 From: faizan at sarai.net (Faizan Ahmed) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 21:36:01 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Babri Masjid and Crisis of Archaeology Message-ID: <200307102136.01536.faizan@sarai.net> Hi all, Here is an interesting article by Prof. Irfan Habib that has appeared in 'Hindustan Times' addressing the Babri Masjid issue.....Please go through it. Best Faizan. Crisis of Archaeology Prof. Irfan Habib, Historian Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh July 5 Among the twenty issues framed in what is now termed the Ramjanmbhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute, evidence is being currently taken on the second issue at a Special Bench of the Allahabad High Court, at Lucknow. This is whether there was a Hindu temple at the disputed site before the Babri Masjid was built, and “if so, its impact on the case”. While much evidence has been taken, as offered by the parties, the Bench decided to collect evidence on its own as well — by having the disputed site dug up to find whether or not there had actually been a temple below the mosque. To a lay person this decision might seem to weaken the force of the order of status quo that had been imposed by the Supreme Court. That this possibility also partly weighed with the High Court was reflected in its decision to obtain a geophysical survey of the site before actually ordering the excavation. The work of the survey was entrusted (at the invitation of the Archaeological Survey of India, ASI) to Tojo-Vikas International (Pvt) Limited, a company based at Kalkaji, New Delhi, with no previous known experience in archaeological work. In its report the conclusion was announced that the ‘anomalies’ “could be associated with ancient and contemporaneous structures such as pillars, foundation walls, slab flooring, extending over a large portion of the site.” The word ‘pillars’ immediately suggested to many the existence of temple pillars, and little attention was paid to the fact that on page 26 of its report the company expressly cautioned that when it said ‘pillars’ there could actually be no pillars underneath, but just debris or a boulder of a certain size! In the event not a single pillar has turned up in the excavations of the entire site, except for one belonging to the Babri Masjid’s own structure, one that had been broken by the karsevaks while demolishing the mosque. Subsequently, even the ASI had to note repeatedly that structures predicted by Tojo-Vikas through its reported ‘anomalies’, did not in most cases match with what was found upon actual digging. Yet it was the Tojo-Vikas report which became the basis for the High Court’s orders on March 5 this year, requiring the ASI to begin excavations immediately. Now any archaeological excavation is an act not only of exploration, but also of destruction. One has to disturb, remove and demolish what lies in the upper layers in order to reach the lower. It has therefore, to be weighed very carefully whether what one is likely to get below is worth as much as what one necessarily destroys. At Mohenjo Daro, the great site of the Indus Civilization, a ruined Buddhist stupa of no artistic merit stands above a crucial part of the Citadel of the earlier city. Below it might well lie an important Indus monument. Yet till date no proposal to dig through the stupa ruins has been countenanced. This aspect was totally ignored in the excavations at Ayodhya. The entire surkhi-polished original floor of the Babri Masjid, as laid out in 1528, was removed together with most of the remaining lower parts of its walls. Whatever the karsevaks had not been able to demolish in December 1992 has thus now been destroyed. There can be no justification for such destruction under any recognised principle of archaeology. Such being the case, what we have seen at Ayodhya is just ‘crisis archaeology’ (a term used, tongue-in-cheek, for the Ayodhya excavations by the US journal Archaeology, May-June 2003). The crisis has been for archaeology itself: would the ASI perform in such circumstances as a professional body, or simply set its sights at finding what those in power wish it to find out: the remains of a temple? There is good reason to believe that the latter has, indeed, been the case. Once the digging began, the ASI team’s object seemingly has been to look mainly for stones, bricks or artefacts that could conceivably come from a temple and to forget everything else. No use of the flotation technique to sieve out seeds, bone fragments and other minute pieces of material has been made, so that much of the excavation from an archaeological point of view has gone waste. There has been a tendency to ignore medieval ‘Muslim’ glazed ware and animal bones; the High Court had especially to direct on March 26 that such wares and bones be recorded and separately preserved. It will be seen from the ASI’s three reports so far submitted to the Court that it has still paid scant attention to such finds. One suspects that this is because these constitute strong evidence against the existence of a temple at the time at the site. Now that the ASI has excavated the site for over three and a half months, and given its ‘progress reports’ to the Court for periods ending April 24, June 5 and June 19, it has become amply clear that despite practically the entire disputed site having been dug up, no structural or sculptural remains identifiable with those of a temple have been found. For one thing, lime mortar and surkhi, the recognised marks of Muslim construction, are present in practically all the excavated walls. The strong inference that the floor found below the Babri Masjid’s own floor and the walls connected with it, belonged to an earlier mosque has now been confirmed with the find of the base of an arched recess (mihrab) and of arched niche (taq) in a connected wall. The find of lime -mortar and surkhi down to the lowest layers of brickwork at Ramchabutra sets at rest speculation about any pre-Muslim construction under it. An inscription which gave some momentary excitement has turned out to be in modern Devanagari, of no sacred import. It is now left to the ASI to make the best of what it called ‘structural bases’ in its first ‘progress report’, but which in the next two reports have miraculously turned into ‘pillar bases’. As described in the first report these are formed by “squarish or circular blocks of calcrete stone over three or four courses of brickbats”. What is astonishing about the nomenclature adopted for them by the ASI is that in not a single instance are these ‘bases’ associated with any pillar, in fact, as we have noted, no pillars (or fragments of them) have been found. There are not even any marks of depression on the surface of the stones surmounting the so-called bases. In any case how can mere heaps of brickbats, uncemented by mortar, carry any kind of weight? To call them ‘pillar bases’ or even ‘structural bases’ is absurd. They could just be low seats or, in some cases, markers for shops or stalls as in the Lal Darwaza Masjid at Jaunpur. The fact that some of these ‘bases’ are sealed, while others are not, by the original floor of the Babri Masjid, shows that they belong to different times, and most of them are demonstrably subsequent to the phases of mosque construction at the site. These ‘pillar bases’ have another feature: they are easy to assemble. A series of complaints have been submitted to the judicial observers appointed by the Court on May 21 and subsequently, showing how brickbats that lay scattered under lime-surkhi floor of the Masjid, along with sandstone blocks, obviously to provide a stable base for the floor, have been re-arranged by the ASI excavators to provide evidence for ‘pillar bases’. Many of these ‘pillar bases’ are, therefore, likely to be not genuine at all. It is saddening that one should be obliged to speak in this manner of the work of the ASI that was once an institution in which the country could take justifiable pride. Today, one can only say that if it did not do worse at Ayodhya, part of the credit goes to the numerous archaeologists from many places in India, who maintained a constant vigil at the excavations. They did so only out of a loyalty to their profession and to secular values. When one thinks of them, one cannot help feeling sentimental about a country which, amidst all its troubles, can still bring forth such men and women. Sentiment must, however, also nestle with cynicism. Now that the excavations have proved such a disappointment one suddenly hears once again the demand for ‘compromise’. Both the time and circumstances make the demand most suspect. Now that everything has been destroyed and dug up, why not just wait for the court verdict and obey the law? (The writer is one of India's most eminent Historians.) --------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------- From cugambetta at yahoo.com Fri Jul 11 17:22:54 2003 From: cugambetta at yahoo.com (Curt Gambetta) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 04:52:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Digital Shoplifting Message-ID: <20030711115254.89898.qmail@web12205.mail.yahoo.com> I came across this on the BBC a few nights ago. Apparently, to give one example, women have been using their camera-equipped cell phones in Japan to capture hair styles in magazines they fancy and show them to a hairdresser or friend for an opinion (one among many 'crimes,' many revolving around voyeurism). This has been dubbed "digital shoplifting," and the Japanses Magazine Publisher's Assocation has launched a public awareness campaign, because they feel they are being cheated... now people won't buy the magazines (perhaps now the magazines 'under threat' will have to overhaul, even improve their written content to lure readers...) The BBC link is below, and any google search will bring about countless links if you seek more information... -curt http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3031716.stm __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com From zipzap_2k at yahoo.com Sat Jul 12 17:17:41 2003 From: zipzap_2k at yahoo.com (Anamika Bhatnagar) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 04:47:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Attention please! In-Reply-To: <20030712042829.12640.5132.Mailman@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20030712114741.69040.qmail@web41605.mail.yahoo.com> Hi to everyone on the reader list I am a final year student of MA Mass Communication from AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia. As part of my course, I am making my final degree film on issues concerning women�s rights and the feminist movement. My film deals with the silence of metropolitan public on issues of crime, molestation and harassment against women. It aims to explore the aspects of why the people have actively chosen to stay silent on such grose and disturbing incidents. There is a dearth of active public intervention and concern and increasingly it is becoming a part of our regular day to day lives. As part of the narrative structure of the film I am dealing with two diametrically opposite case studies, the MAMC rape case and Sunita Chaddha�s killing. As of now, I am looking for reading material, guidance in terms of research and content development for this film. The script is still being developed and I would like to share it with all those who are even remotely interested in this subject. I think that the more one discusses and shares about issues such as the one above, it helps one to enrich his/her understanding and grasp over the issues under concern. Therefore I would strongly encourage all of you who subscribe to the reader list to correspond, contribute, write to me about what you think of the two issues or if you would like to know more about my film. I am also looking for guidance in terms of research material, videotapes, archival footage or people who have been involved with this issue or the two cases in either personal or professional capacity. I would encourage you all to feel free and correspond with me on this issue. Thank you all so much for all the time and interest Anamika Bhatnagar __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com From aiindex at mnet.fr Sat Jul 12 18:44:52 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 14:14:52 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Press release | VHP attack on filmmaker Gopal Menon and his team Message-ID: Press release Date: 12 July 2003 Contact: "K.P. Sasi" India: Reality Check On IT Masters or cyber-coolies? By Praful Bidwai [July 7 2003] The success of India's information technology (IT) industry and related businesses has produced such a euphoric and exuberant reaction that some of its more enthusiastic celebrants have already declared India a "knowledge-based society" and "information superpower" which qualifies it for a special global status. This "knowledge-based" description sounds odd, to put it mildly, in a society in which almost half the population is illiterate, the general level of skills very low, and transmission of knowledge severely restricted by the hierarchies of class, caste and gender. India's computer software export boom has admittedly been an impressive success story, with annual growth rates of 40 percent or more over the past decade. It has contributed significantly to India's foreign exchange reserves. But euphoria over it could be misplaced--not only because growth has now slowed down to 26 percent, according to the latest figures. IT certainly contributes in growing measure to the Indian economy, but it remains an "island" phenomenon. It cannot drive the entire country into another epoch or "stage" of development. There are three reasons for saying this. First, the computer software business remains extremely (80 percent-plus) export-dependent. This is even truer of information technology-enabled services (ITES) like call centres and medical transcription, and business process outsourcing (BPO), which are now growing at twice the speed of software exports. The best or most informed estimate of the size of India's indigenous information technology sector, including hardware and domestic software, is that it accounts for less than 2 percent of GDP. By contrast, trade and hospitality alone account for 15 percent of GDP. Even in external sector accounts, software exports ($7.2 billion) still contribute less than remittances, mainly from poor workers in the Gulf ($8.1 billion). Even if the ITES/BPO business grows five- or eight-fold over the coming five years, as optimistic projections estimate, its contribution to India's GDP will remain relatively small. Second, despite their meteoric rise, most IT companies are puny even by Indian corporate standards, with their sales turnover usually within some hundreds of crores of rupees, or in the top range, a few thousand crores--as compared to tens of thousands for manufacturing sector majors. It is only now, this year, that India's largest IT company, Tata Consultancy Services, joined the "One Billion Club", with revenues exceeding Rs. 4,800 crores. Other IT giants, like Infosys and Wipro, have even lower revenues (Rs. 3,323 crores and Rs. 4,334 crores respectively). Only four IT companies figure in the Economic Times list of India's top 100 corporations (rated by sales). IT companies' profits are high, share prices stellar, and market capitalisation spectacular. But their economic size and influence are rather limited. And third, the geographical distribution of India's IT business is extremely uneven. The maldistribution bears no relationship to the uneven spread of literacy, education and other human development indicators, or to infrastructure development. For instance, of the total exports of computer software and electronics hardware, the South alone accounts for over 50 percent, with the North coming a distant second (26 percent), and the East lagging at a pitiable 2 percent. If Delhi and adjoining parts of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana are excluded, the North's share falls to an embarrassing 4 percent. The South has always taken the lead in IT, with Karnataka alone claiming half the region's share. Yet, there are no signs that these huge disparities are narrowing. This too does not speak of a national-level driving force or "growth engine". There are other basic constraints on IT growth too, such as poor infrastructure, low telecom density (just 5 out of 100 Indians are connected), and one of the poorest levels of penetration of computers (less than 6 machines per one thousand people, as compared to China's 19). Many IT strategists pin their hopes on the relatively rapid recent expansion of IT-enabled services. Their growth spurted last year by 59 percent to touch Rs. 11,300 crores (of a total of Rs. 46,100 crores for the IT sector as a whole, which grew by 26 percent). ITES-BPO now contributes a quarter of India's IT exports and has created 160,000 jobs. ITES boasts of a 65:35 female-male employment ratio and also a fair amount of indirect job creation. According to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), ITES "has the potential of creating one million direct jobs by 2008" largely through outsourcing or farming out of business from the West. India has emerged as the preferred ITES outsourcing destination ahead of China, Russia, and many other countries because of advantages like low costs, language, scalability, and stability of policy, according to investment banking research firm Brean Murrary Research. In its report, "Secular Megatrends: India -- Software Outsourcing Superpower", the firm says India should adopt the outsourcing model as a "strategic necessity". This projection is based on the fact that top firms like Infosys and Wipro have recently signed large contracts in the $20 million to $100 million range with big US manufacturing companies. However, even here, hope is running up against social obstacles. The greatest of these is rising awareness in the Western countries that India's ITES has grown largely because of outsourcing and transfer of jobs. For instance, well-known consultant Forrester Research estimates that 3.3 million service-sector jobs will have left the US by 2015, perhaps half of them to India. Another firm (Deloitte) predicts that ITES operators in the First World will move two million jobs to low-wage countries over the next five years, again mostly to India. Similarly, in Britain, The Sunday Times carried the "shock and horror" headline: "Banks prepare to shift 200,000 jobs to India". This has so alarmed British trade unionists that they have decided to launch a campaign against India's call centres and software industry which, they feel, are big "job-snatchers". These are not all "crying-wolf" scare stories. In the US, Silicon Valley programmer Kevin Flanagan recently shot himself to death, because he couldn't face the prospect of losing his job to outsourcing. Ironically, before being given the marching orders, the programmer helped train the very same Indian workers who were supposed to take over his job. Flanagan's suicide was an extreme step. But his circumstances were by no means exceptional. He was one of some 800,000 Americans who have lost their jobs to outsourcing in the past year alone. No wonder this has prompted legislators in New Jersey to ban the export of IT-related state contracts to other countries. Other American states (Missouri, Connecticut, Washington, Maryland) are also moving in that direction. It won't be easy to prevent such curbs--despite US rhetoric about "free markets". Livelihoods are at stake. The basic reason why India is seen as an outsourcing "threat" is simple. In the US, it costs $43,000 to hire a full-time employee in the ITES business. The cost of an Indian employee is $6,180, or seven times lower. Because of time-zone difference, India can provide round-the-clock service on all days of the week. (There need be no closures on weekends). The average Indian employee's productivity is high. Big companies like General Electric report 85 to 92 percent-plus "satisfaction" ratings for its Indian employees. There is a relatively large pool of English-speaking low-skilled manpower in India. All this makes India a Western corporate attraction--and an IT worker's nightmare! The crux, the key, is low wages. That's the bottom-line! India's ITES-BPO, like its computer software business, is heavily concentrated in low-paid jobs and low value-addition segments. Indian companies have developed very few finished, marketable software products, selling which generates the cream. They tend to develop components or sub-packages/assemblies/programmes that go into the final products made and marketed by US companies. Thus, a good proportion of the sub-programmes in Windows 95 and 98 were developed by Indian engineers. But it's Mr Bill Gates who skimmed off the profits! The situation is even worse at the level of call centres. Here, young women and men work painfully long hours practising cultivated American accents to sell products they have never seen or give invisible customers information they don't remotely comprehend (e.g. about a restaurant's location in Memphis, Tennessee)--all for a pittance. This disembodied, alienating relationship to work, and low levels of skills and wages--lower than even a bank chaprasi's--are turning these people into almost mindless cyber-coolies. This is not something we should be proud of--no more than the Chinese should be proud of producing low-cost goods thanks to repressed, non-union, low-wage labour. If we want to get into high-end, high-value-added services, which alone can upgrade our people's skills while raising their incomes and redistributing new wealth, we must set our sights high. That implies ambitious goals for manpower training, skill generation, backward-region development (through the conscious creation of new jobs in Bihar or Punjab), export content rules, etc. We can't let Western companies do that for us. Setting our goals in accordance with our people's needs and resources is the only way we can move from being cyber-coolies with no rights and little security, to dignified, respected workers who control the labour processes they work under.--end-- -- From menso at r4k.net Mon Jul 14 06:57:09 2003 From: menso at r4k.net (Menso Heus) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 03:27:09 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] The Empire Strikes Back Message-ID: <20030714012709.GG57329@r4k.net> Belgium has decided to drop the genocide law under pressure of the US. The genocide law made it possible for people to prosecute war criminals from all over the world. The US didn't like this and threatened to move the NATO headquarters from Belgium, after which the fresh Belgium parliament decided to drop te law (after having offered the US to change it several times already). People wanted to bring Bush, Rumsfeld and Franks to Belgium court. Sharon is also happy the law has been dropped, since he was on the list of war criminals also. The new Belgium government decided to take parts of the genocide law in the regular Belgium law, basically rendering it useless for prosecution of war criminals, since Western countries are excluded, as are heads of state and diplomats. Empire - Belgium, 1-0. -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image - Stephen Hawking -------------------------------------------------------------------------- From ranita at sarai.net Fri Jul 4 19:51:25 2003 From: ranita at sarai.net (ranita) Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 19:51:25 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Fwd: Subaltern Studies - Call for Papers Message-ID: <200307041951.25037.ranita@sarai.net> CALL FOR PAPERS LIVES OF DEMOCRACY: Peoples, Populations, Citizens in South Asia A Subaltern Studies Conference It has been acknowledged in recent times that the actual practices of democracy and political mobilization are closely linked to and influenced by the ways in which governmental practices define and classify populations as targets of their policies. It has also been argued that political mobilizations based on such identification and classifications have promoted identity politics, with movements increasingly organized along caste, tribe, language, gender, religion, ethnicity etc. On the other hand, the workings of democracy have opened up new arena of mass politics that often acquire their own logic and rhythm, producing outcomes that were unanticipated by elite and governmental designs. The entry of untutored masses into the democratic political arena thus opens up a whole series of questions about the relationship between the institutional practices of democratic governance and the 'people'. It is said that these movements undermine the classical idea of democracy as the political participation of citizens - as individuals or in the collective form of a people. Is this charge correct? Is there a tension between the institutional practices of democracy and popular politics, nurtured within a different set of beliefs? Do identity-based mobilizations also carry the moral imprint of movements of the people? Can popular democratic aspirations be pursued through the politics of identity? The Seventh Subaltern Studies Conference, to be held at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies [CSDS], Delhi, on January 6,7, 8 and 9, 2004, will be concerned with these issues. The conference is being organized jointly by Lokniti, CSDS, and the Subaltern Studies Collective. Besides the members of the Subaltern Studies Collective, about 15 scholars will be invited to present their papers on the basis of their abstract. Students and scholars without any institutional affiliation are also welcome to submit an abstract. Papers may address the theme of the conference in historical, theoretical or contemporary modes and may relate to the national, the regional or the local. The abstract should not be more than 500-600 words and should be submitted by August 15, 2003 to Aditya Nigam, CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054 India. Email: aditya at sarai.net. Scholars invited to present papers should submit their final papers by November 15, 2003. The invited South Asian scholars will be paid their travel expenses and provided accommodation and local hospitality for attending the conference. Aditya Nigam Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi-110054 Tel: 2250 2784 (R), 2394 2199, 2395 1190 (O) ------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From marnoldm at du.edu Sat Jul 5 12:07:04 2003 From: marnoldm at du.edu (Michael Arnold Mages) Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2003 00:37:04 -0600 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] July on -empyre-: Net Blackness with Mendi + Keith Obadike and damali ayo Message-ID: -empyre- takes great pleasure in welcoming three artists whose work explores the politics of race and identity. The plasticity of identity over the internet is a well known phenomenon. Internet utopians exalt in a genderless, colorless society that is available only though a digital medium. However, race remains a inextricably formative part of identity, and plays a central, contextualizing role in the nature of communication and social discourse. In the zealous search for terrorists, racial profiling has become a tool of US security agencies, and more palatable to that nation's population. Skin color has again become an acceptable way to identify those that may pose a threat to the hegemonic culture. Increasingly, the questions that surround stereotyped or commodified portrayals of race and ethnicity require satisfactory answers. Please join us at -empyre- for the month of July, to participate in the discussion where artists Mendi and Keith Obadike, and damali ayo explore and debate these issues. ---- Mendi and Keith Obadike are interdisciplinary artists working with music, live art, and conceptual internet artworks. Their works conduct inquiry into the implications of social and cultural networks as relates to blackness. Other areas of exploration include sex toys, current events, and commodification of race and identity. In August of 2002, they exhibited The Interaction of Coloreds, commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art. At Yale University Mendi and Keith premiered their Internet opera The Sour Thunder, which was commissioned by the Yale Cabaret and will be released on CD by the classical music label Bridge Records. The Interaction of Coloreds http://www.whitney.org/artport/gatepages/august02.shtml Blackness for Sale http://Obadike.tripod.com/ebay.html The Sour Thunder http://blacknetart.com/sour damali ayo is a self-described junk artist--defining junk as "things we once bought (or bought into) and keep around because we are accustomed to their presence." Working from her studio in Portland, Oregon, ayo uses installation, assemblage, sound, paint, fabric whatever it takes to investigate concepts that engage her curiosity as well as social and community issues in the US. Her most recent online work, http://www.rent-a-negro.com/ is a performance work enabled by the internet. -- Subscribe to -empyre- at: http://www.subtle.net/empyre/ -- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From arcotpune at now-india.net.in Thu Jul 10 18:06:03 2003 From: arcotpune at now-india.net.in (geetanjali srikantan) Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 18:06:03 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Shocking!! Message-ID: <005f01c346df$d42742e0$3bcec3cb@comp> check out this website- seems interesting http://www.urbanlegends.com/ulz/progesterex.html > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030710/53338406/attachment.html From lehar_hind at yahoo.com Fri Jul 11 15:54:12 2003 From: lehar_hind at yahoo.com (Lehar ..) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 03:24:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: V.IMP: a newspaper is born..The People's paper Message-ID: <20030711102412.81448.qmail@web20908.mail.yahoo.com> Note: forwarded message attached. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Lehar sethi zaidi" Subject: V.IMP: a newspaper is born..The People's paper Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2003 16:58:23 +0530 Size: 5088 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030711/cefb238c/attachment.mht From ricardo at ambriente.com Sun Jul 13 23:43:00 2003 From: ricardo at ambriente.com (ricardo miranda zuniga) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2003 11:13:00 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] nexum atm Message-ID: Hi Sarai folk, I'm spreading the word on a new project that I've been working on, NEXUM ATM, it's both an interactive installation and a web site, please check it out when you get a chance: http://www.nexumatm.us/ The installation will be on view at the Bronx Museum through Sept. 28th, as part of the AIM23 exhibition. The opening is on Wed. July 16th from 6:30-8:30 pm. If you're in NYC please stop by, you can find directions to the museum at: http://www.bxma.org/ NEXUM ATM, an interactive video piece in the form of an ATM, presents a histoy of US global imperialism toward ten small and largely poor countries. The ten countries represent a history of imperialism dating back to the 1820's to the present. Nexum is the latin word meaning getting out of debt through slavery. Accompanying the physical ATM is a web site: http://www.nexumatm.us/ The site is informational depository to contest the actions of the Bush administration by presenting information and links toward civil mobilization. The site features an atlas of intervention, the Nexum Anthem, interviews with individuals concerning the US's global status... ricardo p.s. In september look for a second ATM installed at a free public location in NYC. From kanti.kumar at oneworld.net Mon Jul 14 16:48:09 2003 From: kanti.kumar at oneworld.net (Kanti Kumar) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 16:18:09 +0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Building Digital Opportunities: ICT Case Studies Message-ID: <30390-22003711410489400@oneworld.net> Building Digital Opportunities: ICT Case Studies at http://www.digitalopportunity.org/fulltext/casestudies.shtml Dear Friends, As part of the Building Digital Opportunities (BDO) programme, OneWorld is conducting case studies to help give decision-makers a clear understanding of how civil society is actually using information and communications technologies, and what the impact is. The ICT projects being profiled in this series were not selected for being success stories; they are likely to help identify both the positive and negative impacts that ICTs have. Over a dozen projects run by OneWorld partners in South Asia, Southern Africa and Central America will be profiled in this series, which is being published by Digital Opportunity Channel. The projects' activities range from offering wireless communication equipment to tribal nomads and teaching slum children how to use computers, to training NGOs how to build Websites and online broadcasting of radio programmes. A brief explanation of the methodology of this study is available with the case studies. The same structure and definitions have been used so as to make the conclusions on impact and sustainability fairly comparable. Case studies of two Indian projects - Indev, an initiative of the British Council, and Deepalaya, an NGO training slum children in computers - have already been published. Please visit Digital Opportunity Channel regularly to read the latest case studies, which will be published at least twice a month. Kanti Kumar Editor, Digital Opportunity Channel www.digitalopportunity.org OneWorld South Asia From monsoon at pukar.org.in Tue Jul 15 01:23:07 2003 From: monsoon at pukar.org.in (PUKAR Monsoon) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 01:23:07 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] SYMPOSIUM, 19-26 July 2003 Message-ID: Dear Friends: Please circulate this announcement as widely as possible to UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS in Mumbai. You are cordially invited to the PUKAR MONSOON SYMPOSIUM, a week-long series of panel discussions, film screenings, and presentations by students and researchers on water and the city. The PUKAR Monsoon is an annual series of occassional lectures, workshops and pedagogic activities organised from May to August every year, in which undergraduate college students address a specific theme through a variety of creative approaches to documentation and education of urban life. The aim of PUKAR Monsoon 2003 has been to facilitate debate and reflection, encourage artistic, intellectual and creative expression, and develop hands-on skills in documenting the political and cultural implications of the many connections between cities and water. Water as substance and as medium has been central to urban development throughout human history. In Mumbai, as in many other world cities, the modern urban experience is 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. PUKAR Monsoon 2003 began with the DOC-SHOP -- an eight-day student workshop for students held from 19-27 May 2003 -- and continues with pedagogic activities in undergraduate colleges throughout Mumbai in July and August 2003, when colleges open. For more information, contact Rahul Srivastava or Shekhar Krishnan at 2207 7779, , or visit http://www.pukar.org.in/doc-shop/. See below for the complete schedule of activities, for which we encourage students, teachers, and the public to attend and participate. _____ P U K A R M O N S O O N S Y M P O S I U M : " O n C i t i e s , O n W a t e r " Dates: 19-26 JULY 2003 Times: Afternoons and Evenings 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. S A T U R D A Y 1 9 J U L Y 2 0 0 3 18.00-18.15 PUKAR Monsoon 2003 -- "On Cities, On Water" : INTRODUCTION RAHUL SRIVASTAVA Director, PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research), Mumbai 18.15-20.15 Water Supply to Poor Areas: PANEL DISCUSSION MEERA BAPAT Independent Researcher, Pune DAVID SATTHERTHWAITE Editor, Environment and Urbanisation, London, U.K. Intl Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), London, U.K. INDU AGARWAL SPARC (Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres), Mumbai M O N D A Y 2 1 J U L Y 2 0 0 3 17.00-18.00 FILM: "Spring" (Valdas Navasaitis, 19 minutes, 1997) This silent documentary languidly glides upon an aquatic landscape, which much resembles a painting, and tries to understand the strange and unusual place, Valteris, the main character lives in. Valteris lives in the region of Klaipeda in Lithuania. Every year when the snow begins to melt, his house and the surrounding fields are flooded. Valteris lives to the rhythm of this spring flood; it is a part of his life. 18.00-19.30 FILM: "Aral: Sea of Thirst" (Jean Afanassieff, 52 minutes, 1999) The Aral Sea has dried up. The 'Big Blue Mirror'of the Kazakhs is now a desert of sand and grasses haunted by the rusting hulls of fishing boats. Fed by two major rivers, the Syr-Dia and Amou-Daria, most of the water of the inland sea of Central Asia was diverted to irrigate cotton and rice fields. Today the intensive crops which were programmed by the Soviets in the 50s have all disappeared and, apart from the little that is left of the inexhaustible resources of the sea, there remains the bitter reality of a desolate environment. The government of Kazakhstan promises a better future in 2030. They have to promise something for the future. For an old fisherman kneeling in front of his grounded boat the only prospect is sand stretching out as far as the eye can see. T U E S D A Y 2 2 J U L Y 2 0 0 3 17.00-17.30 FILM: "20,000 Leagues on the Sea" (Bernard David-Cavaz, 13 minutes, 1995) This documentary is the portrait of a Geophysicist, Jean-Francois Minster, who heads the Laboratory of Oceanography in Toulouse. This reveals the implications of climate changes on human populations, the economy, and life in general like a journey of discovery into a complex and mysterious world. 18.00-19.15 FILM: "Fishing in the Sea of Greed" (Anand Patwardhan, 40 minutes, 1999) followed by discussion with ANAND PATWARDHAN Documentary Film-Maker, Mumbai W E D N E S D A Y 2 3 J U L Y 2 0 0 3 17.00-18.30 VIDEOS: Urban Sanitation, Transport, and Alliances of the Urban Poor followed by discussion with INDU AGARWAL and DEVIKA MAHADEVAN SPARC (Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres), Mumbai 19.00-21.00 FILM: "Living on the River Agano" (Sato Makoto, 115 minutes, 1992) The filmmakers filmed and shared everyday life in Kanose, a town on the River Agano in the Niigata Prefecture. Kanose and nearby Yasuda lie close to the Showa Electric Company factory that has poisoned the river by dumping organic mercury waste. T H U R S D A Y 2 4 J U L Y 2 0 0 3 15.00-16.00 Waterfronts and Ambiguous Boundaries: STUDENT PRESENTATIONS SHILPA PHADKE and students of St Xavier's College Associate, PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research), Mumbai 16.30-18.00 Mumbai's Waterfronts: URBAN DESIGN INTERVENTIONS Eastern Waterfront: Bombay Port and Harbour ANIRUDH PAUL and PRASAD SHETTY Design Cell, Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture (KRVIA), Mumbai Western Waterfronts: Dadar-Mahim, Bandraand Juhu P.K. DAS Architect, P.K. Das Associates, Mumbai discussion moderated by VYJAYANTHI RAO Director, PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research), U.S.A. 18.30-19.15 FILM: "Canals Suspended in the Sky" (Dominique Martin-Ferrari, 26 minutes) Hué, which is crossed by The River of Perfumes, is trying to restore the canals and the hanging gardens of the Vietnamese city whilst conciliating the preservation of the architecture and the landscape, the maintaining of rural populations on the shores of the river, and the development of tourism. Parcels of land are turned into rice paddies following the model of the Etang de Thau, and the small vegetable gardens planted on top of the town walls are preserved. Huê, the 19th century Imperial City, reconnects with is traditions and its water heritage. 19.15-18.00 FILM: "The Village of the Mist" (Nina Peliaeva and George Trivano, 12 minutes) At Chungungo, in Northern Chile, rain never falls. Since there are no springs in the village, every week, water is brought to the inhabitants by lorry. However, the village is near the sea, and every morning, a thick mist rises up along the mountain slopes. Scientists have thought up a simple but effective way of collecting the mist to obtain water. Up to 60,000 litres of water per day can be produced when there is mist. This has changed the life of the village. F R I D A Y 2 5 J U L Y 2 0 0 3 15.00-17.00 Water Issues in the Media: PANEL DISCUSSION Reporting Water PRADEEP SAHA Managing Editor, Down To Earth Magazine, New Delhi Media Coverage of the Environment MEENA MENON Journalist and Writer, Mumbai discussion moderated by SAMEERA KHAN Associate, PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research), Mumbai 18.00-19.30 FILM: Premiere of "Words on Water" (Sanjay Kak, 2003, 82 minutes) followed by discussion with SANJAY KAK Film-Maker, Octave Communications, New Delhi S A T U R D A Y 2 6 J U L Y 2 0 0 3 15.00-16.00 Ecological Footprint of Mumbai: STUDENT PRESENTATIONS NIKHIL ANAND and students of Sophia College Associate, PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research), Mumbai 16.30-17.00 FILM: "Four Engineers and a Manager" (Pradeep Saha, 2000, 22 minutes) followed by discussion with PRADEEP SAHA Managing Editor, Down To Earth Magazine, New Delhi 17.30-19.00 Water -- Mumbai at Risk?: PANEL DISCUSSION discussion chaired by NIRUPA BHANGAR Educationist, Mumbai Water Infrastucture NAYAN PAREKH and RACHNA SHETH Juhu Together, Mumbai Urban-Rural Migration KAREN MENEZES and ZARIR DEVITRA St Xavier's College, Mumbai Perspectives on Privatisation SANJAY BHANGAR Bombay Independent Media Centre (IMC), Mumbai 19.00-20.00 OPEN DISCUSSION on Cities and Water _____ 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 info at nmartproject.net Mon Jul 14 14:00:43 2003 From: info at nmartproject.net (NewMediaArtProjectNetwork) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 10:30:43 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Slowtime?....................... Call for proposals Message-ID: <007e01c349e2$3cfbfe50$0400a8c0@agricola11> Call for proposals Deadline 30 September 2003 *********************** Cinematheque at MediaCentre of " Le Musee di-visioniste" www.le-musee-divisioniste.org/mediacentre/ is preparing another show case of streaming media for autumn 2003, entitled: "Slowtime?........" [Quicktime (.mov) as an artistic medium] Quicktime does not only represent a cross-plattform file format for converting and distributing (analogue/digital) video into an Internet compatible streaming format, but has a lot of different features and characteristics which predestine Quicktime to be a serious artistic medium beyond that. Cinematheque invites artists who use Quicktime for their artistic purposes - in which way ever - to submit up to two (2) works in Quicktime (.mov) format. It is preferred that the submitted work has an URL of itsown, in this case there is no limit of file size. But it is also possible to send the work via email as .mov file, however, then will be a file size limit of 5MB for each submitted work. Deadline 30 September 2003 Please use this form for submitting: ******************* 1.name of artist, email address, URL 2. short biography/CV (not more than 300 words) 3. works (maximum 2): title of work, URL of work, year of production 4. short description of each submitted art work (not more than 300 words each) 5. one screenshot for each submitted work (max. 800x600 pixels, .jpg only) ******************** Send this form completely filled out together with the media files to: slowtime at le-musee-divisioniste.org Deadline 30 September 2003 The coming show of "Slowtime?......" will be launched in November 2003. Currently, the streaming media show "Winter Streams" is still running. ********************* Cinematheque at MediaCentre organises online show cases of streaming media in the framework of Le Musee di-visioniste www.le-musee-divisioniste.org/mediacentre/ Le Musee di-visioniste www.le-musee-divisioniste.org is an online museum based on philosophical ideas, and is corporate member of NewMediaArtProjectNetwork - the experimental plattform for net based art - founded by Agricola de Cologne, media artist and New Media curator operating from Cologne/Germany. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030714/10576613/attachment.html From aiindex at mnet.fr Wed Jul 16 18:35:35 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 14:05:35 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] The new information ecosystem: cultures of anarchy and closure Message-ID: opendemocracy | 26 - 6 - 2003 http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article.jsp?id=8&debateId=101&articleId=1319 Part 1: The new information ecosystem: cultures of anarchy and closure Siva Vaidhyanathan [ Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of the forthcoming The Anarchist in the Library and a true scholar of the internet age, presents a compelling, five-part panorama of the implications of electronic peer-to-peer networks for culture, science, security, and globalisation. His provocative argument registers peer-to-peer as a key site of contest over freedom and control of information. ] The rise of electronic peer-to-peer networks has thrown global entertainment industries into panic mode. They have been clamouring for more expansive controls over personal computers and corporate and university networks. They have proposed radical re-engineering of basic and generally open communicative technologies. And they have complained quite loudly - often with specious data and harsh tones that have had counterproductive public relations results - about the extent of their plight. But the future of entertainment is only a small part of the story. In many areas of communication, social relations, cultural regulation, and political activity, peer-to-peer models of communication have grown in influence and altered the terms of exchange. What is at stake? This is the story of clashing ideologies: information anarchy and information oligarchy. They feed off of each other dialectically. Oligarchy justifies itself through "moral panics" over the potential effects of anarchy. And anarchy justifies itself by reacting to the trends toward oligarchy. The actors who are promoting information anarchy include libertarians, librarians, hackers, terrorists, religious zealots, and anti-globalisation activists. The actors who push information oligarchy include major transnational corporations, the World Trade Organisation, and the governments of the United States of America and the Peoples' Republic of China. Rapidly, these ideologies are remaking our information ecosystem. And those of us uncomfortable with either vision, and who value what we might call "information justice", increasingly find fault and frustration with the ways our media, cultural, information and political systems are changing. The most interesting thing about these challenges and battles is that we can observe how ideologies alter our worlds. Ideologies are, to use a phrase from Pierre Bourdieu, "structuring structures". Ideologies are lenses, ways of thinking and seeing, that guide our perceptions and habits. They are permeable and malleable. They are not determinative. But they make a difference in the judgments we make and the habits we develop. In recent years we have seen the rise of anarchy as a relevant ideology in many areas of life. Our ideologies affect the technologies we choose to adopt. And using certain technologies can alter our ideologies. Anarchy is not just a function of small political groups and marginal information technologies any more. Anarchy matters. This is more than a battle of ideologies. It is also the story of specific battles. There are dozens of examples of recent and current conflicts that arose out of efforts to control the flows of information: * The story of the "Locust Man," an imprisoned dissident democratic activist in China who distributed political messages by attaching them to the backs of locusts. * The ordeal of the public library in Arlington, Virginia, at which two of the hijackers of 11 September 2001 used public terminals in the days preceding their attack. An increasing number of American librarians have had to endure federal law enforcement agencies asking them to violate their code of ethics and their patrons' privacy since this incident. * The controversy over the complaint that some Canadian women can no longer get tested for genes that indicate a predisposition for breast cancer because an American company has patented those genes and charges too much for the test. Through such incidents, we can examine the following issues: * The battle to control democratic sources of information such as public libraries, which are suddenly considered dens of terrorism and pornography. Libraries are under attack through technological mandates and legal restrictions. * Efforts to radically re-engineer the personal computers and networks to eliminate the very power and adaptability that makes these machines valuable. * The cultural implications of allowing fans and creators worldwide sample cultural products at no marginal costs through peer-to-peer computer networks. * Futile attempts to restrict the use and distribution of powerful encryption technology out of fear that criminals and terrorists will evade surveillance. * Commercial and governmental efforts to regulate science and mathematics, including control over the human genome. * Attempts to stifle the activities of political dissidents and religious groups. * The information policy implications of recent United States policies including the USA Patriot Act, Total Information Awareness, and the Department of Homeland Security. This essay is the first of a series for openDemocracy that will consider these battles for control of information. This introductory piece will examine the proliferation of peer-to-peer systems. The nature of peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer electronic networks such as Napster, KaZaa, and Gnutella, solve two communicative problems and create two more. The first problem is somewhat trivial. Where do we find a convenient index to files on other people's hard drives? Or, in the case of Napster founder Sean Fanning, a Boston-area university student, how can I find music on other people's computers without asking them to expose themselves to threats by copyright holders? The second problem is more substantial. How do we exploit two of the great underused resources of the digital age: surplus storage space and surplus processing power? More significantly, how do we do this in a way that is effectively anonymous and simple? Fundamentally, peer-to-peer file-sharing systems such as KaZaa, Gnutella, Freenet, and the dearly-departed Napster attempt to recapture or at least simulate the structure and function of the original internet, when all clients were servers and all servers were clients. This original vision of the internet, call it Internet 1.0, arose in the 1970s and devolved around 1994 with the rise of ISPs and dynamic Internet Protocol (IP) numbers. The handful of netizens of Internet 1.0 worked with mainframe computers linked to each other through the Domain Name System (DNS), which helped direct packets of data to the proper destination. Each sender and each destination had a discreet and constant IP number that identified it to the network hubs. But as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) proliferated in the mid-1990s and connected millions of personal computers to networks for only several minutes or hours at a time, it became clear that rotating and re-using IP numbers would allow many more users to share the internet. Thus began Internet 2.0, in which increasingly personal computers allowed their users to receive and consume information, but allowed limited ability to donate to the system. This extension of the network cut off personal computers from the server business. Most users donated information only through e-mail. And it became clear that while the internet once seemed like a grand bazaar of homemade goods and interesting (albeit often frightening) texts generated through community dynamics, it would soon seem more like a shopping mall than a library or bazaar. Two new problems Peer-to-peer file-sharing technology is a set of protocols that allow users to open up part of their private content to public inspection, and thus, copying. In the digital world, one cannot access a file without making a copy of it. From this fact arose the first peer-to-peer problem: there is no way to enforce scarcity on these systems. The popularity and common uses of these protocols produce massive anxiety within the industries that rely on artificial scarcity to generate market predictability. The second problem is less well understood because there is no special interest constituency complaining about it. So states have stepped up to take the lead in confronting it. That problem is irresponsibility. Because most of what happens over peer-to-peer networks is relatively anonymous, servers and clients are not responsible for the ramifications of their communicative acts. Using widely available forms of encryption or networks that assure privacy, one may traffic in illicit material such as child pornography with almost no fear. In many places in the world, the availability of adult pornography or racist speech through peer-to-peer systems undermines a decade of efforts to cleanse the more visible and therefore vulnerable World Wide Web. This second problem is actually a solution to another communicative problem that exists primarily in illiberal communicative contexts. Many of the same states that hope to quash pornography also want to quash the speech and organisational communications of democratic activists. So the very existence of these communicative technologies creates moral panics throughout the illiberal world as well as the liberal world. While some worry about the erosion of commerce, others worry about the erosion of power. And the same technologies that liberal societies would use to protect commerce might find more effective uses in Burma or China. Listening to Napster But most of the popular discussion about the rise and effects of peer-to-peer technology has read like a sports story: who is winning and who is losing? Some has read like a crime story: how do we stop this thievery? I am more interested in looking at peer-to-peer communication in its most general sense. How do we explain the peer-to-peer phenomenon? How do we get beyond the sports story or the crime story? Peer-to-peer communication is unmediated, uncensorable, and virtually direct. It might occur between two computers sitting on different continents. It might occur across a fence in a neighborhood in Harare, Zimbabwe. What we are hearing when we listen to peer-to-peer systems are "bruits publics", or public noises - not the reasonable, responsible give and take of the bourgeois public sphere. This is very old. What we call 'p2p' communicative networks actually reflect and amplify - revise and extend - an old ideology or cultural habit. Electronic peer-to-peer systems like Gnutella merely simulates other, more familiar forms of unmediated, uncensorable, irresponsible, troublesome speech; for example, anti-royal gossip before the French Revolution, trading cassette tapes among youth subcultures such as punk or rap, or the distribution of illicit Islamist cassette tapes through the streets and bazaars of Cairo. Certain sectors of modern society have evolved with and through the ideology of peer-to-peer. Academic culture and science rely on an ideal of raw, open criticism: peer-to-peer review, one might call it. The difference, of course, is that academia and science generally require a licensing procedure to achieve admission to the system. The Free Software movement is the best example of what legal theorist Yochai Benkler calls "peer production", but what we might as well, for the sake of cuteness and consistency, call "peer-to-peer production". This form of speech has value. But it has different value in different contexts. And while peer-to-peer communication has an ancient and important, although under-documented, role, we are clearly seeing both an amplification and a globalisation of these processes. That means that what used to occur only across fences or on park benches now happens between and among members of the Chinese diaspora who might be in Vancouver and Singapore, Shanghai and Barcelona. As cultural groups disperse and reify their identities, they rely more and more on the portable elements of their collective culture which are widely available through electronic means. The clampdown strategy Several technological innovations have enabled this amplification and globalisation of peer-to-peer communication: * The protocols that makeup the internet (i.e. TCP/IP) and the relative openness of networks that make up the internet. * The modularity, customisability, portability, and inexpense of the personal computer. * The openness, customisability, and insecurity of the major personal computer operating systems. * The openness, insecurity, and portability of the digital content itself. Understandably, states and corporations that wish to impede peer-to-peer communication have been focusing on these factors. These are, of course, the very characteristics of computers and the internet that have driven this remarkable - almost revolutionary - adoption of them in the past decade. These are the sites of the battle. States and media corporations wish to: * Monitor and regulate every detail of communication and shift liability and regulatory responsibility to the Internet Service Providers. * Redesign the protocols that run the internet. * Neuter the customisability of the personal computer and other digital devices. * Impose "security" on the operating systems so that they might enable "trust" between a content company and its otherwise untrustworthy users. These efforts involve both public and private intervention, standard setting by states and private actors. The United States Congress, the Federal Communication Commission, the Motion Picture Association of America, Microsoft and Intel have all been involved in efforts to radically redesign our communicative technologies along these lines. And they are appealing for complementary legal and technical interventions by the European Union and the World Trade Organisation. These moves would create Internet 3.0, although it would not actually look like the internet at all. It would not be open and customisable. Content - and thus culture - would not be adaptable and malleable. And what small measures of privacy these networks now afford would evaporate. These are the dangers that Lawrence Lessig warned us about in 1998 in his seminal work Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. Only now are we coming to understand that Lessig was right. These regulatory efforts have sparked an arms race. The very suggestion of such radical solutions generated immediate reactions by those who support anarchistic electronic communication. Every time a regime rolls out a new form of technological control, some group of hackers or "hacktivists" break through it or evade it in a matter of weeks. The only people who really adhere to these controls are those not technologically proficient: most of the world. It might surprise casual observers of these battles that the important conflicts are not happening in court. The Napster case had some interesting rhetorical nuggets. But basically this was classic contributory infringement by a commercial service. KaZaa is a bit more interesting because it is a distributed company with assets under a series of jurisdictions and a technology that limits its ability to regulate what its clients do. KaZaa might collapse and only fully distributed, voluntary networks might remain: namely, Gnutella and Freenet. The real conflicts will be in the devices, the networks, and the media products themselves. And there seems to be few areas of healthy public discussion or critique about the relationships between technology and culture. Meanwhile, the strategies and structures that limit peer-to-peer communication also quash dissent, activism, and organisation in illiberal contexts - that is, oppressive, totalitarian and authoritarian states. And for this reason, p2p systems like Freenet - encrypted, completely anonymous, and unquenchable - are essential tools for democratic activists in places like Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Burma and China. The lessons for the public sphere Where there is no rich, healthy public sphere we should support anarchistic communicative techniques. Where there is a rich, healthy public sphere, we must take an honest, unromantic account of the costs of such anarchy. And through public spheres we should correct for the excesses of communicative anarchy. Still, we must recognise that poor, sickly, fragile public spheres are more common than rich, healthy public spheres. And the battles at play over privacy, security, surveillance, censorship and intellectual property in the United States right now will determine whether we will count the world's oldest democracy as sickly or healthy. Anarchy is radical democracy. But it is not the best form of democracy. But as a set of tools, anarchy can be an essential antidote to tyranny. o o o opendemocracy | 10 - 7 - 2003 http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-8-101-1348.jsp Part 2: 'Pro-gumbo': culture as anarchy Siva Vaidhyanathan In much of the American South before the Civil War, drums were illegal. Slaveholders were aware of the West African traditions of "talking instruments" and tried everything within their means to stifle free, open, unmediated communication across distances. Drums could signal insurrection. And drums could conjure collective memories of a time of freedom. Mostly, slaveholders realised that to subjugate masses of people, they had to alienate them from their culture as much as possible. They had to strand them in a strange land and try to make that land seem stranger than it was. They had to strictly regulate slave culture. They had to outlaw slave literacy. They had to commit social and cultural homicide to keep otherwise free people from rising up and taking charge of their own bodies. That the rhythms of Africa and the Caribbean still set the time for American culture speaks to the determination and courage of African American slaves. The slaveholders outlawed the tools. But they could not stop the beat (see Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans and Christopher Small, Music of the Common Tongue) That the rhythms of Africa and the Caribbean still set the time for American culture speaks to the determination and courage of African American slaves. The slaveholders outlawed the tools. But they could not stop the beat. As oligarchic forces such as global entertainment conglomerates strive to restrict certain tools that they assume threaten their livelihood, they should consider that throughout the history of communication, people have managed to use and adapt technologies in surprising and resilient ways. Once in a while, a set of communicative technologies offers revolutionary potential: peer-to-peer networks do just that. They are part of a collection of technologies - including cassette audio tapes, video tapes, recordable compact discs, video discs, home computers, the internet, and jet airplanes - that link diasporic communities and remake nations. They empower artists in new ways and connect communities of fans. The battle to control these cultural flows says much about the anxieties and unsteadiness of the power structures that had hoped to exploit cultural globalisation. It also teaches us much about the nature of culture itself. Global culture by the download A couple of years ago, a journalist friend of mine put me in contact with a gentleman who does consulting work for the World Bank. This gentleman called me to see if I was interested in participating in a meeting in New York that June which would enable cultural ministers from a handful of African countries - including Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa - to meet leaders from the American music industry. The goal was to brainstorm about how African musicians might exploit digital music distribution systems to market and deliver their songs directly to diasporic communities. The battle to control these cultural flows says much about the anxieties and unsteadiness of the power structures that had hoped to exploit cultural globalisation. It also teaches us much about the nature of culture itself. He had no way of knowing what I thought of this idea. I had yet to publish anything on the subject. So my opinions were not widely known. So he was not quite prepared for my reaction. "Why do they need record companies?" I asked. "The artists can do it all themselves for less than $10,000." He was stunned. Having a World Bank perspective on development, he assumed that the artists of the developing world would need and welcome the giant helping hand of Bertelsmann or AOL Time Warner. So he responded with an appeal to technological expertise. The artists would need the major labels, he said, because the labels are working on incorporating digital rights management software into digital music files. Without watermarking or copy-protection features, the artists would just be giving their music away. Then I explained to him that it was too late for all that. The power of digitisation and networking had beaten him and the record companies to it. I didn't even touch the subject of the complications inherent in asking African musicians - who are often dissidents - to work with government culture ministers. I just made it seem like he had missed a technological moment. He had the best of intentions. But he had not considered that certain technological changes had fostered a new ideological movement as well. And that these trends might change the nature of global music and creativity. All music will be 'world music' One of the great unanswered questions is how file sharing and MP3 compression will affect the distribution of what music corporations call "world music", tunes from non-English-speaking nations, offering rhythms that seem fresh to Europeans and Americans who have grown up and old on the driving four-four beat of rock-and-roll. Now, rhymes and rhythms from all corners of the Earth are available in malleable form at low cost to curious artists everywhere. Peer-to-peer has gone global. Of course, there are some big economic and technological hurdles to overcome before it can affect all cultural traditions equally. As the differences narrow, how will the availability of a vast and already stunningly diverse library of sounds change creativity and commerce? Won't all music be "world music?" The riches of ephemera On any given day, on any peer-to-peer file sharing system, one can find the most obscure and rare items. I have downloaded some of Malcolm X's speeches, Reggae remixes of Biggie Smalls' hits, various club dance mixes of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, and long lost Richard Pryor comedy bits that were only released on vinyl by a long-defunct company. Through nation-specific and general "world music" chat rooms on the now-defunct Napster, I had been able to find Tamil film songs, Carnatic classical music, and pop stuff from Asian Dub Foundation, Ali Farka Toure, Orisha, and Youssou N'Dour. The most interesting and entertaining phenomena of the MP3-peerto-peer is the availability of "mashes" - new compositions created by combining the rhythm tracks of one song and the vocal track of another. (The best example of a popular "mash", currently, is Genie's Revenge, a combination of vocals by Christina Aguilera and a guitar riff by the Strokes). Anxious ethnomusicology This is a phenomenon that ethnomusicologists are just starting to consider. During the 1980s and 1990s, anthropologist Steven Feld raised some serious questions about the future of global cultural diversity as "world music" gained market share and generated interest among western producers and labels. Feld published some of his thoughts as an article called A Sweet Lullaby for World Music. The article traces the development of marketing efforts for this new genre of "world music", which meant anything from drum beats from Mali to the ambient sounds of lemurs in Madagascar. Feld expressed concern early on the very term "world music" made some forms of music distinct from what academics and music industry figures call "music". Since the rise of the world music genre as a commercial factor, music scholarship has been asking the question, "how has difference fared in the new gumbo?" Feld wrote that recent world music scholarship has revealed the "uneven rewards, unsettling representations, and complexly entangled desires that lie underneath the commercial rhetoric of global connection, that is, the rhetoric of 'free' flow and 'greater' access." "Free flow" is a buzzword in north-south communication policy debates. Stemming from 1970s arguments in Unesco forums, the United States argued that the world community should establish standards that would encourage the free flow of information across borders, ostensibly to spread democracy and ensure civil rights. Many oppressive states - chiefly India under Indira Gandhi - argued that the doctrine of "free flow" was merely a cover for what we now call the neoliberal agenda: sweetening American corporate expansion by dusting it with the sugar of enlightenment principles. The "free-flow" vs. "cultural imperialism" argument (which has since been supplemented by another approach that emphasises the complex uses to which all audiences put cultural elements) has unfortunately limited our vision and stifled discussions about what we might do to encourage freedom and the positive externalities of cultural flow while limiting the oppressive and exploitative externalities of the spread of American and European modes of cultural production and distribution. Feld also outlined the reaction to scholarship that embraced this "cultural imperialism" model. In contrast to those who raise concerns about the spread of new loud noises, "celebratory" scholarship emphasised the use and re-use of elements of American and European musical forms in the emerging pop sounds flowing from the developing world. It also celebrated the new market success that artists from the developing world were achieving. This scholarship emphasised fluid cultural identities and predicted an eventual equilibrium of the power differences in the world music industry. This school, which I subscribe to, downplays the influence of hegemony and underlines the potential creative and democratic power of sharing. Instead of "celebratory", I prefer the term "pro-gumbo". Steven Feld, who belongs to that group of scholars who utilise what he calls "anxious narratives", sees little possibility for resisting the commodification of ethnicity and musical styles. For the anxious, "global" becomes "displaced"; "emerging" become "exploited"; "cultural conversations" become "white noise". To make his point that we should not ignore the effects of the cultural violence that is primitivism, Feld writes, "The advertisement of this democratic and liberal vision for world music embodies an idealism about free-flows, sharing, and choice. But it masks the reality that visibility in product choice is directly related to sales volume, profitability, and stardom." Even though I celebrate sharing, free flows, and gumbo, I must concede the gravity of Feld's concerns. But my question now is: how does peer-to-peer change these issues? Feld is really writing about the anxieties of ethnomusicologists. He is not so concerned with the effects on the actual music and how it works in the lives of musicians and fans: "In the end, no matter how inspiring the musical creation, no matter how affirming its participatory dimension, the existence and success of world music returns to one of globalization's basic economic clichés: the drive for more and more markets and market niches. In the cases here, we see how the worlds of small (UNESCO and Auvidis) and large (Sony) and major independent (ECM) music owners and distributors can come into unexpected interaction. We see how production can proceed from the acquisition of a faraway cheap inspiration and labor. We see how exotic Euromorphs can be marketed through newly layered tropes, like green enviroprimitivism, or spiritual new age avant-garde romanticism. We see how what is produced has a place in a larger industrial music zone of commodity intensification, in this case artistic encounters with indigeneity, as made over in popular Western styles. In all, we see how world music participates in shaping a kind of consumer-friendly multiculturalism, one that follows the market logic of expansion and consolidation." The peer-to-peer solution Perhaps the spread of peer-to-peer libraries should allay the concerns of anxious critics. Peer-to-peer music distribution - so far - has been all about decorporatisation and deregulation. Music corporations do not control the flow, prices, or terms of access anymore. Music distribution has lower barriers of entry than ever before, and offers the potential of direct, communal marketing and creolisation. We should acknowledge some key concepts about cultural globalisation: * It's happening, but it's rolling out in ways that are alarming to those who hoped to profit the most from it. * The prices and profits of globalisation are falling unevenly and unpredictably. * Culture is not zero-sum. Using something does not prevent someone else from using it, and does not degrade its value. In fact, it might enhance it. Culture is anarchistic We often mistake the collection of end-products of culture - the symphonies and operas, novels and poems - that have survived the rigorous peer review of markets and critics as the culture itself. Culture is anarchistic if it is alive at all. It grows up from the common, everyday interactions among humans who share a condition or a set of common symbols and experiences. We often mistake the collection of end-products of culture - the symphonies and operas, novels and poems - that have survived the rigorous peer review of markets and critics as the culture itself. Culture is not the sum of its products. It is the process that generates those products. And if it is working properly, culture is radically democratic, vibrant, malleable, surprising, and fun. These two different visions of culture explain much of the difference between the assumptions behind information anarchy and information oligarchy. Anarchists - and many less radical democrats - believe that culture should flow with minimal impediments. Oligarchs, even if they seem politically liberal, favor a top-down approach to culture with massive intervention from powerful institutions such as the state, corporations, universities, or museums. All of these institutions may be used to construct and preserve free flows of culture and information. But all too often they are harnessed to the oligarchic cause, making winners into bigger winners, and thus rigging the cultural market. What Matthew Arnold thinks of P2P In 1867 the English critic Mathew Arnold published a treatise called Culture and Anarchy. The book was an extended argument with the cultural implications of John Stuart Mill's 1859 book On Liberty. Arnold took Mill to task for endorsing a low level of cultural regulation. Culture, to Arnold, was all the good stuff that cultural authorities such as himself said it was. And culture, in the Arnoldian sense, was preferable - was in fact and antidote to - anarchy. Samuel Huntington expresses this same oligarchic theory of culture in his simplistic yet influential book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Huntington sees cultures as grounded on certain immutable foundations. He sees the emphasis on cultural transmission, fluidity, and hybridity as "trivial" when compared to the deep, essential texts and beliefs of a culture. Huntington affirms the role of the Bible in what he calls "western civilization" and the role of the Analects of Confucius in what he calls "Confucian civilization." In this way, Huntington disregards how people who live in these cultures actually use the texts and symbols around them. "The essence of Western Civilization is the Magna Carta, not the Magna Mac," Huntington writes, despite the fact that most residents of the nations he labels "western" have no idea of the history or significance of the Magna Carta, yet no one can underestimate the cultural power of the Big Mac. Huntington is arguing against cultural globalisation, against fostering flows and exchanges of ideas and information. He looks at a dangerous and angry world and prescribes walls instead of paths. Huntington's preferred world might be quieter, but it would also be darker and dumber. The fact is, cultures change, grow, and revise themselves over time if they are allowed to. And cultural life is healthier when cultures are allowed to grow and revise themselves. Only during the European "Dark Ages" (5th to 12th centuries CE) have we seen a large portion of the world sever its cultural arteries and rely on internal and local signs and symbols. Europe was stuck in a time of crippling cultural stasis while the rest of the world, led by Persian and Arab traders, moved on. The Dark Ages in Europe were a time of mass illiteracy and not-coincidental concentrations of power among local elites. Every area of the world becomes more diverse in the local sense as long as people are free to borrow pieces of cultural expressions and re-use them in interesting ways. As Tyler Cowen explains in his book Creative Destruction: How Globalization Is Changing the World's Cultures, cultural exchange generates cultural change. Exchange might make disparate cultures more like each other, but it also infuses each culture with new choices, new ideas, and new languages. Every area of the world becomes more diverse in the local sense as long as people are free to borrow pieces of cultural expressions and re-use them in interesting ways. Culture as process This idea of culture as temporal, contingent, dynamic, and Creolised best describes how culture actually works in people's lives. No one lives in Matthew Arnold's "culture"; and few would want to live in Samuel Huntington's. The fact is, most of us don't have a clue why the Magna Carta as a document is important to us, if it is at all any more. Many more of us can wax about how Madonna is important to us. And she is important to our culture in different ways to different people at different times. Madonna, like the culture that rewards and follows her, is temporal, contingent, and dynamic. As Lawrence Levine explains in Black Culture and Black Consciousness, "culture is not a fixed condition but a process: the product of interaction between the past and the present. Its toughness and resiliency are determined not by a culture's ability to withstand change, which indeed may be a sign of stagnation not life, but by its ability to react creatively and responsively to the realities of a new situation." If we use some instrument of technology or law to dampen that vibrancy, malleability, or dynamics, of culture, we risk cultural stasis. Deployed carelessly, such instruments can freeze-in winners and chill losers - or those merely waiting to play. From shuddha at sarai.net Thu Jul 17 03:05:06 2003 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 21:35:06 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Music Piracy and Terrorism Linked By Interpol In-Reply-To: <64771.213.187.170.114.1058294977.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20030716213506.C83D328DA81@mail.sarai.net> Dear all, I thought this would be of interest to all those on this list who have a curisoity about the everyday life of intellectual property. We (the Raqs Media Collective) have been on an artists residency in Oslo for the past two weeks, and in the course of our forays into the city, have often walked into the Gronland district of Oslo. home to many migrants from South Asia, (mainly from Pakistan, but also from India and Sri Lanka). Of course, as in any other such neighbourhood, anywhere in the world, you can walk into shops that sell and rent dvd's, cd's and video tapes of the latest hindi film, and the latest music. We saw copies of dvd's of 'Bhoot' and 'Supari' for sale, as well as ancient films from the fifites. The material arrayed for sale displayed a healthy range of various shades of legality. However, if you read the article below, you would no doubt expect the little shop in Oslo's Gronland and of course the arcades in Delhi's Palika Bazaar, as well as the pavement shops in Sarojini Nagar and Janpath that sell variations on the Benetton or Gap label to be the subject of search and destroy anti terrorist operations. If you want to know why, read the following article, which appeared in today�s INDIAN EXPRESS Some of us always expected the neat dovetailing of the disocourses of intellectual property, national security and the 'war against terrorism', but I did not expect it to be stated with such clarity. But then, power can be just as surprising as it can be predictable. What is surprising is just how predictable it can be. cheers Shuddha ______________________________________________ Music piracy used for terror financing: Interpol Press Trust of India/ Associated Press http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=23082 The Indian Express, July 16,2003 Paris, July 16: The head of Interpol on Wednesday called for a global crackdown on software and music piracy, saying the illicit proceeds help finance al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and other terrorist networks. The international police agency's secretary-general, Ronald K. Noble, urged governments and law enforcement agencies to treat such crimes as a priority, saying in a statement, "it is becoming the preferred method of funding for a number of terrorist groups." � The statement was issued on Wednesday ahead of a speech on the subject that Noble was to give in Washington to the House of Representatives' committee on international relations. "There are enough examples now of the funding of terrorist groups in this way for us to worry about the threat to public safety," Noble said. "We must take preventative measures now." An Interpol document to be presented in Washington later in the day said that a wide range of terrorist groups have profited from the production or sale of counterfeit goods, including al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Chechen separatists, ethnic Albanian extremists in Kosovo and paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, the statement said. Noble called for stepped-up efforts to trace the proceeds of pirated CDs, DVDs, computer software, and counterfeit clothing and cigarettes. Interpol, based in Lyon, France, coordinates information-sharing among police forces in 181 countries. -- Shuddhabrata Sengupta SARAI Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road Delhi 110054 Phone 23960040 From saberwal at bol.net.in Wed Jul 16 18:30:15 2003 From: saberwal at bol.net.in (saberwal) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 15:00:15 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] server managers' tricks? Message-ID: An e-mail from Lahore to Delhi last week came through as follows: 1. message severely truncated; 2. the above message repeated and a hard-to-delete virus attached - which was recognised by my anti-virus program. Furthermore, the sender's address from Lahore, which ends with "pk", was replaced with "vsnl.com" - so that when I used the "reply to sender" option with the first version, message came back because the addressee could, of course, not be traced! It is unlikely that I was singled out for the trickster's attention. Is someone at the server disrupting messages between Pakistan and India systematically? Satish Saberwal From tbyfield at panix.com Wed Jul 16 19:48:17 2003 From: tbyfield at panix.com (t byfield) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 10:18:17 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] server managers' tricks? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20030716141817.GA13897@panix.com> saberwal at bol.net.in (Wed 07/16/03 at 03:00 PM +0200): > Is someone at the server disrupting messages between Pakistan and > India systematically? Satish Saberwal it's quite normal for viruses to forge headers and/or use other means to disguise their origins. and it's much more efficient to program them to do that than it is to co-opt someone running a server then force them to modify messages by hand. cheers, t From aiindex at mnet.fr Thu Jul 17 07:03:03 2003 From: aiindex at mnet.fr (Harsh Kapoor) Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 02:33:03 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] The Spirit of Terrorism - December 13th, 2001 Message-ID: India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch # 125 17 July 2003 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/message/136 The Spirit of Terrorism December 13th, 2001 by Geoffrey Cook* "...Le spectacle du tourisme impose le terrorisme du spectacle. Et contre cette fascination immorale...l'orde politique nepeut rien" "Le'espirit du terrorisme" Jean Baudrillard Le Monde, Paris November 11, 2001 Three years ago, at a banquet following a symposium on South Asian nuclear proliferation at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, I was at a table with the well known expert on Subcontinental Islamic political science Professor (emeritus) Theodore Wright from the State University at New York at Albany; the Director of the W. Alton Jones Foundation in Washington; the expert and author of India's Bomb, George Perkovitch; Neil Joeck, who at that time was about the highest ranking expert on South Asian nuclear matters directly employed by the U.S. government -- then at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and now with the U.S. State Department; the Indian Consul-General Sharma at Chicago and myself. Professor Wright, who because of his generation, was slightly baffled by the popularity of the new methodologies in the humanities and the social sciences, brought the discussion with these men, who are daily involved with issues of preventing mega-death, to the subject of Post-Modernism, the current rage in academic America. Ambassador Sharma, who had previously represented New Delhi in Hanoi after a career as a military man and had even written an art history book there about the relics of Hindu temples in Viet Nam, asked, "What is Post-Modernism?" I responded with a quick repartee, "There is no bomb." I would like to extend that comment for this exercise, "There is no Terrorism." That is the précis of this paper. Everyday as a student of South Asian media, I listen to news broadcasts from both Radio Pakistan and All India Radio (AIR). It is interesting to compare descriptions of the same violent encounter in Kashmir where the identical space is claimed by the competing powers. The Pakistani announcer describes the Vale as "occupied Kashmir" while New Delhi as Kashmir. Islamabad talks of "freedom fighters" and "martyrs". While the Indians describe the insurgents as "terrorists" and talk in the language of the grim statistics of death. What we observe is opposing rhetoric. The tragedy is that solutions are hidden behind the impenetrable rhetoric of the contending parties. Peace will never be achieved unless this obfuscating oratory can first be pierced. One of the thickest slabs of rhetoric is "Terrorism". This article will ask: "What is Terrorism?" "Is Terrorism real or is it rhetorical?" Undeniably, something is real because there is great suffering and death, what is real (material) what is ethereal (immaterial) in the concept of Terrorism? This study will be an abstract one to better understand the phenomenon; and, thereby, hopefully, to successfully grabble with it. There are great risks in this approach -- that we lose sight of humanity suffering; and, thus, the point of my vignette at the beginning of this essay. So, let us proceed with caution. On November 11th 2001, exactly two months after the Twin Towers outrage in New York City, a full two page large news-sheet sized article, "L'espirit terrorisme" (http//:humanities.psydeshow.org/political/baudrillard/htm) -- i.e. "The Spirit of Terrorism" (http://amsterdam.nettime/Lists-Archives/nettime-1-0111/msg00083.html) by one of the leading living French Post-Modern philosophers, Jean Baudrillard, was published in the important Parisian newspaper Le Monde in the French language. For the influence it has generated it is rather short -- between 5-6,000 words. Subsequently, before the end of last year, the article was published as a pamphlet under the same title by Editions Galilee, also, in Paris, and it has been reported that it has become a best seller there having done much to generate a great deal of questioning and dissatisfaction with American foreign policy in Afghanistan and the Middle East and Southern Asia within Europe. The essay attempts to get at the symbolic meaning of the tragedy, and along the way it asks what is Terrorism and its relation to Globalization and Modernism. It clarifies why it is happening now, and even makes suggestions on how it can best be fought. Your author would like to use Baudrillard's original thinking as a backdrop into the "meaning" of Terrorism or if there is any meaning in the act at all. Although Baudrillard's work was written with American and French realities in mind and in complete ignorance of the South Asian model, I would like to apply his controversial (which created quite a stir on the pages of Le Monde itself) and unique ideas to the political realities of the Subcontinent. Now, again, cross-cultural comparisons can, also, be fraught with danger, for there are commonalities, but, at the same time totally different assumptions that are basic to dissimilar cultural milieus. Too often this has caused political misunderstandings between New Delhi and Washington and Paris, and hence, unfortunately, has lead to low level antagonism over the past 55 years. Most of my readers in South Asia and in the Diasporas are probably not fluent in French. Therefore, I am using a quickly put together translation into English by a Dr. Rachel Boll of the School for Social Sciences at the Australian National University. For the complete version follow the URL above after the English reference to the "The Spirit of Terrorism" (the full French text can be found at the URL after "L'espirit du terrorisme"). There are other translations appearing on the Internet, but, in my less than expert opinion, I feel this is the best at this time until a fully literary and philosophical translation can be made. In reading both, I notice differences in tone between the original and the translation, and may at occasion put the French in parenthesis. Your critic has done three literary translations - but none from the French - so from time to time he will work to smooth out the flow of the phrasing in the target language of English. Post-Modernism is a belief that the world is in a new historical period from Modernism -- especially in the fully industrialized world, but most contemporaries cannot put their fingers on what makes it different. But it is agreed that attitudes have changed throughout most of the world. One of the most maddening markers of this attitude is the assumption that there are no firm eternal truths that people can rely on as in past ages. It is truly a vision of the world in a constant state of flux and relativity. With the death of the Second World (Socialist camp) and the birth of a "unipolar" world, what has arisen to challenge late Capitalism (Neo-libralismo) on the material plane and Post-Modernist cynicism on the intellectual level has been fundamentalism(s). And it is not only Islamic fundamentalism (although there is a historical reason that it has predominated in certain periods of crisis in the Islamic world), but it exists in all fundamentalisms - including in Hinduism, Christianity, Sikhism, Judaism, even Buddhism et al. Your author might add that Lalita Ramdas, the wife of the former Chief of the Indian Naval Staff (he is the now the vocal leader in opposing nuclear proliferation in both India and Pakistan) pointed out -- in a San Francisco area talk she made with her husband -- that a fundamentalism need not only be religious. A close senior professor colleague who teaches at the University of Texas at Austin in a non-South Asian area studies field wrote to me a letter of shock at the events at the disintegration of Yugoslavia. He deemed people would never again fight over religion as an indicator of difference. But, when the prevailing system of liberal Communism collapsed in the Balkans, ancient repressed rivalries re-emerged. So it was in South Asia at Partition, and the horrors of Partition have not been fully resolved over the past fifty-five years -- especially brought to our attention this year in the horrid excesses of Gujarat last February and March. Curiously, competing fundamentalisms are most antagonistic to each other than liberalism is to fundamentalism. (Please note that both Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush are Fundamentalists from different religious beliefs systems.) The Indian political environment is disturbed by such fractures and schisms as religion, caste, class, language and sub-nationality. And similar fissures also, rupture Pakistani society. Therefore, an understanding of Terrorism on the Subcontinent is a complex enterprise. It has become a cliché - but true -- to say that Terrorism is the weapon of the weak and not of the powerful -- especially suicidal terrorism. Or, in Baudrillard's words. "When the situation is monopolized by powerŠwith technological Šhegemony [pensee unique]Šthe terrorist responds with a definitive actŠ" Of course, in India, December 13th, 2001 in New Delhi is uttered in the same breath as September 11th in New York. The attack on the national Parliament on that date and the attack on the Kashmiri Parliament of the previous October 1st and the army cantonment at Kaluchak in the same contested State of May 14th of that year led to two nuclear showdowns with Pakistan that are still smoldering just below the surface. The root of the public sympathy for Islamic militants worldwide lies not so much in Kashmir as in Palestine, for it is the outrages of the Israeli army that are portrayed on our televisions so prominently in most of the world. Jean Baudrillard points out "ŠIt is they who did it, but we who wanted itŠ" ["Šc'est eux qui l'ont fait, mais c'est nous l'avons vouluŠ"] Now, he is talking about the French popular response to the American tragedy, but in India the repressed and wretched probably had similar secret thoughts. "If one does not take that into account, the event lost all symbolic [symbolique] dimension Šthe murderous fantasy of a few fanatics, who need only to be suppress. But we know ŠthatŠis not so." Notice the word "symbolic". The World Trade Center was symbolic of the heart of American Capitalism, but the Parliament was even more symbolic of the Indian soul. It stands at the heart of Indian democracy itself. And the act vibrated horror throughout that nation. A psychological attack at such a central symbol pervades emotional fear throughout the commonweal, for anyone, therefore, could be a terrorist or, on the other hand, a victim of one. Shortly thereafter there was another terrorist action in Calcutta that was criminal and not politically based. Along with the high profile attacks in Kashmir, the Indian nation was understandably devastated by the symbolic suicidal assaults of the Terrorists. Baudrillard's European Post-Modernist sensibility states that "Š their death does not prove anything, but there is nothing to prove in a system where truth is self-elusive..." ["Šleur morte ne prouve rien, mais il n'y a rien a prouver dans un systeme ou la verite elle-meme est insaisissableŠ]" India, because it is a state that is quickly developing but still is not developed to the point of the First World, the advance populace's sensibility is probably more attuned to Modernism than to Post-Modernism, but the battle lines have been drawn up between the modern world and the Medieval mindset of the fundamental. "...they [the terrorists] do not fight with equal weapons if they have the right to a salvation, we can no longer hope forŠ" ["Šils ne luttent pas a armes egales, puisqu'ils ont droit au salut, don't nous ne pouvons meme plus entretenir l'espoirŠ"] After the end of the Afghan War against the Soviets, Arab and other irregular fighters remained in the Hindu Kush. (Please note the internationalization of the Kashmir struggle indirectly grew out of great power rivalry in the region.) After an indigenous revolt, which had been simmering for some time, began in the Vale during 1989, many of these ideological mercenaries began filtering into J & K. Some came across the porous Pakistani borders -- whether with the connivance of the Pakistani ISI or not -- and some through other more devious routes directly from Afghanistan. They caused disruption within Kashmiri society itself for they forced their harsh Islamicist views upon the more Sufic-oriented citizens of the State - often quite harshly. But, at the same, time, as independent human rights reports have documented, violent repression against non-combatants by the Indian defense forces lost the hearts and minds of Srinagar's State to the Center in New Delhi. India will very likely become a great world power if she can solve some grave problems. One of those challenges is the relationship of the Center with its Peripheries, for violent dissatisfaction is found mostly at the peripheries. India is the last great Nineteenth century empire. If it cannot solve these political problems of geography, insurrection and sub-nationalities, it will go the way of the Soviet Union. If it can, it will transpire into a mighty Twenty-first century powerfully unified state by the popular will of all of its citizens. One of the most disturbing elements to an outsider is the current administration's abandonment of the nation's founding principles that made India into a great and inspiring nation. That is Secularism. As a well-known Dutch anthropologist on South Asia said at the University of California at Berkeley, "Secularism is what people do in private." That is difference should not be forced on an Other. To deny people their rights of lawful expression is to invite rebellion. And that is what is happening under the current rightwing regime. "Suicidal Terrorism was [is] the Terrorism of the poorŠ" ["Le terrorisme suicidaire etait un terroisme de pauvresŠ"] This purest symbolic sacrifice opposes all politico-historical models in that it does not make sense under our [i.e., Western] value system (i.e. the primacy of life and even brute animal survival), and, thereby, under "our" rules; i.e., the Terrorist "cheats". Terrorism does not follow the "moral" axiom of historical (i.e., permissive) aggression such as the revolutionary. Even though "Terrorism is immoral" ["Le terroisme est immoral]," his act is not gratuitous, for in his twisted theology his exploit grants salvation to his soul. That is why it is so hard to counter his actions and to break his cells and other structures. In a strange twist of history, he is a product of Globalization. He has made good use of Globalism to build worldwide configurations of confraternities that can strike at many points at any time or at once. That is the secret of his thinking and his success and that is what we must understand to counter him. We should be heading towards bringing these ideas fully into a South Asian context, and how we can lessen the popular support for these militants, and make our political process more inclusive in so doing. Sadly, the political evolution in both the United Sates and the Indian Union have grown more exclusive - not only to its own marginalized, but to those beyond its borders. Both the States and India are hegemons. The U.S.A., a less than humble world power, and India has gained hegemony within South Asia, and, if we are to believe the Prime Minister's boasts after the 1998 nuclear blasts, there are those aiming for hegemony from the China Sea to the Persian Gulf within his Government! In one sense, though, India underestimates the power of its nemesis in Islamabad that was so dramatically dramatized last spring. The terrorist act makes the system itself suicide. ("L'hypothese terroriste, c'est que le systeme lui-meme se suicideŠ") In democratic societies such as the United States, the United Kingdom and India such draconian measures as the Patriot Act, POTO and POTA are put forward to protect the society from these allusive asuras, but at the same time these measures attack the very democratic values of the societies themselves. These incorporating principles are subsumed in trying to save the commonwealth itself. Thus, the Terrorist has won the battle leading the system into a collapse. The power of the terroristic adversary has humbled the hegemon. Yet, most importantly, for the counter-insurgent to hold in mind is that repressive action travels the same road of unpredictability as terrorist actions ("L'acte represif parcourt la meme spirale impevisible que l'acte terroristeŠ") The Terrorist could not have the power he has over the minds of a population without the unconscious collusion of the media. The image consumes the event of the sacrificial suicide, and the media hands it back as a consumer good with an unprecedented impact. "The real and fiction are inextricableŠ["Reel et fiction sont extricablesŠ"]. Especially in the Parliament incident, when the Real was added to the Image, mass terror and anger were created. What followed were two (this observer feels there were two separate crises - one set off by December 13th and the other by May 14th) nuclear confrontations -- in disproportion to the threat -- with their nuclear neighbor Pakistan. The potential nuclear reaction came from a perceived violation of symbolic space. What can we extract from Baudrillard on how to apply counter-insurgency in the South Asian environment, and what would be the most effective methods of action. He has said above that we are destroying our values in protecting our societies from the terrorist challenge. For the ten days immediately after the World Trade Center attacks a constant barrage of Talking Heads (no nothing "experts") were paraded across American television screens. The only comment that made any sense was "You can't protect yourself from Terrorism, you can only change policy." For Terrorist action is not a totally destructive action in the terrorist mind, and it mirrors the violence of the hegemonic power he is attacking. That is to say, the terrorist has a point from his perspective, and if we are to counter it, we must see it, and understand it. We must not underestimate it. The adversary of the State has humbled the Union in both India and the United States. It is not simply enough that the terrorists be eliminated as in previous insurgencies - they must be made to lose face in the hearts and minds of the people who secretly support them. "Šthis cannot be obtained by pure force and by suppression of the OtherŠ" ["ŠEt cela on ne l'obtient jamais par la force pure et par la suppression de l"autreŠ"] It was said above that the ideology of contemporary Islamic militancy was born in the Middle East, and has traveled to South Asia. India like America has become suicidal (to ourselves/themselves) in our unbearable power over the powerless. For India, this is certainly true with Kashmir. In the last fifty-five years there has been opportunities to reach a win-win solution. But this author feels that the biggest obstacle has been New Delhi. Every time that three (or better yet a fourth partner so each side has a negotiator that it can trust) way discussions are suggested, India proclaims the Simla Agreement. Well, the Simla Agreement has not worked. The Subcontinent was too close to war just a few short months go. Kashmir must be discussed with the wishes of the State's people participating as well as the two contending nation states. Otherwise, terrorism will only continue, and nuclear war is only a matter of time. Another crisis must not be allowed to arise. But how can the preconditions be established for serious negotiations? From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Thu Jul 17 13:18:22 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 17 Jul 2003 07:48:22 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Govinda Message-ID: <20030717074822.1168.qmail@webmail9.rediffmail.com> The Rediff Interview/Govinda 'My films were a compromise' Ronjita Kulkarni | July 17, 2003 Govinda has made everyone laugh with his excellent comedy in films like Hero No 1, Coolie No 1, Raja Babu and even the latest Ek Aur Ek Gyarah. Ask him which of these films does he personally like and he'll say with fervour, "None! My taste, cinema and thinking are different. What I did was a good compromise." Yes, meet the real Govinda, who is tired of his own comedy and frustrated with his lot of films. Born Govind Ahuja, this Punjab-born actor has many hidden traits. Whether it is his philosophical outlook to life ('sometimes you handle a situation, sometimes the situation handles you'), his immense respect for his mother (a sign on his front door reads: Kiss the feet of your mother, Success will kiss your feet), his favourite films Pakeeza, Mughal-e-Azam and Mother India, or that his children are not allowed to criticise his performances in films. While he may be the dancing hero trying to outwit the bad guys, at heart he is still the 'Virar ka chokra'. Govinda speaks to Ronjita Kulkarni about why he thinks his films are a compromise. You recently stated you would never do comedy again. Why? My films have always been considered total time pass entertainment, as B-grade films. There were never called good films. They were never acclaimed even though they did well. I would always be nominated for awards [in the Best Actor category] but never win. Then even that category changed [to Best Actor in comic role]. I tried to fight the situation. But then I thought, why fight? So I decided to change. I will not do comedy films from now on. But in case I do, the script has to be fresh and new. I hate the same kind of writing. My track record till my last film Ek Aur Ek Gyarah has been good. It does not matter whether I have been more successful or less successful in my career. What matters is there has been success. Now, I should not spoil my name. This is the right time to move out. I want to do good cinema. There should be a good director and quality writing. But I don't have a dream role as such. If I had something specific in mind, then I may not be giving a chance to others to bring out their best qualities. What made you do so many comedy roles? Serious roles required too much of me. Being a sincere artiste, I thought three or four serious roles per year is too much of an exertion. To avoid this, I started doing comedy. Comedy helped my nerves and health. Fortunately, I became successful in this. But getting stuck in this rut is foolishness. So I decided to get out of it. Which of your films are your favourites? I don't like any of my films except Hathyar and Swarg. These two films were sincere efforts at filmmaking and everyone was involved. My taste and thinking are very different. What I did was a good compromise. I'm lucky that they turned out good. But now, I really have to do something better. You have also sung in your films like Wah! Tera Kya Kehna and your upcoming Raja Bhaiya. Songs just happened. They were not planned. Unfortunately, the song in Wah! Tera Kya Kehna -- I want money -- was not promoted well. I felt very bad about it. But that is the producer's wish, so I did not say a word. I have been singing since my childhood. My mother was a classical vocalist. I am very bad at singing, but being an actor I can manage my show. I was not successful because my songs were never aired properly. That was the time when the music industry was down. But I guess this happens. Sometimes you handle a situation, sometimes the situation handles you. You set a new trend with your style of clothes. When I wore those clothes, I thought they were consistent with my character. Later, I realised people were putting me in a bracket. I am a sincere actor. I can play a particular role or wear some kind of clothes. But I did not want to be categorised. I have not been wearing those kinds of clothes for the last five years yet people want me in the same image. When you are versatile, why should you let someone put you in a bracket? Even your dance set a new trend. Unfortunately, the dances became average because of the kind of films I was doing. Besides, comedy films generally have lyrics of a lower grade. I thought this was rubbish. Also, they were very repetitive. This was also responsible for my decision in a big way. Do you think comedy films have changed over the years? No. There are only four or five such writers in the industry. Their way and style is the same. They have been churning out hits for 10 years. How much more can they do? Hadh kar di uske taraf se. So it was me who had to do something. Why do you think your comedy films are not working? No film is working. The entire business has been doing badly for two years. This happens every 10-12 years. When I entered the film industry, there was a low phase. Tezaab (1988) was the first big hit after about 200 flops. The industry is taking a turn. New people are coming in, seniors are going out. The weaker side of the industry has to move out. It is an art to survive in that situation. Are you willing to work with new directors? My doors are open to everyone. But I hate repetitive ideas, same kind of cinema. It is very frustrating! Har aadmi apne aap se bahut mohabbat karta hai. Agar mein badalna chahta hoon, toh mein doosron se definitely bahut zyada chahooga. Aur mein aapne aap se zyada kisiko laad nahin kar sakta na? [Every person is in love with himself. If I want to change, I would also expect others to change. And I cannot love anyone more than myself, isn't it?]. How has your journey been from the days as a struggle to a star? It has been good. I went through good and bad phases. By the grace of God, I have survived and been successful. Dharamji [Dharmendra] had once told me something. He said one must give one success in three years and you will survive in this trade for 30 years. People will not forget you for three years if you give a hit, even if you are a newcomer. Are you still a 'Virar ka chokra'? I am how I have always been. Different people relate to me differently. While some people may call me Govindaji, I know my oldest and closest friends will call me 'kyu be' only! But I love hearing 'chokra' even after 20 years! I hope they call me a 'chokra' for another 30 years! [laughs] You once said you did not like being called Chi Chi. That was a formula that I had tried. I spread the word in the newspapers that I did not want to be called Chi Chi. This move had a reason. I wanted to see who my true friends were. I had a lot of fun with the reactions! Some people would call me Chi Chi purposely and then become quiet. They wanted to see my reaction. Others would call me Chi Chi and then quickly add, "Oh, I'm sorry Govinda, please don't mind'. I used to think actor ke saath acting kar raha hai!That was a comedy by itself. The ones dear to me were open with me. They knew if Govinda prefers it this way, they would follow it. Ek bahut hi choti topic ko leke maine ek badi cheez ko aasan kar diya. What kind of films do you watch? I watch all kinds of films to keep myself updated. I even watched Bhoot Bangla recently. Since so many people are making films nowadays, sometimes someone sees a great punch or scene while dubbing or shooting and then it appears in another film. Writers write for so many films. The narrator narrates the script very confidentially, but suddenly it appears in another film. So to know what's happening where, you have to be aware. What are your forthcoming films? Raja Bhaiya, Ek Haseena Ek Deewana and Hum Do Hamara Ek. But I don't want to talk about these films because then people will view it with a particular mindset. In fact, I feel that even the promos aired on TV is bad. That way you are telling them what to expect in your film. And if they don't get it, they are disappointed. What about Khullam Khulla Pyar Karenge? I am not sure when it will be released. It is a very entertaining film. Bahut hasa mein (I laughed a lot). It is about a Bihari guy who falls in love with the daughter of a don and how he manages to get her. He is a simpleton but very smart. You cannot say it's a great film, but its very commercial. The delay is due to finance. The songs have become old so I have requested the makers to chop some off. But you never know! Sometimes, of course, the old songs may become hits. So far, my request is just that – a request. I don't insist. Tell us about your children, Narmada and Yash. I keep my children away from the spotlight. I don't want to spoil their childhood. Of course, they are more aware than other children. They enjoy the small joys of childhood, like fighting for a pencil. I tell them even studies must be done in the right doses so that they can enjoy the other joys of life. Unfortunately, Mumbai's children are not allowed to live normally. People who have naam, yash and kirti [name, fame and success] are so involved with it that their children are sucked into it. I want them to enjoy their childhood to the fullest because that will never come back. They watch my films like normal children do. I'm just papa for them. But they are not allowed to criticise my performances in films. ___________________________________________________ Download the hottest & happening ringtones here! OR SMS: Top tone to 7333 Click here now: http://sms.rediff.com/cgi-bin/ringtone/ringhome.pl From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Thu Jul 17 13:18:32 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 17 Jul 2003 07:48:32 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Govinda Message-ID: <20030717074832.1365.qmail@webmail9.rediffmail.com> The Rediff Interview/Govinda 'My films were a compromise' Ronjita Kulkarni | July 17, 2003 Govinda has made everyone laugh with his excellent comedy in films like Hero No 1, Coolie No 1, Raja Babu and even the latest Ek Aur Ek Gyarah. Ask him which of these films does he personally like and he'll say with fervour, "None! My taste, cinema and thinking are different. What I did was a good compromise." Yes, meet the real Govinda, who is tired of his own comedy and frustrated with his lot of films. Born Govind Ahuja, this Punjab-born actor has many hidden traits. Whether it is his philosophical outlook to life ('sometimes you handle a situation, sometimes the situation handles you'), his immense respect for his mother (a sign on his front door reads: Kiss the feet of your mother, Success will kiss your feet), his favourite films Pakeeza, Mughal-e-Azam and Mother India, or that his children are not allowed to criticise his performances in films. While he may be the dancing hero trying to outwit the bad guys, at heart he is still the 'Virar ka chokra'. Govinda speaks to Ronjita Kulkarni about why he thinks his films are a compromise. You recently stated you would never do comedy again. Why? My films have always been considered total time pass entertainment, as B-grade films. There were never called good films. They were never acclaimed even though they did well. I would always be nominated for awards [in the Best Actor category] but never win. Then even that category changed [to Best Actor in comic role]. I tried to fight the situation. But then I thought, why fight? So I decided to change. I will not do comedy films from now on. But in case I do, the script has to be fresh and new. I hate the same kind of writing. My track record till my last film Ek Aur Ek Gyarah has been good. It does not matter whether I have been more successful or less successful in my career. What matters is there has been success. Now, I should not spoil my name. This is the right time to move out. I want to do good cinema. There should be a good director and quality writing. But I don't have a dream role as such. If I had something specific in mind, then I may not be giving a chance to others to bring out their best qualities. What made you do so many comedy roles? Serious roles required too much of me. Being a sincere artiste, I thought three or four serious roles per year is too much of an exertion. To avoid this, I started doing comedy. Comedy helped my nerves and health. Fortunately, I became successful in this. But getting stuck in this rut is foolishness. So I decided to get out of it. Which of your films are your favourites? I don't like any of my films except Hathyar and Swarg. These two films were sincere efforts at filmmaking and everyone was involved. My taste and thinking are very different. What I did was a good compromise. I'm lucky that they turned out good. But now, I really have to do something better. You have also sung in your films like Wah! Tera Kya Kehna and your upcoming Raja Bhaiya. Songs just happened. They were not planned. Unfortunately, the song in Wah! Tera Kya Kehna -- I want money -- was not promoted well. I felt very bad about it. But that is the producer's wish, so I did not say a word. I have been singing since my childhood. My mother was a classical vocalist. I am very bad at singing, but being an actor I can manage my show. I was not successful because my songs were never aired properly. That was the time when the music industry was down. But I guess this happens. Sometimes you handle a situation, sometimes the situation handles you. You set a new trend with your style of clothes. When I wore those clothes, I thought they were consistent with my character. Later, I realised people were putting me in a bracket. I am a sincere actor. I can play a particular role or wear some kind of clothes. But I did not want to be categorised. I have not been wearing those kinds of clothes for the last five years yet people want me in the same image. When you are versatile, why should you let someone put you in a bracket? Even your dance set a new trend. Unfortunately, the dances became average because of the kind of films I was doing. Besides, comedy films generally have lyrics of a lower grade. I thought this was rubbish. Also, they were very repetitive. This was also responsible for my decision in a big way. Do you think comedy films have changed over the years? No. There are only four or five such writers in the industry. Their way and style is the same. They have been churning out hits for 10 years. How much more can they do? Hadh kar di uske taraf se. So it was me who had to do something. Why do you think your comedy films are not working? No film is working. The entire business has been doing badly for two years. This happens every 10-12 years. When I entered the film industry, there was a low phase. Tezaab (1988) was the first big hit after about 200 flops. The industry is taking a turn. New people are coming in, seniors are going out. The weaker side of the industry has to move out. It is an art to survive in that situation. Are you willing to work with new directors? My doors are open to everyone. But I hate repetitive ideas, same kind of cinema. It is very frustrating! Har aadmi apne aap se bahut mohabbat karta hai. Agar mein badalna chahta hoon, toh mein doosron se definitely bahut zyada chahooga. Aur mein aapne aap se zyada kisiko laad nahin kar sakta na? [Every person is in love with himself. If I want to change, I would also expect others to change. And I cannot love anyone more than myself, isn't it?]. How has your journey been from the days as a struggle to a star? It has been good. I went through good and bad phases. By the grace of God, I have survived and been successful. Dharamji [Dharmendra] had once told me something. He said one must give one success in three years and you will survive in this trade for 30 years. People will not forget you for three years if you give a hit, even if you are a newcomer. Are you still a 'Virar ka chokra'? I am how I have always been. Different people relate to me differently. While some people may call me Govindaji, I know my oldest and closest friends will call me 'kyu be' only! But I love hearing 'chokra' even after 20 years! I hope they call me a 'chokra' for another 30 years! [laughs] You once said you did not like being called Chi Chi. That was a formula that I had tried. I spread the word in the newspapers that I did not want to be called Chi Chi. This move had a reason. I wanted to see who my true friends were. I had a lot of fun with the reactions! Some people would call me Chi Chi purposely and then become quiet. They wanted to see my reaction. Others would call me Chi Chi and then quickly add, "Oh, I'm sorry Govinda, please don't mind'. I used to think actor ke saath acting kar raha hai!That was a comedy by itself. The ones dear to me were open with me. They knew if Govinda prefers it this way, they would follow it. Ek bahut hi choti topic ko leke maine ek badi cheez ko aasan kar diya. What kind of films do you watch? I watch all kinds of films to keep myself updated. I even watched Bhoot Bangla recently. Since so many people are making films nowadays, sometimes someone sees a great punch or scene while dubbing or shooting and then it appears in another film. Writers write for so many films. The narrator narrates the script very confidentially, but suddenly it appears in another film. So to know what's happening where, you have to be aware. What are your forthcoming films? Raja Bhaiya, Ek Haseena Ek Deewana and Hum Do Hamara Ek. But I don't want to talk about these films because then people will view it with a particular mindset. In fact, I feel that even the promos aired on TV is bad. That way you are telling them what to expect in your film. And if they don't get it, they are disappointed. What about Khullam Khulla Pyar Karenge? I am not sure when it will be released. It is a very entertaining film. Bahut hasa mein (I laughed a lot). It is about a Bihari guy who falls in love with the daughter of a don and how he manages to get her. He is a simpleton but very smart. You cannot say it's a great film, but its very commercial. The delay is due to finance. The songs have become old so I have requested the makers to chop some off. But you never know! Sometimes, of course, the old songs may become hits. So far, my request is just that – a request. I don't insist. Tell us about your children, Narmada and Yash. I keep my children away from the spotlight. I don't want to spoil their childhood. Of course, they are more aware than other children. They enjoy the small joys of childhood, like fighting for a pencil. I tell them even studies must be done in the right doses so that they can enjoy the other joys of life. Unfortunately, Mumbai's children are not allowed to live normally. People who have naam, yash and kirti [name, fame and success] are so involved with it that their children are sucked into it. I want them to enjoy their childhood to the fullest because that will never come back. They watch my films like normal children do. I'm just papa for them. But they are not allowed to criticise my performances in films. ___________________________________________________ Download the hottest & happening ringtones here! OR SMS: Top tone to 7333 Click here now: http://sms.rediff.com/cgi-bin/ringtone/ringhome.pl From loungelab at backup-festival.de Wed Jul 16 09:03:09 2003 From: loungelab at backup-festival.de (kloschi) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 05:33:09 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Call for Entries: Backup.lounge|lab.2003 Message-ID: <20030716053309.5aa4f337.loungelab@backup-festival.de> lounge|lab 2003: XOR - Testing Truth. This years theme is concerned with the interpretation of truth and the dissemination of fakes. All works are to be interpreted as being created and used within the framework of a GNU Public License, even if the works have nothing to do with software. For us, all art is open source. The lounge|lab application is available as a pdf [1]. We hope that you take the time to read the description and then put together an application! Deadline: all entries must be postmarked by July 31, 2003! cheers, kloschi [1] pdf: http://www.backup-festival.com/callforentries/b03_loungelab_entry_form.pdf call for entries: http://www.backup-festival.com/callforentries/cal-content-lounge.html#loungelab questionaire: http://www.backup-festival.com/callforentries/cal-content-lounge.html#loungeques -- www.backup-festival.de www.backup-festival.com loungelab at backup-festival.de _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From nyvoices at indypress.org Thu Jul 17 08:37:01 2003 From: nyvoices at indypress.org (Rehan Ansari) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 20:07:01 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] Voices 74 Message-ID: <018b01c34c10$e034cbd0$6a01a8c0@herman> This Week's Voices That Must Be Heard By IPA-New York, a sponsored project of the Independent Press Association Edition 74: 17 July 2003. NEWS ITEMS: Preventable lead poisoning in central Brooklyn injures young by David Mark Greaves, Our Time Press, 1 July 2003. English language. The cognitive development of our young is severely threatened by malevolence, ignorance or neglect. MORE. Rep. Rangel pulls for Perkins, blasts Bloomberg by J. Zambgba Browne, Amsterdam News, 16 July 2003. English language. Rep. Charles B. Rangel, one of those invited to give Bill Perkins a boost at a press conference in Harlem, rebuked both Mayor Michael Bloomberg and activist Dr. Lenora Fulani for their campaign to institute nonpartisan local elections. MORE. Homeland Security has blocked Irish woman's return home to U.S. family for last seven months by Sean O'Driscoll, Irish Voice, 9 July 2003. English language. Bridget Reuter, 61, a grandmother, U.S. resident, and the wife of a veteran, traveled to Ireland to attend a wedding and was not allowed to re-enter the U.S. from Shannon. MORE. A hundred Chinese garment workers protest and win by Lin Ching, China Press, 10 July 2003. Translated from Chinese by Connie Kong. On the afternoon of July 9th, nearly one hundred Chinese garment workers, mostly female, protested in front of Wild Cat Service Corp, an occupational training center. As victims of 9/11, they were qualified to get compensation from the September 11th Fund and receive one year of free health insurance, in addition to attending occupational training classes. On Monday, when they came to class on time, they were told that classes had ended, five weeks before schedule. MORE. Bush bid for Jews' votes zeroes in on Gen X, GOP nurtures cadre of activists by E.J. Kessler, Forward, 11 July 2003. English language. The White House is nurturing a cadre of Generation X Republican Jewish activists, many of them Orthodox, as part of a concerted strategy to boost Republican strength among Jewish voters-and Jewish political donors-in the run-up to the 2004 election. MORE. Bloomberg supports bilingual education by Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska, Nowy Dziennik / Polish Daily News, 10 July 2003. Translated from Polish by Anna Milewska. For changing his mind about bilingual education, Mayor Bloomberg stands to gain the gratitude of thousands of immigrants and their children. Unfortunately, at the moment bilingual classes are only available in Spanish and Chinese. MORE. BRIEFS: Local senator leads fight against media merger by Heather Haddon, Norwood News, 16 July 2003. English language. Korean small businesses leaving Manhattan by JooChan Kim, Korea Times New York, 11 July 2003. Translated from Korean by Jeongwoo Han. Leaked EPA report says post-9/11 dust is toxic by Su-Ping Tsin, China Press, 7 July 2003. Translated from Chinese by Connie Kong. Caribbean immigrants at mercy of unscrupulous immigration consultants by Tony Best, CaribNews, 15 July 2003. English language. Fear of gangs increases in Paterson by Carolina Sotola, Hoy, 7 October 2003. Translated from Spanish by Karina Valencia. The young are out of control during summer vacation by Jun-yong Ahn, Korea Daily News, 2 July 2003. Translated from Korean by Sun-yong Reinish. EDITORIALS: One more Bangladeshi has been attacked in Jamaica, Queens, while returning from mosque, Weekly Thikana, 4 July 2003. Translated from Bangla by Moinuddin Naser. Locals say that this is the third such incident that has taken place in the area. This does not include the incident two weeks ago when Mian was coming back from prayer and outside the same high school some kids shouted out at him that he is Muslim and an enemy. MORE. Call for naming anti-Shia violence sacrilegious, News Pakistan, 17 July 2003. Translated from Urdu by Rehan Ansari. On July 4 three men massacred 53 Muslims in a Shia mosque in Quetta, Pakistan. MORE. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030716/5faf4bcf/attachment.html From fred at bytesforall.org Fri Jul 18 00:35:02 2003 From: fred at bytesforall.org (Frederick Noronha (FN)) Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 00:35:02 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] Music case... Message-ID: Does anyone have details on what further happened to this case? Curious... FN NEWS: Hotels In Goa Restrained From Playing Music Without Royalty Vidisha Barua New Delhi, January 18: The Delhi High Court has restrained a number of hotels in Goa from playing music, the copyright for which vests with the Indian Performing Right Society Ltd, through cable or otherwise without paying licence fees and royalty. Justice Manmohan Sarin said that he was 'satisfied that a prima facie case has been made out for ad interim injunction against the defendants.' The next date of hearing has been fixed for July 9. The hotels made parties in the suit are Kamat Inns Pvt Ltd, Hotel Nova Goa, Hotel Golden Goa and Kamat Holiday Homes. Counsel Praveen Anand appearing for the society submitted that it had the copyright in the lyrics and composition of various musical works played in the hotels. He alleged that the hotels had paid licence fees up to 1993-94 and had stopped thereafter. Despite non-payment of licence fees, the hotels were violating the copyright to protect the interest of the artists. Mr Anand submitted that despite repeated reminders, the hotels failed to renew their licence contracts and pay the outstanding fees. Mr Anand submitted that the Indian Performing Right Society is a non-profit making body established in August 1969 to monitor, protect and enforce the rights of its members comprising authors, composers and publishers of musical works both in India and abroad. He further submitted that the plaintiff is a registered copyright society under Section 33(3) of the Copyright Act, 1957 and has received the certificate of registration from the union government authorising it to carry on the copyright business in musical works and any words or action intended to be sung, spoken or performed with the music. The society is also affiliated to 194 societies of authors and composers across the globe. The primary task of the society is to collect royalties and thereafter give it to the owners of the copyright in the music, whose interest it represents. http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=26240 -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha (FN) | http://www.fredericknoronha.net Freelance Journalist | http://www.bytesforall.org http://goalinks.pitas.com | http://joingoanet.shorturl.com http://linuxinindia.pitas.com | http://www.livejournal.com/users/goalinks ------------------------------------------------------------------------- T: 0091.832.2409490 or 2409783 M: 0 9822 122436 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- From faizan at sarai.net Fri Jul 18 20:06:58 2003 From: faizan at sarai.net (Faizan Ahmed) Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 20:06:58 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] CALL FOR PAPERS Message-ID: <200307182006.58382.faizan@sarai.net> CALL FOR PAPERS "Journal of Comparative Sociology" Contributions are invited for a new journal called the "Journal of Comparative Sociology", which aims to question and develop alternatives to conventional western sociological and anthropological wisdom. Ranging in scope from doubt about western self-representations as they appear in the so-called social sciences to encouragement to develop non-Western and so-called traditional points of view, the journal is oriented to providing a forum for that Social and sociological thought that presumes a plurality of sociologies and civilizational perspectives. Limited to begin with to Indian and European perspectives, the journal hopes to be able to accomodate as many others as possible, if contributions are forthcoming. Both ethnographic and theoretical materials are equally welcome.The emphasis will fall on careful reasoning rather than empirical curiosity, though of course the counterposition of the two may well be an exaggeration. The work of young scholars is especially welcome. Deadline for the forthcoming issue is 10th Aug. 2003. Please send us your papers to the following: Dr. Rabindra Ray Dept. of Sociology Delhi School of Economics University of Delhi Delhi - 110007 Ph: 91-11-27667858 E-mail: journal_comparativesociology at rediffmail.com For further information please contact the above. Regards Dr. Rabindra Ray. From amc at autonomous.org Fri Jul 18 20:15:41 2003 From: amc at autonomous.org (Amanda McDonald Crowley) Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 17:45:41 +0300 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] ISEA2004 - CALL for PROPOSALS Message-ID: - Stockholm - Tallinn - Helsinki - August 14th - 22nd, 2004 ************************************************************ ISEA2004: The 12th International Symposium on Electronic Art ************************************************************ CALL FOR PROPOSALS ************************************************************ Deadline: August 15th 2003 ************************************************************ http://www.isea2004.net new media art - media culture research - electronic music - art and science - cultural and social applications for new media - New media meets art, science, research, and popular culture at ISEA2004 in Stockholm - Tallinn - Helsinki. For the first time an event of this scale is being organised between three cities and on the ferry travelling between these three Baltic countries. International participants and local audiences attend thematic conferences, exhibitions, live performances, screenings, satellite events, concerts and clubs. Many events are also interfaced via television, radio, broadband Internet, and mobile networks. We are encouraging: Socially, critically and ecologically engaging work; Projects that bring the creative media to the streets; Projects that are worn on or inside people; Context sensitive work in the museums; Projects that float, dock or sail; Screen based media as it appears in 2004; Sea Fair: technological gizmos for ferry travellers and future media archaeologists to discover; Bridges between club scenes and art venues; Most engaging works from performing arts that engage new media, users, and audiences; Networks to network... Key themes for the event include: Networked experience (Stockholm) Wearable experience (Tallinn) Wireless experience (Helsinki) Histories of the new: media arts, media cultures, media technologies - all cities Additional themes include: Open source and software as culture (Helsinki) Critical interaction design (Helsinki) Geopolitics of media (Tallinn) Interfacing sound (Helsinki and on the Ferry - in collaboration with Koneisto - check out http://www.koneisto.com for details of this year's Koneisto Festival 24-26 July 2003) We are currently inviting proposals for projects and papers for the exhibitions, conferences and associated programs during ISEA2004. Projects might include: works for exhibition in a gallery; workshops; installations in public spaces; live performance; interfaced screenings; games or shared environments; projects which encourage remote participation - etc. Proposals for the conference can include papers and panels but we are equally interested in workshops and roundtables: discussion formats that encourage participation and exchange of ideas. We are also working with a range of local organisations who may be able to host short and medium term residencies or workshops for artists who are keen to spend a longer time working with local artists and organisations. Information on these opportunities will be regularly added to the web site, so do register to receive updates. ISEA2004 will be an exciting week long event, but we are also interested in providing a space to build long term, sustainable exchange and collaboration. The time on the Ferry will provide a space for less formal dialogue and social intercourse, so feel free to propose workshops and meetings for the exchange of information and ideas. Our over all aim for ISEA2004 is to create an event which is thematically and critically coherent and provides new insight. Please note that ISEA2004 is a forum for artistic, academic, and culturally or socially relevant work that has not previously been presented in international forums (you may have showed/presented it in your local context). All submissions are done via our website using a web form and stored into a database. This procedure allows us to have the proposals reviewed by International Programme Committee (IPC) members. We very much look forward to hearing your ideas! For further information: http://www.isea2004.net info at isea2004.net Our partners for the event are: MAIN ORGANISER: m-cult, centre for media culture in finland http://www.m-cult.org HELSINKI: Exhibition: The Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma http://www.kiasma.fi Conference: Media Centre Lume (University of Art and Design) http://www.lume.fi Electronic music: Koneisto (Festival for electronic music and arts) http://www.koneisto.com STOCKHOLM: Coordinator: CRAC, Creative Room for Art and Computing http://www.crac.org Conference: Moderna Museet http://www.modernamuseet.se and Royal University College of Fine Arts (Stockholm) http://www.kkh.se Exhibition: Färgfabriken http://www.fargfabriken.se Electronic music: Fylkingen http://www.fylkingen.se TALLINN: Coordinator + conference: Estonian Academy of Arts http://artun.ee Exhibition: Center for Contemporary Arts, Estonia at The Art Museum of Estonia http://www.cca.ee ISEA2004 is produced in collaboration with ISEA Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts http://www.isea-web.org -- For further information: http://www.isea2004.net info at isea2004.net _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From shuddha at sarai.net Sat Jul 19 20:27:17 2003 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 14:57:17 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] BBC E-mail: Iran steps up net censorship Message-ID: <20030719_154232_012097.shuddha@sarai.net> Shuddhabrata Sengupta saw this story on BBC News Online and thought you should see it. ** Message ** An Interesting report on the BBC website on Internet censorship in Iran. I thought it would be of interest to people on the Reader List, cheers Shuddha ** Iran steps up net censorship ** Iran is reported to have banned thousands of political and pornographic websites. < http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/technology/3019695.stm > ** BBC Daily E-mail ** Choose the news and sport headlines you want - when you want them, all in one daily e-mail < http://www.bbc.co.uk/dailyemail/ > ** Disclaimer ** The BBC is not responsible for the content of this e-mail, and anything said in this e-mail does not necessarily reflect the BBC's views. If you don't wish to receive such mails in the future, please e-mail webmasters at bbc.co.uk making sure you include the following text: I do not want to receive "E-mail a friend" mailings. From monsoon at pukar.org.in Sat Jul 19 13:09:20 2003 From: monsoon at pukar.org.in (PUKAR Monsoon) Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 13:09:20 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] "On Cities, On Water" SYMPOSIUM BEGINS TODAY Message-ID: Dear Friends: The PUKAR MONSOON SYMPOSIUM begins today, SATURDAY 19 JULY at 6.00 P.M., with a panel discussion on urban water supply featuring INDU AGARWAL from SPARC (Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres) Mumbai, KALPANA SHARMA, Deputy Editor of The Hindu, Mumbai, and DAVID SATTHERTHWAITE from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), London, U.K. The PUKAR Monsoon Symposium is a week-long series of panel discussions, film screenings, and presentations by students and researchers, which continues from today until SATURDAY 26 JULY 2003. See below for the complete shedule of activities over the coming week. All the activities in the Monsoon Symposium are free and open to the public, and we particularly encourage students and teachers to attend and participate in the Symposium, which will be followed by workshops and activities in undergraduate colleges in Mumbai on the theme of water and the city. PUKAR Monsoon 2003: "On Cities, On Water" Water as substance and as medium has been central to urban development throughout human history. In Mumbai, as in many other world cities, the modern urban experience is 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. What is the PUKAR Monsoon? The PUKAR Monsoon is an annual series of occassional lectures, workshops and pedagogic activities organised from May to August every year, in which undergraduate college students address a specific theme through a variety of creative approaches to documentation and education of urban life. The aim of PUKAR Monsoon 2003 has been to facilitate debate and reflection, encourage artistic, intellectual and creative expression, and develop hands-on skills in documenting the political and cultural implications of the many connections between cities and water. PUKAR Monsoon 2003 began with the DOC-SHOP -- an eight-day student workshop for students held from 19-27 May 2003 -- and continues with pedagogic activities in undergraduate colleges throughout Mumbai in July and August 2003, when colleges open. For more information, contact Rahul Srivastava or Shekhar Krishnan at 2207 7779, , or visit http://www.pukar.org.in/doc-shop/. SCHEDULE of PUKAR MONSOON 2003 SYMPOSIUM: "On Cities, On Water" Dates: SATURDAY 19 JULY to SATURDAY 26 JULY 2003 Times: Afternoons and Evenings 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. S A T U R D A Y 1 9 J U L Y 2 0 0 3 18.00-18.15 PUKAR Monsoon 2003 -- "On Cities, On Water" : INTRODUCTION RAHUL SRIVASTAVA Director, PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research), Mumbai 18.15-20.15 Water Supply to Poor Areas: PANEL DISCUSSION INDU AGARWAL SPARC (Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres), Mumbai KALPANA SHARMA Deputy Editor, The Hindu, Mumbai DAVID SATTHERTHWAITE Editor, Environment and Urbanisation, London, U.K. Intl Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), London, U.K. M O N D A Y 2 1 J U L Y 2 0 0 3 17.00-18.00 FILM: "Spring" (Valdas Navasaitis, 19 minutes, 1997) This silent documentary languidly glides upon an aquatic landscape, which much resembles a painting, and tries to understand the strange and unusual place, Valteris, the main character lives in. Valteris lives in the region of Klaipeda in Lithuania. Every year when the snow begins to melt, his house and the surrounding fields are flooded. Valteris lives to the rhythm of this spring flood; it is a part of his life. 18.00-19.30 FILM: "Aral: Sea of Thirst" (Jean Afanassieff, 52 minutes, 1999) The Aral Sea has dried up. The 'Big Blue Mirror'of the Kazakhs is now a desert of sand and grasses haunted by the rusting hulls of fishing boats. Fed by two major rivers, the Syr-Dia and Amou-Daria, most of the water of the inland sea of Central Asia was diverted to irrigate cotton and rice fields. Today the intensive crops which were programmed by the Soviets in the 50s have all disappeared and, apart from the little that is left of the inexhaustible resources of the sea, there remains the bitter reality of a desolate environment. The government of Kazakhstan promises a better future in 2030. They have to promise something for the future. For an old fisherman kneeling in front of his grounded boat the only prospect is sand stretching out as far as the eye can see. T U E S D A Y 2 2 J U L Y 2 0 0 3 17.00-17.30 FILM: "20,000 Leagues on the Sea" (Bernard David-Cavaz, 13 minutes, 1995) This documentary is the portrait of a Geophysicist, Jean-Francois Minster, who heads the Laboratory of Oceanography in Toulouse. This reveals the implications of climate changes on human populations, the economy, and life in general like a journey of discovery into a complex and mysterious world. 18.00-19.15 FILM: "Fishing in the Sea of Greed" (Anand Patwardhan, 40 minutes, 1999) followed by discussion with ANAND PATWARDHAN Documentary Film-Maker, Mumbai W E D N E S D A Y 2 3 J U L Y 2 0 0 3 17.00-18.30 VIDEOS: Urban Sanitation, Transport, and Alliances of the Urban Poor followed by discussion with INDU AGARWAL and DEVIKA MAHADEVAN SPARC (Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres), Mumbai 19.00-21.00 FILM: "Living on the River Agano" (Sato Makoto, 115 minutes, 1992) The filmmakers filmed and shared everyday life in Kanose, a town on the River Agano in the Niigata Prefecture. Kanose and nearby Yasuda lie close to the Showa Electric Company factory that has poisoned the river by dumping organic mercury waste. T H U R S D A Y 2 4 J U L Y 2 0 0 3 15.00-16.00 Waterfronts and Ambiguous Boundaries: STUDENT PRESENTATIONS SHILPA PHADKE and students of St Xavier's College Associate, PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research), Mumbai 16.30-18.00 Mumbai's Waterfronts: URBAN DESIGN INTERVENTIONS Eastern Waterfront: Bombay Port and Harbour ANIRUDH PAUL and PRASAD SHETTY Design Cell, Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture (KRVIA), Mumbai Western Waterfronts: Dadar-Mahim, Bandra and Juhu P.K. DAS Architect, P.K. Das Associates, Mumbai discussion moderated by VYJAYANTHI RAO Director, PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research), U.S.A. 18.30-19.15 FILM: "Canals Suspended in the Sky" (Dominique Martin-Ferrari, 26 minutes) Hué, which is crossed by The River of Perfumes, is trying to restore the canals and the hanging gardens of the Vietnamese city whilst conciliating the preservation of the architecture and the landscape, the maintaining of rural populations on the shores of the river, and the development of tourism. Parcels of land are turned into rice paddies following the model of the Etangde Thau, and the small vegetable gardens planted on top of the town walls are preserved. Huê, the 19th century Imperial City, reconnects with is traditions and its water heritage. 19.15-18.00 FILM: "The Village of the Mist" (Nina Peliaeva and George Trivano, 12 minutes) At Chungungo, in Northern Chile, rain never falls. Since there are no springs in the village, every week, water is brought to the inhabitants by lorry. However, the village is near the sea, and every morning, a thick mist rises up along the mountain slopes. Scientists have thought up a simple but effective way of collecting the mist to obtain water. Up to 60,000 litres of water per day can be produced when there is mist. This has changed the life of the village. F R I D A Y 2 5 J U L Y 2 0 0 3 15.00-17.00 Water Issues in the Media: PANEL DISCUSSION Reporting Water PRADEEP SAHA Managing Editor, Down To Earth Magazine, New Delhi Media Coverage of the Environment MEENA MENON Journalist and Writer, Mumbai discussion moderated by SAMEERA KHAN Associate, PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research), Mumbai 18.00-19.30 FILM: Premiere of "Words on Water" (Sanjay Kak, 2003, 82 minutes) followed by discussion with SANJAY KAK Film-Maker, Octave Communications, New Delhi S A T U R D A Y 2 6 J U L Y 2 0 0 3 15.00-16.00 Ecological Footprint of Mumbai: STUDENT PRESENTATIONS NIKHIL ANAND and students of Sophia College Associate, PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research), Mumbai 16.30-17.00 FILM: "Four Engineers and a Manager" (Pradeep Saha, 2000, 22 minutes) followed by discussion with PRADEEP SAHA Managing Editor, Down To Earth Magazine, New Delhi 17.30-19.00 Water -- Mumbai at Risk?: PANEL DISCUSSION discussion chaired by NIRUPA BHANGAR Educationist, Mumbai Water Infrastucture NAYAN PAREKH and RACHNA SHETH Juhu Together, Mumbai Urban-Rural Migration KAREN MENEZES and ZARIR DEVITRA St Xavier's College, Mumbai Perspectives on Privatisation SANJAY BHANGAR Bombay Independent Media Centre (IMC), Mumbai 19.00-20.00 OPEN DISCUSSION on Cities and Water _____ 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 eye at ranadasgupta.com Sun Jul 20 09:36:53 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2003 09:36:53 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Zimbabwe halts rent-a-corpse scam Message-ID: Zimbabwe halts rent-a-corpse scam http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3080379.stm Two mortuary workers in Zimbabwe have been arrested for allegedly renting out corpses to motorists to enable them to buy fuel. Most service stations in Zimbabwe give preference in fuel queues to people with burial orders or those taking dead relatives for burial. The state-owned Herald newspaper reported that the two men were also accused of selling fake burial orders to motorists who then took the corpses to service stations. Police spokeswoman Cecilia Churu told the Associated Press the two workers were arrested on Thursday after security guards at the hospital in the town of Chitungwiza, 24 kilometres (15 miles) south of Harare, noticed a coffin being returned to the morgue. The two men are expected to appear in court on charges of violating dead bodies. The fuel situation is a symptom of the country's economic crisis. Fuel prices have gone up 600% since February. Mile-long queues are the result, and a further burden on hard-pressed businesses already under pressure by the combination of rampant inflation, an unrealistic exchange rate and government price controls which have worsened shortages instead of easing them. Zimbabwe has been suffering a serious fuel shortage since November when a barter deal with Libya collapsed. From eye at ranadasgupta.com Mon Jul 21 13:52:54 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 13:52:54 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Amazon Plan Would Allow Searching Texts of Many Books Message-ID: NYT article. Major web firms compete with each other and with publishers over the complex issue of putting books online. R July 21, 2003 Amazon Plan Would Allow Searching Texts of Many Books By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/21/technology/21AMAZ.html?th=&pagewanted=prin t&position= Executives at Amazon.com are negotiating with several of the largest book publishers about an ambitious and expensive plan to assemble a searchable online archive with the texts of tens of thousands of books of nonfiction, according to several publishing executives involved. Amazon plans to limit how much of any given book a user can read, and it is telling publishers that the plan will help sell more books while better serving its own online customers. Together with little-publicized additions to Amazon's Web site, like listings of restaurants and movie showings, the plan appears to be part of a strategy to compete with online search services like Google and Yahoo for consumers' time and attention. Providing a searchable online database of the contents of books could make Amazon a more authoritative source of information, drawing additional traffic to its online retail store. A spokeswoman for Amazon declined to comment and would not confirm any of details of the plan. The publishing executives said Amazon had asked them to keep the plan confidential until the start of the service, which was scheduled for the fall. Amazon is calling its program Look Inside the Book II, the publishers said. It would expand on a current program that lets shoppers read a table of contents, a first chapter or a few selected pages provided by the publishers of certain books. But Look Inside the Book II would let online browsers search by terms like "Caravaggio," "sans-culottes," or "Osama bin Laden," and then see a list of books mentioning the term along with the sentence that contains it. Browsers could then choose to see several pages around that citation. But to see those pages Amazon would require users to register, and it plans to limit the amount of any single book a browser can view. The publishers said they have been guardedly cooperative. Some said they were willing to let Amazon experiment with works of narrative nonfiction, but not reference books, cookbooks or poetry where shoppers might be satisfied with the few pages produced by a search. Others are holding out for further assurances on preventing piracy and guarantees that they will be able to pull their books from the service. But some publishing executives also noted that Amazon, by far the largest online bookseller, stands to benefit far more than they do. Now, in addition to books, they said, Amazon can sell music, electronics, clothing and other goods to users drawn to the site by the chance to search its digital archive, and the publishers would not receive a cut of that revenue. How authors will react is another question. Most book contracts allow publishers to give away excerpts for promotional purposes, but authors may contend that Amazon's search service more closely resembles some kind of research system. "This sounds like an anthology right, and that has to be specifically approved by the author, and if a publisher is going to license the electronic rights to the whole work there has be to reasonable compensation for that," said Paul Aiken, the executive director of the Authors Guild. Amazon appears to be betting heavily on the idea. At a time when Amazon is squeezing hard to lower its costs everywhere else, the company is paying to enter thousands of texts into its searchable database, the publishers said. Although there are many works already in digital format, others would have to be scanned at a cost of more than $200 a book, executives in the industry said. It is unclear how many books Amazon is paying to scan. Amazon's searchable archive also appears to be part of the company's response to the four-year-old Google, which is changing the way people use the Internet, gather information, advertise and shop. Microsoft is developing its own alternative search engine as part of its online service and just last week Yahoo agreed to acquire Overture, Google's principal rival in the search business, for $1.6 billion. The challenge for Web sites like Amazon is that Google's search service is increasingly cutting in front of them as the first place consumers go online, diverting shoppers who might have gone straight to Amazon, the most popular online retailer. Google's Web site accounted for about 32 percent of the four billion Internet searches conducted in May, compared to about 25 percent from Yahoo, 19 percent through American Online and 15 percent with Microsoft's MSN service, according to the research company ComScore Networks. "Everybody is afraid of Google," said Jordan Rohan, an analyst at SoundView Technology Group. Search-result pages are also experiencing the fastest growth in online advertising. Advertisers can pay to place short text links next to search results like "New York wedding" or "Hawaiian vacation," and through Overture they can pay to appear among the results themselves. Amazon recently reached an agreement with Google to use its search-based advertising system for searches made on Amazon. (Google sells the advertising and splits the fees with Amazon.) Likewise, Google also appears to be taking aim at online retailers like Amazon by testing a spinoff called Froogle.com, which makes it easy to browse and comparison shop at scores of online stores at once. Many consumers already begin searching for products or services at Google, and Froogle looks like an attempt to capitalize on Google's technology and reputation to become a shopping destination to rival Amazon, Yahoo or eBay. If shoppers start at Froogle, "What value does Amazon add?" Mr. Rohan asked. But Google searches only Web sites, not the contents of books, and Amazon's proposed archive might offer a more authoritative alternative source of information. And Google's list of most popular searches on the site suggests that Amazon's planned combination of a digital library with a retail store and film and restaurant listings might be a good place to look for answers to many of the questions. Earlier this month, a list of "top gaining queries" on Google included "Pirates of the Caribbean," "Angelina Jolie," "Bastille Day" and "Stonehenge." Amazon already offers local movie times and customer reviews for "Pirates" and lists the opening day for Angelina Jolie's coming film, a sequel to "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider." It sells DVD's, video games and other products related to both films. For after the show, Amazon offers searchable database of restaurant names by location with menus and some customer reviews in New York, San Francisco, Boston and other cities. But with the addition of its planned archive, Amazon could also offer detailed information about Bastille Day and Stonehenge, as well as related books for sale. A spokesman for Google, David Krane, said the company had a strong relationship with Amazon, which is an important advertiser on Google's search results as well as a showcase for Google's search-related advertisements. And he noted that the two companies remain in different and complementary businesses, one primarily a retailer and the other a research tool. Amazon is hardly the first to imagine building a searchable archive of the contents of thousands of books. The start-ups NetLibrary, Questia and Ebrary have all pursued similar goals. NetLibrary, which initially set out to help libraries provide online access to their patrons, filed for bankruptcy protection and was taken over by a consortium of libraries. Questia, which paid to digitize about 45,000 works of nonfiction, charges fees to use its database, and is directed mostly toward students. It advertises on Overture and Google, where plugs for its service turn up next to searches for student paper topics like "postmodernism," for example. Ebrary, which is partly owned by the Random House division of Bertelsmann, the publisher Pearson, and textbook giant McGraw-Hill, started with a plan similar to Amazon's, an online library that also sold books. Ebrary now offers the contents of about 30,000 documents, including a combination of books, sheet music and other publications, but it has shifted away from its original business. "Generating revenue in that fashion would have taken a much longer period of time," Christopher Warnock, its chief executive, said. Now, Ebrary mainly helps libraries make books available to patrons over the Internet. Thomas D. Turvey Jr., a vice president of business development for Ebrary, said Amazon's plan was risky because of the potential copyright issues, the threat of online piracy and the cost of scanning so many books into digital form. But Mr. Warnock said he spoke with Amazon about collaborating. "It would have been great if we could have figured out a way that we could have worked together on it," he said. Mr. Warnock said that often one Internet company comes up with a good idea and then another, with a lot of traffic, puts it to use. "It seems like the way the world works," he said. From eye at ranadasgupta.com Mon Jul 21 14:09:07 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 14:09:07 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] New DVDs that self-destruct Message-ID: NYT July 21, 2003 DVD's Meant for Buying but Not for Keeping By ERIC A. TAUB http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/21/technology/21FLEX.html?pagewanted=print&po sition= LOS ANGELES, July 20 — Video rental stores want customers to return their movies, they just do not want them to do so too quickly. When tapes and DVD's are returned after the due date, late fees often double the cost of a rental — highly annoying to consumers while providing no additional revenue to the studios that make the movies. To help consumers avoid those fees, while trying to develop new revenue, the Walt Disney Company's home video division plans to test market a new type of DVD that will be priced about the same as a rental but never needs to be returned — because it stops working after a fixed period of time. It is an experiment that will be closely watched in Hollywood, where the home video market last year represented nearly 59 percent of the film industry's $17.38 billion in North American revenue, according to Adams Media Research. Late fees are a lucrative source of additional income for Blockbuster Inc., which is a unit of Viacom Inc., and its competitors. Typically, the late fees account for more than 10 percent of the gross rental revenue at most outlets, according to the Video Software Dealers Association. But, those extra fees do little or nothing to bolster the bottom lines of the film studios, which usually make most of their rental revenue from the initial sale of VHS and DVD copies to retail outlets. The test, by Disney's Buena Vista Home Entertainment could be a way to change that. Set to roll out in September with eight titles in four markets, Disney's new EZ-D DVD self-destructs 48 hours after the purchaser opens the special airtight package. The disc is composed of a Lexan resin co-polymer developed by GE Plastics. The General Electric Company owns a minority stake in Flexplay Technologies, the company that owns the underlying process and has licensed it to Disney. Once the product is exposed to the elements, a chemical clock starts ticking, turning the disc black and making it unreadable by a DVD player's laser after the designated time has elapsed. Until that happens, the disc can be played as often as desired. Employing a chemical rather than software process to disable the disc is meant to ensure that the process will work with any DVD player. And like any standard DVD, the discs can have software copyright protection that would deter a user from copying them onto the hard drive of a computer or onto a blank DVD that would not self-destruct. Disney hopes that the purchase price of $5 to $7 will be close enough to the cost of a typical DVD rental that many customers will consider it an easy impulse buy. Disney will be the first studio to license EZ-D from Flexplay. Among the other video leaders, the home-video divisions of Paramount, Sony and Warner Brothers declined to comment on their possible interest in the technology. Convenience will attract consumers to the concept, the chief executive of Flexplay, Alan Blaustein, said. "With EZ-D, we are taking late fees and the video return process out of the equation." A limited-play DVD service has been tried before — in 1998 — and it failed. But, EZ-D proponents argue that this time will be different. The DVD is now more popular and widely understood. That lends support to EZ-D discs because they will play on a standard DVD machine. To make them readily accessible, Disney plans on selling them in nontraditional outlets not usually associated with video sales or rentals, like convenience stores and gas stations. By sidestepping video rental outlets, Disney will be able to eliminate the middleman and keep a higher percentage of each disc's revenue. At the same time, Disney wants to make sure that its EZ-D sales do not reduce rental profits. So the EZ-D titles will not be available until six weeks after the film is first released in standard video rental stores. To further differentiate the two products, the self-destructing versions will contain the movie but not any of the additional features that helped make the DVD format so popular, like missing scenes and director's commentaries. There is nothing magical about the 48-hour life span of the disc. The manufacturing process can be adjusted so that the disc will expire anywhere from 8 to 60 hours after opening the wrapper. And enterprising consumers may find that they can extend the life even further. Staff members of New Scientist, a British publication, were able to slow down the chemical process and keep an opened EZ-D disc in a playable state for at least 96 hours by placing it in a sealed container and storing it in the refrigerator. While experts say that the technology is intriguing, it remains an open question whether a self-destructing DVD will interest consumers who normally expect that any purchase of a physical object is theirs to use forever. The first hurdle could be educating consumers. Take Netflix Inc., a successful Internet company that offers $20 monthly subscriptions that allow consumers to rent as many DVD's as they want for as long as they want but are not allowed to keep more than three at any time. Executives at the company, which has 1.2 million subscribers, say that just explaining to potential customers how the business works has been a struggle. "Our biggest expenditure is getting people to understand our system of a fixed-fee subscription rental without late charges," said Ted Sarandos, Netflix's vice president for content and acquisition. "The studios underestimate how difficult it is to change consumer behavior." Blockbuster is not threatened by the introduction of EZ-D's. "We don't see it going anywhere," said Karen Raskopf, the company's senior vice president for corporate communications. "Customers can now buy a used DVD from us that plays forever and costs just a few dollars more than an EZ-D." As a response to consumer antipathy toward late fees, Blockbuster is testing a Netflix-like subscription service, called the Freedom Pass, in 700 stores. Last month, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. also started an online DVD rental service to compete with Netflix. Adi Kishore, an analyst with The Yankee Group, agrees that the disposable DVD concept faces a rough road toward acceptance. "When people think about getting a movie," Mr. Kishore said, "they think about going to Blockbuster, not 7-Eleven. And the overall mechanics of getting an EZ-D title are not that much easier than going to Blockbuster." He argues that the idea may create a big splash initially, but that it may not last. "People will snap this up once," he said. "It will be a great novelty product." It is also unknown if consumers will find a 48-hour viewing period sufficient. Those who typically watch a film over several days, catching a few scenes here and there, will be out of luck with EZ-D. Even if people intellectually understand the concept, said Thomas Wolzien, senior media analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York, "when your ability to play it disappears after 48 hours, you are going to feel as if someone robbed you." But Mr. Blaustein of Flexplay argues that the 48-hour period will not be a serious impediment. According to company research, he said, "well over 90 percent of DVD viewers watch an entire film in one sitting." If the EZ-D disc is a success, its detractors say, expect to see an environmental mess, as millions of now useless discs clog the landfills with nonbiodegradable polymers. To counter these concerns, Flexplay has agreed to a partnership with a national recycler to collect used discs. Even if the discs are not recycled, single-use disposable DVD's will result in net energy savings, according to a study conducted by Jonathan Koomey, staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "The solid waste impacts may be more than completely offset by the gasoline saved from avoided trips to the video store. Gasoline savings could be 7.5 to 20 times larger than the increase in solid waste," Mr. Koomey said in an e-mail message. Mr. Blaustein of Flexplay sees a wide range of other applications for its time-limited DVD technology. Screening cassettes of new films, review copies of CD's, or expensive technical catalogs would all be less likely to be pirated if they stopped working shortly after use. Based on recent comments made by Michael D. Eisner, Disney's chairman and chief executive, those other markets may prove to be important revenue sources for Flexplay. Speaking at a Sanford C. Bernstein conference last month in New York, Mr. Eisner indicated that he expected the EZ-D test to be short-lived. "I think it probably won't work," he said. "I think it's going to boomerang on us, but it's a test." Those backing the Flexplay effort say that Mr. Eisner is being too pessimistic and that consumers will fall in love with the EZ-D idea once they are see it. "You want to go on vacation or something, you buy five of these and throw them in the trunk," said Robert Wright, the chairman of G.E.'s NBC unit. From info at nmartproject.net Mon Jul 21 15:05:33 2003 From: info at nmartproject.net (NewMediaArtProjectNetwork) Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 11:35:33 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Deadline list for July/August 2003 Message-ID: <01e301c34f6b$6f6bb310$0400a8c0@agricola11> [NewMediaArtProjectNetwork] Deadline list for July/August 2003 1. JavaMuseum - Forum for Internet Technologies in Contemporary Art www.javamuseum.org a) extended deadline 1 September 2003 *Perspectives'03* - Call for entries b) extended deadline : 1 September 2003 *"Feature" Netart from German Speaking countries"" Call for submissions - in German www.javamuseum.org/deu.htm c) deadline 30 September 2003 *"Feature: Netart from Great Britain and Ireland" 2. Cinematheque MediaCentre at Musee di-visioniste show casing streaming media www.le-musee-divisioniste.org/mediacentre/ deadline 30 September 2003 Slowtime?......... Call for proposals 3. Violence Online Festival www.newmediafest.org/violence/ deadline ongoing call for proposals ***************************************** 1. JavaMuseum a) *Perspectives'03* 2003 competition and show case - call for submissions JavaMuseum organises this event online and offline in cooperation with Computer Space Festival Sofia/Bulgaria and Goethe Institute - Internationes Sofia/Bulgaria. October 2003 "Perspectives'03" will focus on the net based art production 2002/2003. The competition is open for all thematical and technological aspects which net based art allows. Invitation!! All artists who are working net based are invited to submit up to three works completed after 1 January 2002. Only URLs may be submitted to the competition, the finalists will be invited to send their works also as digital files for an eventual offline display. Please use this form for submitting: 1. firstname/name of artist, email, URL 2. a brief bio/CV (not more than 300 words) 3. title and URL of the max 3 projects/works, 4. a short work description for each work (not more than 300 words), 5. a screen shot for each submitted work (max 800x600 pixels, .jpg) Please send the completely filled out form to perspectives03 at javamuseum.org or go to JavaMuseum site www.javamuseum.org extended Deadline 1 September 2003 ************************************* JavaMuseum b) *Feature: Netart from German speaking countries* This feature will be presented on JavaMuseum site as well, as on Computer Space Festival Sofia by Goethe Institute -Internationes Sofia. As all online features, also this one will remain for permanent on JavaMuseum site. All artists working netbased who are born in Germany, Switzerland or Austria or have their residency in one of these countries are invited to submit up to three netbased works. For more details and the entry form visit www.javamuseum.org/deu.htm extended Deadline 1 September 2003 ************************************* JavaMuseum c)* Feature: Netart from Great Britain and Ireland* planned to be published online in December 2003 All artists working netbased who are born or have their residency in Great Britain or Ireland are invited to submit up to three netbased art works. Find the call, including all details and entry form on the startpage of www.javamuseum.org Deadline 30 September 2003 ************************ 2. Cinematheque at MediaCentre is looking for proposals for the online show "Slowtime?............ Quicktime (.mov) as an artistic medium" to be launched in November 2003. Cinematheque invites artists who use Quicktime for their artistic purposes - in which way ever - to submit up to two (2) works in Quicktime (.mov) format. Please find the call, including all details and entry form on www.le-musee-divisioniste.org/mediacentre/index.html Deadline 30 September 2003 **************************** Award winning Violence Online Festival www.newmediafest.org/violence/index.html New Media art project in form of an online festival is looking for new artworks reflecting the phenomenon of violence in all its facets. Until now more than 270 artist from 40 countries are participating and offer a fascinating view on how violence is perceived artistically. The call for entries, including all details and entry form can be found on Violence Online Festival site www.newmediafest.org/violence/ Deadline ongoing. Approved entries will be included always in the next following project version which will go online on occasion of the participation in a virtual or physical event. Next coming version 7.3 will be published on 7 August, version 8.0 will go online on 14 August. The call, including all details and entry form can be found on Violence Online Festival site www.newmediafest.org/violence/index.html Deadline ongoing. ************* NewMediaArtProjectNetwork - experimental platform for netbased art - founded by Agricola de Cologne includes the corporate member sites www.javamuseum.org www.le-musee-divisioniste.org www.a-virtual-memorial.org www.engad.org www.agricola-de-cologne.de www.nmartproject.net www.newmediafest.org For information and inquiries use info at nmartproject.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030721/c7a59765/attachment.html From shuddha at sarai.net Mon Jul 21 21:37:07 2003 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 18:07:07 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] the Next Step in Surveillance Video ? Message-ID: Dear All, Here is a link to a story in the New Scientist that reports new developments in the intelligent analysis of surveillance video. The next step, so to speak, after face recognition. Notice how the 'Simhastha Kumbha Mela" is cited as a likely site of the immediate implementation of this technology. This story was forwarded by Coco Fusco on the 'Undercurrents List'. Shuddha http://www.newscientist.com/news/print.jsp?id=ns99993918 Smart software linked to CCTV can spot dubious behaviour 19:00 11 July 03 Jenny Hogan It could be the dawn of a new era in surveillance. For the first time, smart software will help CCTV operators spot any abnormal behaviour. If the trial due to go live in two London Underground stations this week is a success, it could accelerate the adoption of the technology around the world. The software, which analyses CCTV footage, could help spot suicide attempts, overcrowding, suspect packages and trespassers. The hope is that by automating the prediction or detection of such events security staff, who often have as many as 60 cameras to monitor simultaneously, can reach the scene in time to prevent a potential tragedy. If the technology takes off it could put an end to a long-standing problem that has dogged CCTV almost from the beginning. It is simple: there are too many cameras and too few pairs of eyes to keep track of them. With more than a million CCTV cameras in the UK alone, they are becoming increasingly difficult to manage. And besides being a tedious task, watching TV monitors also demands a higher level of concentration than many people can manage. The new software, called the Intelligent Pedestrian Surveillance system (IPS), could change all that, says London Underground's Peter Tollington, who is overseeing the installation at the stations. "CCTV itself is fantastic, but this puts it on another plane. It means that you don't have to look at a screen all of the time," he says. Indeed it seems likely this is just the beginning. Other companies are working on similar technologies. Behavioural oddities Not that long ago similar claims were made for face recognition software, which has still to make its mark, particularly in crime prevention. But the computer scientist behind IPS is convinced that his software will not suffer a similar fate. Sergio Velastin at Kingston University, London, has spent a decade developing his algorithms (New Scientist print edition, 11 December 1999). The trick, he says, is to keep it simple. Face recognition software by its very nature involves complex image analysis and tries to do too much. As a result, operators are often disappointed. Others have argued that recognising faces on CCTV of known offenders, for example, is only of limited use. You can't arrest people just for being caught on camera. Velastin's software compares the images from each CCTV camera with pictures of the empty station, analysing each pixel to pick out those that differ between the two images. Clusters of pixels which could be objects or people are tracked in real time. For example, a blob that remains on the platform even after several trains have passed could be a loiterer, or someone who is lost. It doesn't matter that the system cannot distinguish between the possibilities, as long as someone is alerted who can investigate. Its job is not to make evaluations but merely to draw attention to behavioural oddities. Similarly, when people are building up the courage to attempt suicide on the tracks they will often let several trains pass before actually jumping. By spotting this behaviour it should be possible to dispatch someone to the platform or warn approaching trains. Million pilgrims "I think CCTV can be tremendously effective in improving health and safety and reducing crime. But it can be even more effective if we can use technology to supplement the operators," says Adam Wiseberg, chairman of the CCTV group at the British Security Industry Association. IPS was developed using actors to simulate passenger behaviour in London Underground stations. It was the product of 10 years of research and collaboration between six European countries, in a European Union funded project. Now Velastin has set up a company, Intelligent Pedestrian Surveillance and Observation Technologies (IPSOTEK), to market the technology. Already, he says, organisers of the Simhastha Kumbh Mela festival in India have contacted him. They want to use CCTV with automatic surveillance to help manage congestion and prevent people being crushed or injured next spring when more than a million pilgrims are expected to descend on the town of Ujjain in the state of Madhya Pradesh. Velastin thinks it will also be useful in art galleries, schools and public spaces. Invasion of privacy But the two London Underground stations that have installed the IPS software - Liverpool Street and Mile End - will be the first to test it for real. When it is switched on Mike Chatterton of Capital Projects Consultancy will be gauging the response of the people using it. Over the next six months, he will evaluate the system with staff in the two stations' control rooms. Customers in the two stations have not been told about the project, says Tollington, because "we want to get the technology right before we make any song or dance about its effectiveness". Although some campaign groups see CCTV as an invasion of privacy, customers are likely to welcome technology that makes the stations safer, says Ian Brown, from the Foundation for Information Policy Research, a London-based IT think tank . The total number of CCTV cameras in Underground stations across London is set to increase from 6000 to 9000 over the next few years, and they are also being installed on trains. That will make the need for a system like IPS all the more acute. This pattern is being repeated in cities around the world, says Joe Freeman, who runs a consulting company for the security industry in Newtown, Connecticut. In a survey of hundreds of US security executives, he found that systems which could process the video from the spiralling number of From meenugaur at hotmail.com Tue Jul 22 12:06:19 2003 From: meenugaur at hotmail.com (meenu gaur) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 06:36:19 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Invisible in the Camps: Women in the Kashmiri Pandit refugee camps. Message-ID: In this posting I would like to focus on the narratives of the women that I interviewed in the course of this research. When a community encounters a threat, its fears are often expressed through discourses on the honour and dignity of the women of the community. The narratives of Kashmiri Pandit migrants about 1990 focus on how it had been getting difficult for the women from Pandit households to move around in the Valley with self-respect and dignity. Many recounted stories of how Pandit women were being forced to marry Muslim militants though these incidents and stories often took place in an elsewhere which nobody seemed to have been much familiar with� all of them had heard of such a thing happening from someone else. I make this point not to suggest that atrocities were never committed on Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley but that rumour mongering and criminal mischief by rogue elements took on an acutely ugly turn for a community whose sense of security had already been completely eroded by 1990. So much so that the militants found willing partners in these criminal/rogue elements who did all they could to create confusion in the Valley (the former Chairman of the Hurriyat had once called "confusion" a desirable goal for the ends of Pakistan in the Valley). The ubiquitous posters and the notorious hit lists could be drawn up in a militant hideout or by schoolboys in the back alleys of downtown Srinagar�nobody bothered to stop anybody in the interests of �confusion�. But a more sinister goal seems to have been at work here�to instill fear in the hearts and minds of not just the Pandit minority but that of everybody in Kashmir. The State did nothing to restore the confidence of the people or allay the fears of the Pandit minority, protect them or in the least dispel many of these rumours� it already had too much on its hands faced with a complete collapse of civil administration and first stirrings of rebellion even in the J&K Police. Even then the State wasn�t interested in anything but �national security�. Someone in the Sultanpuri camp mentioned to me, that though Kashmiri Pandits may well now be living impoverished lives in refugee camps of Delhi but at least their women live with honour and dignity. However, if you imagine a camp such as the South Extension camp in Delhi housed in a �community centre�� one large hall� a �baraat ghar�, as these halls are called� 27 families, which would approximately mean 104-110 people, in this hall or �baraat ghar�� each allotted 2 feet X 5 feet minuscule spaces, it is difficult to understand the rhetoric about self-respect and dignity� But the women I spoke with frequently brought up this lack of space in their narratives and this is understandable, as it is the women who spend most of their time inside these camps (very few are employed outside the camp). The refugee camp is a space where the notion of the private is all but non-existent and the only available spaces are shared spaces between the men and women, the young and the old� and, as is often the case, men dominate even these matchbox spaces. The women feel they were better off in a traditional society, which at least offered its own spaces for them. Veena, one of the women I interviewed, told me that most Pandit households in Kashmir had segregated spaces for men and women and they did not share the same space even with the men from their own families (the reason she cited for the existence of this practice was the shared culture between the Hindus and the Muslims in the Valley). In the camps, they had to abandon their traditional ways of living. The women of the camps see the loss of their private space as a loss of dignity. There are small common bathrooms in the camp, women have to sleep cramped in corners in their small cubicles next to other members of their own family or as was the case in the earlier days, in the large unpartitioned halls next to the members of the other families. The complete lack of intimacy between couples and the impossibility of any real emotional engagement due to the constant gaze in which each of them found themselves every single moment all these years is also spoken of by these women to highlight the strain every personal relationship has gone through over the last 12 years. Some in the camps speculated about the drop in birth-rates and the dangerous implications it carried for the community. Many of them often talked about �extinction�. For many women who were already married in the 1990s this migration has meant a separation and isolation from their parental homes and larger families which were often seen by them as support structures (most of the community is getting scattered even now as families move out of the camps to resettle into small flats in Delhi suburbs and the links with even the camp community have begun to weaken). In my interviews in the camps, most women were nostalgic about marriages, festivals, Shivratri celebrations, frequent visits to neighbours and the rest of the family, shopping in bazaars, close friendships with Muslim women, when they spoke of their life in Kashmir. The younger women recalled their days in high school and college, and contrasted it to their present life, which is constrained and often surrounded by unfriendly neighbours. One of the women explained to me, using the allegory of birds building a nest that however far and wide the birds may travel, in the evening they must 'return' to their nests and that the Pandits have no nests anymore, �we can never return home in the evening�. Also, there are no interactions for them outside the camp, all social and festive occasions mean hopping over to the next cubicle in the camp. Veena�s marriage took place in the very camp she now lives in, though she stressed that there aren�t any intra-camp marriages (meaning marriages between people of the same camp, this being a necessary invention to act as a safeguard and deterrent for young people in the camp). She also spoke of how all the promise and potential in the younger women was not realized, their education and all other career opportunities were throttled as there was so much paranoia about honour of the community with which the Kashmiri Pandit women found themselves burdened. Thus most girls were married in their teens because of the fear of things �spiralling out of control� (to express the gravity of the situation Veena went to the extreme of saying that the practice of �baal vivaha� or child marriage has been revived by the community). However, she was also quick to point out that in many cases like herself the migration provided a much needed exposure to new worlds and opportunities. Even though her own education had been disrupted for some years, today Veena has a good career in a multinational corporation. She mentions how the quotas and reserved seats in various institutions like medical colleges, engineering colleges devised by various state governments for the Kashmiri Pandits such as by the government in Maharashtra has been the biggest boon for the young in the community. She narrated a story about the Karbala massacre�in order to speak about a community building their lives after displacement� �kehte hai jab shiao pe zulm hua tha, unka paani roka gaya tha, unhe ghar se beghar kiya gaya tha, at that time Prophet Muhammad ki ma ne, unhone ek dua dee thee ki jo bhi beghar hoga bhagwaan usko bahut jaldi settle bhi kar dega, jisko zulm ki wajah se apni zameen chornee paregee, unka bahut jaldi settlement hoga, aur who dua sach hui.� ( It is said that when the Shias were facing oppression and were forced to leave their homes, the Prophet�s mother prayed that all those who lose their land and home due to oppression should find resettlement� and that prayer was answered). Interestingly Prophet�s mother had died long before Karbala when Prophet Muhammad himself was very young�but what I wanted to emphasize through this story is the threads, which often come up through such cultural references which still connect the Pandits in the camps and the Muslims in the Valley. Veena remembered the night of 16th January 1990 when they left the Valley vividly. She remembered the exact objects they had carried with them that night� �chaar bartan, petromax, ek chula�� familiar objects�this is the home they carried with them to the cubicles in these camps�She remembered how as a young girl, she and her siblings were most excited at the prospect of travelling on a truck, unaware of the seriousness of the situation when they were leaving the Valley. She remembers that the older members of the family cried throughout the journey while she fought with her siblings as to who would occupy the window seat. Most people left their houses with very little as they were sure that they would be able to return home that spring� Geeta, from the Hauzrani camp, in response to my query about the memory of home, pointed to a young adolescent boy and said that he was only a year old when they had left the Valley, but he often tells his friends in school �Hum Kashmir mein baraf se khelte the�� (We used to play with snow in Kashmir) and all the older members in the camp tease him and ask him, �lekin aap kabhi Kashmir gaye hain?� (But have you ever been to Kashmir?) � In many ways, she said, they are all like him carrying their fragile identity and memories of home in their hearts and minds. _________________________________________________________________ E-mail just got better. Find out why. http://server1.msn.co.in/features/general/extrastorage/index.asp Click here! From amitbasu55 at hotmail.com Tue Jul 22 13:27:05 2003 From: amitbasu55 at hotmail.com (Amit R Basu) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 07:57:05 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] SAPPHO: The first lesbian group in Calcutta Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030722/4389f24c/attachment.html From eye at ranadasgupta.com Tue Jul 22 13:58:43 2003 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 13:58:43 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Japan considers nuclear armament Message-ID: any late 19th century echoes here? R July 22, 2003 Japan Faces Burden: Its Own Defense By HOWARD W. FRENCH http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/22/international/asia/22JAPA.html?hp=&pagewan ted=print&position= TOKYO, July 21 — Not long ago, Nisohachi Hyodo, the author of a four-year plan for nuclear armament of Japan, was part of the lunatic fringe, his ideas so far from the pacifist mainstream that he was published only in obscure journals. These days, though, he has his own program on a major Tokyo radio station and is a popular speaker on college campuses. With everyone from the academic establishment to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi advocating that Japan become more assertive militarily, Mr. Hyodo scarcely stands out. More than a half-century after two atomic blasts forced Japan's surrender in World War II, talk of acquiring nuclear weapons — long one of the country's most sacred taboos — is but one illustration of how Japan is grappling openly with the challenge of becoming what is known here as a "normal nation," one armed and able to fight wars. By no means do all Japanese support nuclear armament. But the world has changed since Japan accepted a Constitution, written by the United States during its postwar occupation, that renounces war as a tool of diplomacy. The question now is, can Japan change too? The country's 13-year economic slump is pushing forward a host of issues — immigration, the role of women, a steep decline in population — that are testing whether this tradition-bound society will adapt or face inevitable decline. No issue is likely to have a greater impact on the region than how Japan takes up the burden of its defense after a 20th-century past that traumatized it and its neighbors. During its long postwar boom, Japan's security rested on two pillars: the protection of the United States, which still bases 47,000 troops here, and pockets so deep that it could buy its way out of almost any unpleasant situation. Today both elements are subject to nagging doubts. "We are becoming much more realistic about defense matters, and the reason for this is our economic stagnation," said Koji Murata, an expert in international relations at Doshisha University. "In the past we could depend on our overwhelming economic strength as a sort of cushion. Generally speaking, Japanese are beginning to feel that this margin is getting smaller and smaller." For the first time in three generations a shift in public opinion has rendered ordinary the discussion of a more assertive Japan and left defenders of the "peace Constitution" on the defensive. While China's expanding power is a growing concern, the most immediate spur for this change has been a year of starkly increased tensions with North Korea, which already possesses ballistic missiles and is pursuing nuclear weapons. In March, Mr. Koizumi's defense minister, Shigeru Ishiba, told a parliamentary committee that if North Korea started fueling its missiles, "then it is time to strike." But even if Japanese are more comfortable with such assertiveness, their neighbors may not be. Many continue to harbor suspicion of a country that they feel has yet fully to acknowledge the damage done by its militarization last century, or to atone for its colonial past. Relations with China have been strained for two years by Mr. Koizumi's repeated visits to a controversial shrine to Japan's war veterans, including 14 people judged as Class A war criminals. When Mr. Koizumi reasserted last month that he would continue his visits, in what has become a summer ritual, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Kong Quan, warned, "Without a correct view on history, there is no guarantee to healthy and stable ties between China and Japan." During the same time, there have been no visits between leaders of the countries, and China has watched the move toward a more muscular Japan with concern. While it is unclear precisely how much China spends on defense, Japan spent $47 billion on defense in 2002, according to the Center for Defense Information. By almost any ranking China and Japan are among the world's top five military budgets, and some analysts warn of the dangers of an unmediated military competition in the region, which could include the unpredictable North Korea. For a long time the United States served as a buffer in the region by providing for Japan's defense. But many say that this relationship cannot last forever and that Japan's neighbors, like the Japanese themselves, may have little choice but to accept the inevitability of a bulkier Japanese military presence. In an era of weapons that can project power over vast distances, and with pressing security commitments elsewhere after Sept. 11, 2001, America may simply tire of shouldering the defense burden here, many Japanese analysts fear. Indeed, some are already drawing that conclusion from a recent decision to reduce the presence and profile of the 37,000 United States troops in neighboring South Korea. At the same time, Japan's economic problems have begun to reveal the limits of an approach to foreign policy that critics here call "happo bijin," or the "eight-faced beauty," strategy, under which the country showers its wealth around the globe, hoping to win the good will of all. In the Persian Gulf war of 1991, instead of sending troops, which it said its Constitution barred, this oil-dependent country spent $13 billion to placate the United States, Kuwait and the other victorious allies. But diplomats and foreign policy experts say that heyday as a donor and practitioner of checkbook diplomacy is past. In the past year, Japan has quietly relinquished to the United States its place as the world's top international aid donor. Its aid budget has been slashed by 10 percent. Public debt has soared to 140 percent of gross domestic product. Opposition to handouts is growing. "For years I have been saying that nuclear armament is an inexpensive solution," said Mr. Hyodo, a former member of the country's armed forces, officially called the Self-Defense Forces. "We should take the example of France, which has a minimal nuclear deterrent force. This allows them to spend far less on defense than Japan, while remaining safe from attack." That may not necessarily be so. For Japan, building up a military may ultimately prove more costly than handing out money, supporting the United Nations lavishly and underwriting American military moves. But arguments like Mr. Hyodo's may prove persuasive nonetheless. The difference, analysts say, is that the extra spending will leave Japan with something tangible — military hardware — and that this may at least create a feeling of greater security, which in politics is everything. Such a shift would also buy jobs as Japan expands the large quasi-defense industry that already exists here. Groups within the governing Liberal Democratic Party have yearned for Japan's return to a "normal," militarized status since the 1950's. Today the signs of the change in thinking abound. Prime Minister Koizumi has urged the abandonment of the peaceful-sounding name, the Self-Defense Forces, which allows Japanese to pretend, as their Constitution demands, that that they have no army, though they have 240,000 forces engaged in national defense, according to Armed Forces of the World. Mr. Koizumi would prefer for them to be known simply as armed forces, and for two years he has been pushing aggressively to expand their role. That began with support in the Indian Ocean for United States operations in Afghanistan, the first time Japan's naval forces have deployed so far away. In recent weeks Mr. Koizumi's government has upped the ante, offering to send troops to Iraq and arguing for a relaxation of restraints on how they could be armed. Throughout the postwar period, the joke about Japan's foreign policy was that it did not have one, instead following ritually in the wake of the United States. Now Mr. Koizumi is pushing for the creation of a national security council, to be drawn up along American lines, bolstering the country's diplomacy and giving the defense and security bureaucracies far more access to the prime minister's ear. Those legal and statutory changes are being matched in the country's armory. Although Japan's richly financed military forces boast some of the world's most sophisticated hardware — weapons systems like the Aegis destroyer and F-15 fighter jets — their actual configuration, as well as training for their use, has been overwhelmingly defensive. That, too, is changing abruptly. The country is acquiring in-air refueling capacity for its fighter force, as well as developing a sophisticated air support ship — part destroyer, part helicopter carrier — that news reports say is intended to allow operations near the Korean Peninsula. Such changes have increasing political and popular support. During a vote this spring on a series of national emergency laws, which greatly expand the government's ability to deploy the Self-Defense Forces, even the main opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan, lined up in support of the bill. Advocates of continued pacifism complain that the government has carefully exploited the tensions with North Korea to heighten fear among voters. The Japanese public, some of them warn, is being dragged unawares into a revival of militarism. "I cannot conceive of a war in which North Korea, a far smaller, far poorer country, attacks Japan first," said Ryuichi Ozawa, a professor of constitutional studies at Shizuoka University. "The point here is that there is no confidence that the people of Japan and their government can control a military," he said. "This is a contemporary concern, and not just an issue of our past history." But public opinion is turning against such sentiments. "Whenever there is any talk about the security needs of Japan, people say we are reverting to militarism," said Tetsu Takahashi, 20, a university student. "I don't necessarily support nuclear weapons, even if we can't rule them out. Whatever the case, our policies have been too meek." From sonnet at crimsonfeet.org Tue Jul 22 13:43:38 2003 From: sonnet at crimsonfeet.org (Prayas Abhinav) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 13:13:38 +0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Independent Art and Writing >> Issue No. 3 Message-ID: <4114-22003722274338195@www.crimsonfeet.org> Dear Friends, We invite you to read the third issue of Poetry and Story, online at http://magazine.crimsonfeet.org . The third issue was posted on the net on 16th July morning. Issue No. 3 has been a justification of our editorial policy, of taking it for granted that there are many more active and vocal writers in India than the publishing houses and the club elite of the published writers/poets have been prepared to acknowledge. The 29 writers / poets published in this issue are balanced in their native. Some have been published and are well known in India, some have been published but have not been read as widely as they needed to be at the time. And many are writers / poets who are just beginning to get published and heard. In our contents, there has been a discovering, re-discovering and publishing. Over and above the details and agendas of whom we publish and whom we don't, it is the fact that poetry and fiction are getting published, and heard and read and experienced here at Poetry and Story. This Issue we extend the Poetry and Story readers some new forums like the Poetry and Story Community where you may interact with the community, a forthcoming print magazine with more content and more reach, an online book shop where you may buy poetry books (which we distribute and market), original recordings of some of the work published online, the mentor program - where you may study poetry / writing / art with the senior and experienced in the field. A baby bird flaps its excited wings. Please post your feedback in the Community. Hoping to be visited by you soon. Poetry And Story, Independent Art and Writing Discovering voices not echoes, Editor: Prayas Abhinav About the Contributors Contents of the Current Issue Submission Guidelines Crimson Feet Media ( www.crimsonfeet.org ) Poetry and Story ( http://magazine.crimsonfeet.org ) Poetry and Story Community ( http://communities.crimsonfeet.org ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030722/c241ff0d/attachment.html From shridhar1903 at yahoo.com Mon Jul 21 20:00:51 2003 From: shridhar1903 at yahoo.com (shridhar rao) Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 07:30:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] LAYER LAUNCHED! Message-ID: <20030721143051.18135.qmail@web21302.mail.yahoo.com> Hi Friends, We are pleased to announce the launch of LAYER - An on-line e-publication which encompasses design related news, resources, issues, articles and much more; with a special focus towards the South Asian design scenario. LAYER finds its roots in diversity. It was born out of a common desire to launch a platform for interaction, exposure and participation of South Asian designers, at all stages to experience and share their ideologies, which will help evolve the present status quo. LAYER indulges in all aspects of design and art. The nature of exhibitions, curatorial strategies and publications, demands new interrogation and reconsideration. This is fueled by the fact that in recent years, worlds of art, architecture and design have outgrown their modes of representation and production, and have started to cannibalize neighboring disciplines. All works are part of same stream. Its ultimate goal is to become a network of production and exposure for such work. Layer wants to launch itself as the first complete contemporary Indian publication that will find its true form in print in years to come. LAYER manifests itself in ART + ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN + LIFESTYLE. Please take time to visit: http://www.layermag.com Thank you, Shridhar Rao Design Cell LAYER __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at mail.sarai.net http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From isast at well.com Tue Jul 22 02:21:32 2003 From: isast at well.com (LEONARDO (mk)) Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 13:51:32 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Leonardo Announces New Board & Committee Members Message-ID: Leonardo/ISAST Welcomes New Members to Its Governing Board, International Advisory Board, and Leonardo Editorial Board Anne Pfister, Michael Grey, Sundar Sarukkai, Julio Bermúdez, and Doug Vakoch Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology is pleased to announce the addition of new members to its Governing Board, International Advisory Board, and Leonardo Editorial Board. Anne Brooks Pfister and Michael Joaquin Grey will join the Leonardo/ISAST Governing Board, a group that consists of prominent figures in the fields of art, science, and technology. The International Advisory Board welcomes Sundar Sarukkai from India and Julio Bermudez from Argentina to its ranks of art-and-science luminaries throughout the world. Governing Board members meet face-to-face at regular meetings several times a year, whereas International Advisory Board members communicate via email and telephone on an ad-hoc basis. Both groups participate actively in reaching decisions for Leonardo/ISAST. Douglas A. Vakoch will enter service on the Leonardo Editorial Board, a group of experts in the fields of art, science, and technology who determine content for the journal Leonardo. ANNE PFISTER AND MICHAEL GREY JOIN THE LEONARDO/ISAST GOVERNING BOARD Anne Brooks Pfister is entering service on the Governing Board. She holds degrees in biochemistry and molecular biology as well as art history, and is currently employed at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley. Pfister¹s background is in marketing, both for science and arts organizations, and in both the non-profit and commercial sectors, including experience at KALA Institute, Quantum Dot Corporation, and Onyx Pharmaceuticals. She is active on the Board of Directors of the University Art Museum Council, UC Berkeley, and as a volunteer judge for the Berkeley Middle School Science Fair Program. She is eager to bring a Latino perspective to the Governing Board of Leonardo/ISAST. Also joining the Governing Board, Michael Joaquin Grey is an artist, designer, inventor, and entrepreneur best known for his popular and highly acclaimed educational toy ZOOB. Winner of honors from ID Magazine, Consumer Reports, Dr. Toy, Family Life Magazine, Astra, and the American Toy Institute Award, ZOOB merges genetic engineering with tinker toys. Grey founded Primordial, LLC, which produced ZOOB, and currently serves as President of the Sound of Time, a multimedia editing system. As an artist, Grey has exhibited internationally and won the Golden Nica Award from Ars Electronica. Michael Grey has a long background in combining industrial design, mechanical engineering, entertainment and education. He orchestrates collaborative efforts between various educational institutions, including Cal Tech, the Art Center College of Design, and the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Design Institute. Grey has served on the boards of Zero One, ATC, and Eyebeam Atelier, among others. Grey and Pfister join Roger Malina, Chair; Martin Anderson, Treasurer; Mark Resch, Secretary; Mina Bissell; Penelope Finnie; Lynn Hershman; Ed Payne; Sonya Rapoport; Beverly Reiser; Joel Slayton; and Stephen Wilson on the Leonardo/ISAST Governing Board. SUNDAR SARUKKAI AND JULIO BERMUDEZ JOIN THE LEONARDO/ISAST INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD Beginning a term on the International Advisory Board, Sundar Sarukkai is a Fellow in the History and Philosophy of Science Unit, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Particle Physics from Purdue University. Recipient of various fellowships, including the Homi Babha Fellowship and David Ross Fellowship, Sarukkai has been a visiting scholar at MIT and Stanford University. He authored the books Translating the World: Science and Language and the forthcoming The Philosophy of Symmetry. Sarukkai publishes and lectures worldwide in science and philosophy journals and conferences. Sarukkai currently serves as a consultant to a project on the relevance of Gandhian thought to contemporary India. Julio Bermúdez, hailing from Argentina, joins the International Advisory Board as an Associate Professor at the University of Utah College of Architecture & Planning. His research and creative work have focused on digital media and the application of architectural concepts to data environments. Bermúdez has received international recognition as a design expert on hybrid representations, methodologies, and technologies involving analog and digital systems. Of particular relevance is his invention of CyberPRINT, a virtual reality-based performing art project that brings together dance, choreography, music, engineering, medicine and architecture. This and other works have been widely published, exhibited, and/or performed in the U.S. and elsewhere. Bermúdez is currently involved in several interdisciplinary projects dealing with information architecture applied to medicine, finance, process control, and network monitoring. Sarukkai and Bermúdez will serve on the Leonardo/ISAST International Advisory Board along with Beverly Reiser, Chair, USA; Mark Beam, Mexico; Annick Bureaud, France; Nic Collins, USA; Nisar Keshvani, Singapore; Christine Maxwell, France; Michael Naimark, USA; Michael Punt, UK; and Rejane Spitz, Brazil. DOUG VAKOCH JOINS THE LEONARDO EDITORIAL BOARD Starting his term on the Leonardo Editorial Board in 2004, Douglas A. Vakoch is the Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute, as well as the only social scientist employed by a SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) organization. Vakoch researches ways that different civilizations might create messages that could be transmitted across interstellar space, allowing communication between humans and extraterrestrials even without face-to-face contact. He is particularly interested in how we might compose reply messages that would begin to express the human experience. ABOUT LEONARDO/ISAST Leonardo/ISAST serves the international art community by providing channels of communication for artists, art historians, technologists, scientists, educators, students and others interested in the arts, with an emphasis on documenting the voices of artists all over the world who use science and developing technologies in their work. Leonardo began international publication of its print journal in 1968 and evolved into the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology in 1982 to broaden its exposure of artists who work with science- and technology-based art media. Leonardo/ISAST also functions as an international meeting ground for artists, educators, students, scientists and others interested in the use of new media in contemporary artistic expression. Further information may be found at www.leonardo.info * * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: not available Type: application/msword Size: 13295 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030721/2e12c160/attachment.dot From nkarani at hotmail.com Tue Jul 22 16:59:33 2003 From: nkarani at hotmail.com (NITIN KARANI) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 11:29:33 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] SAPPHO: The first lesbian group in Calcutta Message-ID: kudos to sappho on coming out. another feather in the cap of kolkata's gay community after last month's pride march. this year has certainly been a 'gay' year for the community everywhere--US, Canada, UK and to an extent India Nitin Karani >From: "Amit R Basu" >To: reader-list at sarai.net >Subject: [Reader-list] SAPPHO: The first lesbian group in Calcutta >Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 07:57:05 +0000 _________________________________________________________________ Cool new emoticons. Lots of colour! http://server1.msn.co.in/sp03/messengerpromo/index.asp On MSN Messenger V6.0 -------------- next part -------------- From monsoon at pukar.org.in Wed Jul 23 12:43:34 2003 From: monsoon at pukar.org.in (PUKAR Monsoon) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 12:43:34 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] 25.7.03: Words on Water PREMIERE Message-ID: Dear Friends: PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research) cordially invites you to the Mumbai premiere of the documentary film "Words on Water", followed by a discussion with director SANJAY KAK. This film screening is part of our week-long PUKAR Monsoon Symposium, from 19-26 July 2003. "Words on Water" (85 minutes, 2002, English/Hindi) is writted and directed by Sanjay Kak, edited by Sameera Jain and Reena Mohan, with photography by Sanjay Kak and Ranjan Palit, location sound by Samina Mishra, and music composed and sung by Rahul Ram, Amit Kilam and Asheem Chakravarty. Date: FRIDAY 25 JULY 2003 6.00 P.M. to 8.00 P.M. 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 THE FILM For almost twenty years, the banks of the Narmada River in central India have been the site of a remarkable struggle for human dignity. Faced with the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people by a gargantuan series of thirty dams, and the abject failure by the Indian government to resettle the displaced, the Narmada valley has thrown up a unique people's movement. "Words on Water" is a film that explores the contemporary contours of this resistance, as the struggle to save the Narmada -- the Narmada Bachao Andolan -- faces its most critical reverse, a verdict from the highest court of the land, which places the establishment's seal of the approval on the Sardar Sarovar dam, a colossal misadventure with multiple, irreversible consequences. "Words on Water" is about the transaction between power and powerlessness in the most populous democracy in the world, in a clash that is at once both intensely traditional and urgently modern. For the struggle over the dam contains within it many of the contradictions of Indian society. The contestation over scarce resources, the debate on the model of development chosen, and the nature of society itself, which allows the powerful to cannibalize those lower down in the hierarchies of caste and class, and pass it off as development. Inevitably, the Narmada valley has also become a testing ground for the new mantra of globalization, as international capital comes sweeping in, looking for new opportunities (and unrestrained profits) in the pockets of the impoverished Developing World. The valley boasts of India's first privatized hydro project, the Maheshwar Dam, although resistance by the people has already driven off investor after investor. But more than anything else, at a time when violence rages like a bush fire across the parched surface of Indian democracy, when resistance movements in the tribal margins of Indian society have steadily taken to the gun, the struggle in the Narmada valley continues to take its cues from the Gandhian notions of ahimsa (non-violence) and satyagraha (the force of truth). So ultimately this is not just a film about the decimation (by drowning) of the poor, the deceit of a political class, or the complicity of a powerful social class, which stands to gain by the centralization of natural resources. Words on Water is about sustained resistance, a non-violent, even joyous, defiance, which empowers you to struggle for your rights, yet saves you from the ultimate humiliation of violence, in which the resistance gets re-made in the image of its oppressor. ABOUT THE DIRECTOR SANJAY KAK is an independent documentary film-maker whose film, in the forest hangs a bridge (1999), won the Golden Lotus for Best Documentary Film at the 1999 National Film Awards in India. The film also won the Asian Gaze Award at the Pusan Short Film Festival, Korea. His recent work includes One Weapon (1997), a video about democracy in the 50th year of Indian independence, and Harvest of Rain (1995), made in association with the Centre for Science & Environment, New Delhi. His films on the theme of migration, looking at people of Indian origin in the fringes of the city of London, This Land, My Land, Eng-Land! (1993), and in post-apartheid South Africa, A House and a Home (1993) have been widely screened at documentary festivals. He has also produced and directed Cambodia: Angkor Remembered (1990), a reflection on the monument and its place in Khmer society. Born in Pune, India in 1958, Sanjay Kak attended St Stephen's College, Delhi and the Delhi School of Economics where he read Economics and Sociology. His early training in film was as writer/researcher on a shoestring black and white popular science series for Indian television. His first independent documentary Kinnaur Ke Log (1983) was an account of a year in the life of a Himalayan shepherd boy, followed by Savdhan! Bacche Khel Rahe Hain (Caution! Children at Play, 1984) is about the remedial uses of drama in the therapy of disabled children. His video Geeli Mitti (The Wet Earth) was awarded the Silver Lotus at the 1985 National Film Awards in India. In 1986 he helped found Octave Communications, a New Delhi based production company, which he still runs. To support his interest in the documentary film Sanjay has also worked extensively in television, where his work includes the seven-part travelogue Pradakshina: Journey Down the Ganga (1985-86). Between 1985-87 he also directed a series of Hindi language news documentaries for India's national television Doordarshan, including Punjab: Doosra Adhyaya (Punjab: Chapter Two), and Kiski Ganga? (Whose River Is It?). Sanjay lives in New Delhi where he is active in the documentary film movement. _____ 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 anilbhatia at indiatimes.com Fri Jul 25 13:52:05 2003 From: anilbhatia at indiatimes.com (anilbhatia) Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 13:52:05 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: What is Tehelka up to? Message-ID: <200307250834.OAA16331@WS0005.indiatimes.com> Message from subscriber at tehelka.com Forwarded as attachment Get Your Private, Free E-mail from Indiatimes at http://email.indiatimes.com Buy The Best In BOOKS at http://www.bestsellers.indiatimes.com Bid for Air Tickets on Air Sahara Flights at Prices Lower Than Before. Just log on to http://airsahara.indiatimes.com and Bid Now ! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030725/9faa2bd2/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Tarun J Tejpal Subject: What is Tehelka up to? Date: 23 Jul 2003 05:42:28 +0530 Size: 17640 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030725/9faa2bd2/attachment.mht From ajayraina at vsnl.com Sat Jul 26 18:44:21 2003 From: ajayraina at vsnl.com (AJAY RAINA) Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 18:44:21 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] paper on kashmiri pandits Message-ID: <000201c35378$2375a7c0$d23c41db@a> Dear Meenu, I find many galling innacuracies and inconsistencies in your 'research paper' but since you say its based on your interactions with some of the inmates I would take them at face value as perhaps 'problems of language and translation'. But i am alarmed at the confidence with which you have set out to dismantle and discredit the 'narratives' of Pandit refugees in India - as contradictory - through your subtly biased analysis. Just look at this, "Many recounted stories of how Pandit women were being forced to marry Muslim militants though these incidents and stories often took place in an elsewhere which nobody seemed to have been much familiar with. all of them had heard of such a thing happening from someone else." (In one sentence you state what you have been told and in the next sentence you put a question mark on its telling.) (for your benefit i have studiously underlined all that i find inaccurate / biased / and outright propagandist in your study paper.) More than anything I wonder if you or anybody could ever feel the courage to 'research' the narratives of 'atrocities' on Kashmiri women in Kashmir..and then also have the courage to analyse or to question the veracity of their versions... Have you actually ever come across anybody in Kashmir... met anybody in Person or even ever been shown a grave of someone in Kashmir who could show you the scars of torture at the hands of security forces or even at the hands of terrorists. This is not to say these atrocities did not take place...but because you would not have a tangible proof of these events, would you discount the events in the same vain as you have in the case of Pandit refugees. And why pick up on Kashmiri Pandits when you do not have the guts to ask Muslims of Kashmir about 'atrocities' on them and about their narratives of the rebellion of the winter 1990. I am asking this because of your own self confessed lack of courage (In your film on Kashmir) when you set out for / but did not go to the 'Kunan poshpura' village where the alleged mass rape is said to have happened...Why was that? And yet when 'safe' in the plains of India you happily saunter off into camps of Pandit refugees to probe the hapless people & analyse the narratives of real or imagined atrocities on them. I have also read your earlier paper about your 'research' in Pandit refugee camps. There is nothing in your study which indicates that the inferences drawn do not confirm with what the 'azadi propagandists in kashmir have had to say about Pandit refugees. ...I have begun to wonder What you are?...a naive grant seeking researcher or a propagandist sympathiser for the 'azadi' brigade in Kashmir. At the risk of sounding insensitive and gravely offensive to you, I would still hope you'll someday soon tell us about what you saw at Kunan Poshpura and how you'd have analysed the narratives of 26 'allegedly' gangraped women. Ajay Raina ----- Original Message ----- Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2003 3:51 PM Subject: sarai mail In this posting I would like to focus on the narratives of the women that I interviewed in the course of this research. When a community encounters a threat, its fears are often expressed through discourses on the honour and dignity of the women of the community. The narratives of Kashmiri Pandit migrants (REFUGEES) about 1990 focus on how it had been getting difficult for the women from Pandit households to move around in the Valley with self-respect and dignity. Many recounted stories of how Pandit women were being forced to marry Muslim militants (I know about rapes and threats to similar effect, but its for the first time i hear that any of the Pandit women were forced to marry militants. Only some of those Pandits who stayed back were forced to marry and convert. This happened in a few villages. If you have been told this by the refugees, did you cross check this with anybody else? You ought to have because this is a grave provocation VHP kind of guys would have much liked to propagate) though these incidents and stories often took place in an elsewhere which nobody seemed to have been much familiar with. all of them had heard of such a thing happening from someone else. (Similarly i have only heard from lots of people but never from the victims themselves of atrocities done by security forces. What are we to make of this hearing business only!) I make this point not to suggest that atrocities were never committed on Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley but that rumour mongering and criminal mischief by rogue elements took on an acutely ugly turn for a community whose sense of security had already been completely eroded by 1990. (So are you suggesting there was some atrocities and much rumour mongering. Can we say the same about Gow kadal / Bijbehara / Kunan Poshpura / Chrar Sharif / Aga Shahid Ali poems....) So much so that the militants found willing partners in these criminal/rogue elements who did all they could to create confusion in the Valley (the former Chairman of the Hurriyat had once called "confusion" a desirable goal for the ends of Pakistan in the Valley). The ubiquitous posters and the notorious hit lists could be drawn up in a militant hideout or by schoolboys in the back alleys of downtown Srinagar.(So you say there were militants who were purely militants and there were criminals and rogue elements who were purely that. In whose side you are is plainly obvious. Does this absolve the separatist leadership of its role in encouraging the exodus of Hindus) nobody bothered to stop anybody in the interests of "confusion". But a more sinister goal seems to have been at work here.to instill fear in the hearts and minds of not just the Pandit minority but that of everybody in Kashmir. The State did nothing to restore the confidence of the people or allay the fears of the Pandit minority, protect them or in the least dispel many of these rumours. it already had too much on its hands faced with a complete collapse of civil administration and first stirrings of rebellion even in the J&K Police. Even then the State wasn't interested in anything but "national security". (So only the state machinery was responsible and not the militants. Perhaps you could have mentioned here that the state apparatus was in the Hands of National Conference of Faroukh Abdullah - the benefactor of a legacy that commanded the hearts and minds of Kashmiri Muslims at least till Rubiya Sayeed was Kidnapped. Perhaps you could have asked your Pandit interviewees what they thought of National Conference and its Goonda'''brigade...) Someone in the Sultanpuri camp mentioned to me, that though Kashmiri Pandits may well now be living impoverished lives in refugee camps of Delhi but at least their women live with honour and dignity. However, if you imagine a camp such as the South Extension camp in Delhi housed in a "community centre". one large hall. a "baraat ghar", as these halls are called. 27 families, which would approximately mean 104-110 people, in this hall or "baraat ghar". each allotted 2 feet X 5 feet minuscule spaces, it is difficult to understand the rhetoric about self-respect and dignity. (so incase of Pandits if they speak of self respect and dignity it is a rhetoric, but for Kashmiri secessionists, its a cause) But the women I spoke with frequently brought up this lack of space in their narratives and this is understandable, as it is the women who spend most of their time inside these camps (very few are employed outside the camp). The refugee camp is a space where the notion of the private is all but non-existent and the only available spaces are shared spaces between the men and women, the young and the old. and, as is often the case, men dominate even these matchbox spaces. The women feel they were better off in a traditional society, which at least offered its own spaces for them. Veena, one of the women I interviewed, told me that most Pandit households in Kashmir had segregated spaces for men and women and they did not share the same space even with the men from their own families I do not know and i have not seen in Pandit households if there were any segregated spaces for male and female. Not even in Muslim households would you find segregated spaces for males and females. The concept of 'zenana' as we know it does not exist among kashmiri's (the reason she cited for the existence of this practice was the shared culture between the Hindus and the Muslims in the Valley). In the camps, they had to abandon their traditional ways of living. The women of the camps see the loss of their private space as a loss of dignity. There are small common bathrooms in the camp, women have to sleep cramped in corners in their small cubicles next to other members of their own family or as was the case in the earlier days, in the large unpartitioned halls next to the members of the other families. The complete lack of intimacy between couples and the impossibility of any real emotional engagement due to the constant gaze in which each of them found themselves every single moment all these years is also spoken of by these women to highlight the strain every personal relationship has gone through over the last 12 years. Some in the camps speculated about the drop in birth-rates and the dangerous implications it carried for the community. Many of them often talked about "extinction". For many women who were already married in the 1990s this migration has meant a separation and isolation from their parental homes and larger families which were often seen by them as support structures (most of the community is getting scattered even now as families move out of the camps to resettle into small flats in Delhi suburbs and the links with even the camp community have begun to weaken). In my interviews in the camps, most women were nostalgic about marriages, festivals, Shivratri celebrations, frequent visits to neighbours and the rest of the family, shopping in bazaars, close friendships with Muslim women, when they spoke of their life in Kashmir. The younger women recalled their days in high school and college, and contrasted it to their present life, which is constrained and often surrounded by unfriendly neighbours. One of the women explained to me, using the allegory of birds building a nest that however far and wide the birds may travel, in the evening they must 'return' to their nests and that the Pandits have no nests anymore, "we can never return home in the evening". Also, there are no interactions for them outside the camp, all social and festive occasions mean hopping over to the next cubicle in the camp. Veena's marriage took place in the very camp she now lives in, though she stressed that there aren't any intra-camp marriages (meaning marriages between people of the same camp, this being a necessary invention to act as a safeguard and deterrent for young people in the camp). She also spoke of how all the promise and potential in the younger women was not realized, their education and all other career opportunities were throttled as there was so much paranoia about honour of the community with which the Kashmiri Pandit women found themselves burdened. Thus most girls were married in their teens because of the fear of things "spiralling out of control" (to express the gravity of the situation Veena went to the extreme of saying that the practice of "baal vivaha" or child marriage has been revived by the community). Again a revelation to me because i have not seen or heard of this practice having flourished post 1990. However, she was also quick to point out that in many cases like herself the migration provided a much needed exposure to new worlds and opportunities. Even though her own education had been disrupted for some years, today Veena has a good career in a multinational corporation. She mentions how the quotas and reserved seats in various institutions like medical colleges, engineering colleges devised by various state governments for the Kashmiri Pandits such as by the government in Maharashtra has been the biggest boon for the young in the community. This is what a well celebrated 'Human Rights Activist' told me in Kashmir. I had asked him why he did not talk about atrocities on kashmiri Pandits in same vain as atrocities on people of his own faith. He had replied, "Pandit exodus has actually benefittted them...they are better off than they have ever been" thus implying they are not a human rights case. Its true that Maharshtra Government has reserved Quotas for kashmiri Pandits...DO YOU HAVE ANY STATISTICS ABOUT HOW MANY KASHMIRI PANDITS CAN STUDY IN KASHMIR's ENGINEERING AND MEDICAL COLLEGES?) She narrated a story about the Karbala massacre.in order to speak about a community building their lives after displacement. "kehte hai jab shiao pe zulm hua tha, unka paani roka gaya tha, unhe ghar se beghar kiya gaya tha, at that time Prophet Muhammad ki ma ne, unhone ek dua dee thee ki jo bhi beghar hoga bhagwaan usko bahut jaldi settle bhi kar dega, jisko zulm ki wajah se apni zameen chornee paregee, unka bahut jaldi settlement hoga, aur who dua sach hui." ( It is said that when the Shias were facing oppression and were forced to leave their homes, the Prophet's mother prayed that all those who lose their land and home due to oppression should find resettlement. and that prayer was answered). Interestingly Prophet's mother had died long before Karbala when Prophet Muhammad himself was very young.but what I wanted to emphasize through this story is the threads, which often come up through such cultural references which still connect the Pandits in the camps and the Muslims in the Valley. Veena remembered the night of 16th January 1990 when they left the Valley vividly. She remembered the exact objects they had carried with them that night. "chaar bartan, petromax, ek chula." familiar objects.this is the home they carried with them to the cubicles in these camps.She remembered how as a young girl, she and her siblings were most excited at the prospect of travelling on a truck, unaware of the seriousness of the situation when they were leaving the Valley. She remembers that the older members of the family cried throughout the journey while she fought with her siblings as to who would occupy the window seat. Most people left their houses with very little as they were sure that they would be able to return home that spring. (They also took little because most of them including my family and our neighbours left in a single truck in the dead of the night. Remembring to not mention things in all encompassing detail as you do, makes your study a very subtle propaganda) Geeta, from the Hauzrani camp, in response to my query about the memory of home, pointed to a young adolescent boy and said that he was only a year old when they had left the Valley, but he often tells his friends in school "Hum Kashmir mein baraf se khelte the." (We used to play with snow in Kashmir) and all the older members in the camp tease him and ask him, "lekin aap kabhi Kashmir gaye hain?" (But have you ever been to Kashmir?) . In many ways, she said, they are all like him carrying their fragile identity and memories of home in their hearts and minds. _________________________________________________________________ E-mail just got better. Find out why. http://server1.msn.co.in/features/general/extrastorage/index.asp Click here! _________________________________________ 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: Reply Reply All Forward Delete Put in Folder...InboxSent MessagesDraftsTrash Can Previous Next | Close MSN - More Useful Everyday MSN Home | My MSN | Hotmail | Search | Shopping | Money | People & Chat © 2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. TERMS OF USE Privacy Statement AJAY RAINA B - 8, SAI MILAP, SAI BABA COMPLEX, GOREGAON EAST, MUMBAI 400 063 INDIA 91 22 8414339 ajayraina at vsnl.com rainaajay at hotmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030726/592b203e/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: spacer.gif Type: image/gif Size: 42 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030726/592b203e/attachment-0002.gif From sunil at mahiti.org Tue Jul 29 09:57:37 2003 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: 29 Jul 2003 09:57:37 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Corporate Fallout Detector Message-ID: <1059452857.1838.11.camel@mahitilaptop.mahitinet> http://web.media.mit.edu/jpatten/cfd/ Corporate Fallout Detector The Corporate Fallout Detector reads barcodes off of consumer products, and makes a noise similar to a gieger counter of varying intensity based on the social or environmental record of the company that produces the product. I came up with the numbers by correlating several online bardcode databases with a pollution database and a corporate ethics database. Of course the data produced by this approach is subjective and inaccurate at times, but that's part of why I built it: It's difficult for consumers trace corporate actions through the maze of corporate ownership, and find who is really responsible. This helps create an environment where consumers have difficulty making informed purchasing decisions.... without the use of "special tools"... The case is made from a discarded steel computer case, cut on a waterjet cutter and bent with a metal brake. Inside is a SaJe microcontroller and a Wasp barcode scanner. Click on the thumbnails at left for larger images -- -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org 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 "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org 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 "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas" George B. Shaw From geert at desk.nl Tue Jul 29 09:59:59 2003 From: geert at desk.nl (geert lovink) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 14:29:59 +1000 Subject: [Reader-list] Asia Encounters the Internet (book) Message-ID: <024c01c3558a$1399cc00$1cbc6682@geert> Asia Encounters the Internet -- edited by K.C. Ho , Randy Kluver , C.C Yang http://www.routledge-ny.com/author_bio.cfm?isbn=0415315034 The Internet is developing quicker in Asia than in any other region of the world. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the information society in an Asian context and the impact of these technologies in Asia. These impacts are inevitably uneven and conditioned by issues of telecommunications infrastructure, government politics, cultural and social values and economic realities. The combination of original research, theoretical innovation and detailed case studies make this an important book for scholars and students in Asian studies, media studies, communication studies and sociology. Table of Contents Introduction 1. Asia Encounters the Internet, K.C. Ho, Randolph Kluver and Kenneth C.C. Yang PART I. Perspectives and Critical Orientations 2. The State of Internet Use in Asia, Tim Beal 3. Catching Up and Falling Behind: Inequality, IT and the Asian Diaspora, Anthony P. D'Costa 4. Cyberspace, Surveillance and Social Control: The Hidden Face of the Internet in Asia, David Lyon 5. Global Technology meets Local Environment: State Attempts to Control Internet Content, Carolyn Penfold 6. Piracy, Open Source and International Intellectual Property Law, Debora Halbert PART II. Issues and Impacts:Case Studies 7. From Real to Virtual (and back again):Civil Society, Public Sphere, and the Internet in Indonesia, Merlyn Lim 8. MalaysiaKini.com and its Impact on Journalism and Politics in Malaysia, James Chin 9. Who is Setting the Chinese Agenda? The Impact of Online Chatrooms on Party Presses in China, Li Xiguang, Qin Xuan and Randolph Kluver 10. Clicking for Votes: Assessing Japanese Political Campaigns on the Web, Leslie M. Tkach-Kawasaki 11. The Tamil Diaspora, Tamil Militancy and the Internet, Shyam Tekwani 12. Construction and Performance of Virtual Identity in the Chinese Internet, Karsten Giese 13. Opening a Pandora's Box: The Cyber Activism of Japanese Women, Junko R. Onosaka 14. Support and Spewing: Everyday Activities of Hindu Online Groups, K.S. Arul Maragatha Muthu Selvan 15. Communication and Relationship in Online and Offline Worlds: A Study of Singapore Youths, Waipeng Lee and Brenda Chan From meenugaur at hotmail.com Tue Jul 29 13:48:42 2003 From: meenugaur at hotmail.com (meenu gaur) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 08:18:42 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Ajay Raina on naive grant seekers and azaadi propagandists Message-ID: Dear Meenu, I find many galling innacuracies and inconsistencies in your 'research paper' but since you say its based on your interactions with some of the inmates I would take them at face value as perhaps 'problems of language and translation'. But i am alarmed at the confidence with which you have set out to dismantle and discredit the 'narratives' of Pandit refugees in India - as contradictory - through your subtly biased analysis. Just look at this, "Many recounted stories of how Pandit women were being forced to marry Muslim militants though these incidents and stories often took place in an elsewhere which nobody seemed to have been much familiar with� all of them had heard of such a thing happening from someone else." (In one sentence you state what you have been told and in the next sentence you put a question mark on its telling.) (for your benefit i have studiously underlined all that i find inaccurate / biased / and outright propagandist in your study paper.) More than anything I wonder if you or anybody could ever feel the courage to 'research' the narratives of 'atrocities' on Kashmiri women in Kashmir..and then also have the courage to analyse or to question the veracity of their versions... Have you actually ever come across anybody in Kashmir... met anybody in Person or even ever been shown a grave of someone in Kashmir who could show you the scars of torture at the hands of security forces or even at the hands of terrorists. This is not to say these atrocities did not take place...but because you would not have a tangible proof of these events, would you discount the events in the same vain as you have in the case of Pandit refugees. And why pick up on Kashmiri Pandits when you do not have the guts to ask Muslims of Kashmir about 'atrocities' on them and about their narratives of the rebellion of the winter 1990. I am asking this because of your own self confessed lack of courage (In your film on Kashmir) when you set out for / but did not go to the 'Kunan poshpura' village where the alleged mass rape is said to have happened...Why was that? And yet when 'safe' in the plains of India you happily saunter off into camps of Pandit refugees to probe the hapless people & analyse the narratives of real or imagined atrocities on them. I have also read your earlier paper about your 'research' in Pandit refugee camps. There is nothing in your study which indicates that the inferences drawn do not confirm with what the 'azadi propagandists in kashmir have had to say about Pandit refugees. ...I have begun to wonder What you are?...a naive grant seeking researcher or a propagandist sympathiser for the 'azadi' brigade in Kashmir. At the risk of sounding insensitive and gravely offensive to you, I would still hope you'll someday soon tell us about what you saw at Kunan Poshpura and how you'd have analysed the narratives of 26 'allegedly' gangraped women. Ajay Raina ----- Original Message ----- Sent: Saturday, July 26, 2003 3:51 PM Subject: sarai mail In this posting I would like to focus on the narratives of the women that I interviewed in the course of this research. When a community encounters a threat, its fears are often expressed through discourses on the honour and dignity of the women of the community. The narratives of Kashmiri Pandit migrants (REFUGEES) about 1990 focus on how it had been getting difficult for the women from Pandit households to move around in the Valley with self-respect and dignity. Many recounted stories of how Pandit women were being forced to marry Muslim militants (I know about rapes and threats to similar effect, but its for the first time i hear that any of the Pandit women were forced to marry militants. Only some of those Pandits who stayed back were forced to marry and convert. This happened in a few villages. If you have been told this by the refugees, did you cross check this with anybody else? You ought to have because this is a grave provocation VHP kind of guys would have much liked to propagate) though these incidents and stories often took place in an elsewhere which nobody seemed to have been much familiar with� all of them had heard of such a thing happening from someone else. (Similarly i have only heard from lots of people but never from the victims themselves of atrocities done by security forces. What are we to make of this hearing business only!) I make this point not to suggest that atrocities were never committed on Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley but that rumour mongering and criminal mischief by rogue elements took on an acutely ugly turn for a community whose sense of security had already been completely eroded by 1990. (So are you suggesting there was some atrocities and much rumour mongering. Can we say the same about Gow kadal / Bijbehara / Kunan Poshpura / Chrar Sharif / Aga Shahid Ali poems....) So much so that the militants found willing partners in these criminal/rogue elements who did all they could to create confusion in the Valley ..the former Chairman of the Hurriyat had once called "confusion" a desirable goal for the ends of Pakistan in the Valley. The ubiquitous posters and the notorious hit lists could be drawn up in a militant hideout or by schoolboys in the back alleys of downtown Srinagar�(So you say there were militants who were purely militants and there were criminals and rogue elements who were purely that. In whose side you are is plainly obvious. Does this absolve the separatist leadership of its role in encouraging the exodus of Hindus) nobody bothered to stop anybody in the interests of �confusion�. But a more sinister goal seems to have been at work here�to instill fear in the hearts and minds of not just the Pandit minority but that of everybody in Kashmir. The State did nothing to restore the confidence of the people or allay the fears of the Pandit minority, protect them or in the least dispel many of these rumours� it already had too much on its hands faced with a complete collapse of civil administration and first stirrings of rebellion even in the J&K Police. Even then the State wasn�t interested in anything but �national security�. (So only the state machinery was responsible and not the militants. Perhaps you could have mentioned here that the state apparatus was in the Hands of National Conference of Faroukh Abdullah - the benefactor of a legacy that commanded the hearts and minds of Kashmiri Muslims at least till Rubiya Sayeed was Kidnapped. Perhaps you could have asked your Pandit interviewees what they thought of National Conference and its Goonda'''brigade...) Someone in the Sultanpuri camp mentioned to me, that though Kashmiri Pandits may well now be living impoverished lives in refugee camps of Delhi but at least their women live with honour and dignity. However, if you imagine a camp such as the South Extension camp in Delhi housed in a �community centre�� one large hall� a �baraat ghar�, as these halls are called� 27 families, which would approximately mean 104-110 people, in this hall or �baraat ghar�� each allotted 2 feet X 5 feet minuscule spaces, it is difficult to understand the rhetoric about self-respect and dignity� (so incase of Pandits if they speak of self respect and dignity it is a rhetoric, but for Kashmiri secessionists, its a cause) But the women I spoke with frequently brought up this lack of space in their narratives and this is understandable, as it is the women who spend most of their time inside these camps... very few are employed outside the camp. The refugee camp is a space where the notion of the private is all but non-existent and the only available spaces are shared spaces between the men and women, the young and the old� and, as is often the case, men dominate even these matchbox spaces. The women feel they were better off in a traditional society, which at least offered its own spaces for them. Veena, one of the women I interviewed, told me that most Pandit households in Kashmir had segregated spaces for men and women and they did not share the same space even with the men from their own families (I do not know and i have not seen in Pandit households if there were any segregated spaces for male and female. Not even in Muslim households would you find segregated spaces for males and females. The concept of 'zenana' as we know it does not exist among kashmiri's) ..the reason she cited for the existence of this practice was the shared culture between the Hindus and the Muslims in the Valley. In the camps, they had to abandon their traditional ways of living. The women of the camps see the loss of their private space as a loss of dignity. There are small common bathrooms in the camp, women have to sleep cramped in corners in their small cubicles next to other members of their own family or as was the case in the earlier days, in the large unpartitioned halls next to the members of the other families. The complete lack of intimacy between couples and the impossibility of any real emotional engagement due to the constant gaze in which each of them found themselves every single moment all these years is also spoken of by these women to highlight the strain every personal relationship has gone through over the last 12 years. Some in the camps speculated about the drop in birth-rates and the dangerous implications it carried for the community. Many of them often talked about �extinction�. For many women who were already married in the 1990s this migration has meant a separation and isolation from their parental homes and larger families which were often seen by them as support structures ...most of the community is getting scattered even now as families move out of the camps to resettle into small flats in Delhi suburbs and the links with even the camp community have begun to weaken. In my interviews in the camps, most women were nostalgic about marriages, festivals, Shivratri celebrations, frequent visits to neighbours and the rest of the family, shopping in bazaars, close friendships with Muslim women, when they spoke of their life in Kashmir. The younger women recalled their days in high school and college, and contrasted it to their present life, which is constrained and often surrounded by unfriendly neighbours. One of the women explained to me, using the allegory of birds building a nest that however far and wide the birds may travel, in the evening they must 'return' to their nests and that the Pandits have no nests anymore, �we can never return home in the evening�. Also, there are no interactions for them outside the camp, all social and festive occasions mean hopping over to the next cubicle in the camp. Veena�s marriage took place in the very camp she now lives in, though she stressed that there aren�t any intra-camp marriages meaning marriages between people of the same camp, this being a necessary invention to act as a safeguard and deterrent for young people in the camp. She also spoke of how all the promise and potential in the younger women was not realized, their education and all other career opportunities were throttled as there was so much paranoia about honour of the community with which the Kashmiri Pandit women found themselves burdened. Thus most girls were married in their teens because of the fear of things �spiralling out of control� (to express the gravity of the situation Veena went to the extreme of saying that the practice of �baal vivaha� or child marriage has been revived by the community). Again a revelation to me because i have not seen or heard of this practice having flourished post 1990. However, she was also quick to point out that in many cases like herself the migration provided a much needed exposure to new worlds and opportunities. Even though her own education had been disrupted for some years, today Veena has a good career in a multinational corporation. She mentions how the quotas and reserved seats in various institutions like medical colleges, engineering colleges devised by various state governments for the Kashmiri Pandits such as by the government in Maharashtra has been the biggest boon for the young in the community. (This is what a well celebrated 'Human Rights Activist' told me in Kashmir. I had asked him why he did not talk about atrocities on kashmiri Pandits in same vain as atrocities on people of his own faith. He had replied, "Pandit exodus has actually benefittted them...they are better off than they have ever been" thus implying they are not a human rights case. Its true that Maharshtra Government has reserved Quotas for kashmiri Pandits...DO YOU HAVE ANY STATISTICS ABOUT HOW MANY KASHMIRI PANDITS CAN STUDY IN KASHMIR's ENGINEERING AND MEDICAL COLLEGES?) She narrated a story about the Karbala massacre�in order to speak about a community building their lives after displacement� �kehte hai jab shiao pe zulm hua tha, unka paani roka gaya tha, unhe ghar se beghar kiya gaya tha, at that time Prophet Muhammad ki ma ne, unhone ek dua dee thee ki jo bhi beghar hoga bhagwaan usko bahut jaldi settle bhi kar dega, jisko zulm ki wajah se apni zameen chornee paregee, unka bahut jaldi settlement hoga, aur who dua sach hui.� It is said that when the Shias were facing oppression and were forced to leave their homes, the Prophet�s mother prayed that all those who lose their land and home due to oppression should find resettlement� and that prayer was answered. Interestingly Prophet�s mother had died long before Karbala when Prophet Muhammad himself was very young�but what I wanted to emphasize through this story is the threads, which often come up through such cultural references which still connect the Pandits in the camps and the Muslims in the Valley. Veena remembered the night of 16th January 1990 when they left the Valley vividly. She remembered the exact objects they had carried with them that night� �chaar bartan, petromax, ek chula�� familiar objects�this is the home they carried with them to the cubicles in these camps�She remembered how as a young girl, she and her siblings were most excited at the prospect of travelling on a truck, unaware of the seriousness of the situation when they were leaving the Valley. She remembers that the older members of the family cried throughout the journey while she fought with her siblings as to who would occupy the window seat. Most people left their houses with very little as they were sure that they would be able to return home that spring� (They also took little because most of them including my family and our neighbours left in a single truck in the dead of the night. Remembring to not mention things in all encompassing detail as you do, makes your study a very subtle propaganda) Geeta, from the Hauzrani camp, in response to my query about the memory of home, pointed to a young adolescent boy and said that he was only a year old when they had left the Valley, but he often tells his friends in school �Hum Kashmir mein baraf se khelte the�� We used to play with snow in Kashmir and all the older members in the camp tease him and ask him, �lekin aap kabhi Kashmir gaye hain?� But have you ever been to Kashmir? � In many ways, she said, they are all like him carrying their fragile identity and memories of home in their hearts and minds. _________________________________________________________________ E-mail just got better. Find out why. http://server1.msn.co.in/features/general/extrastorage/index.asp Click here! _________________________________________________________________ Play detective. Identify genuine Windows. http://server1.msn.co.in/sp03/coa/index.asp Win cool prizes. From abirbazaz at rediffmail.com Wed Jul 30 18:28:52 2003 From: abirbazaz at rediffmail.com (abir bazaz) Date: 30 Jul 2003 12:58:52 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] For Ghulam Nabi Sheikh Message-ID: <20030730125852.12437.qmail@webmail10.rediffmail.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030730/5849b80d/attachment.pl From idy010 at coventry.ac.uk Wed Jul 30 22:09:49 2003 From: idy010 at coventry.ac.uk (sreejata roy) Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 17:39:49 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Todays Guardian Message-ID: <3F27F4D5.1F248DCF@coventry.ac.uk> The teenagers traded for slave labour and sex Today, a new international study reveals that Britain has become an easy target for child trafficking gangs. In a special report, Audrey Gillan exposes the plight of the victims of this hidden trade in human misery The woman whose picture was in the passport looked a little bit like Funmi Adeyemi, but just a little. This made the 15-year-old nervous but it was fine. When her trafficker brought her to nervous but it was fine. When her trafficker brought her to Heathrow airport the pair of them sailed through immigration. It was easy to pass as the man's sister because no questionswere asked. Easy to become anonymous. Easy to slip into alife of domestic slavery in modern-day Britain. Out of Nigeria and on her way to a council house on the Ferrier estate in south-east London. Out of a life of selling plastic cups and plates at the side of the road for no pay and a regular beating to a life as a "maid" working from 6am to midnight,looking after seven kids and cleaning a house for no pay and a regular beating. Funmi is the face of a hidden problem in Britain. Her story is like of hundreds of other girls trafficked to Britain for either that domestic servitude or sexual exploitation. A story of children trapped in rooms with no papers, no identity, where they are nothing but a commodity traded for slave labour or tawdry sex,and living under the fear of voodoo. Funmi is one of the first trafficking victims to brave the threat of reprisals against herself and her family and speak publicly about the burgeoning, hidden trade in children coming into the UK. In the course of a month-long investigation the Guardian has spoken to other victims and dozens of people working with similarly affected children and uncovered a problem that is growing steadily in major cities across the country. Children,mostly from Africa, have recently been discovered in cities such as Newcastle, Nottingham, Northampton and Glasgow: almost all of them have definitely been trafficked. Funmi escaped from the Kidbrooke flat where she worked for three years in March. The Guardian knows the name of her trafficker but cannot identify him because a lack of legislation means he cannot be prosecuted for bringing a child into the country illegally, leaving her on her own with his children, and enslaving her. Often authorities believe the man, the "trafficker", rather than listen to people like Funmi. She says her trafficker once forced her to have sex with him but she will never be able to prove it. "He told me he would break my hand. I told him no but he wouldn't listen," Funmi said. "After that.. I went to live with his sister and she used to beat me. She banged my head on the wall and was beating me with a belt. One day she just threw me out of her house. I didn't have any shoes on and I didn't know where to go. She came after me and when I got back to the house the grandma said I should get on my knees and say sorry to the brother. During that time I was always crying and thinking about running away from them. "One day I went to our neighbour's house and asked her if she had a maid and she said she didn't have time. I contacted our pastor and I told him everything and he said there was nothing I could do. He would just pray for me." No one seemed to want to listen to what Funmi had to say.When police were called to the house they believed she was her trafficker's sister. When he tried to take her back to Nigeria through fear he might get caught, immigration officers believed his story not Funmi's. He was free to go, Funmi was fingerprinted, photographed and held in a detention centre. Today sees the launch of a report by Unicef UK which highlights Today sees the launch of a report by Unicef UK which highlights the changing face of trafficking in the country. It says: "Children are being brought to countries and cities all over the UK. In places such as Newcastle and Nottingham cases have only emerged in recent months, indicating that traffickers are widening their operations, targeting places where the authorities are not aware of the issue." the changing face of trafficking in the country. It says: "Children are being brought to countries and cities all over the UK. In places such as Newcastle and Nottingham cases have only emerged in recent months, indicating that traffickers are widening their operations, targeting places where the authorities are not aware of the issue." The charity says that whilst the government is attempting to legislate against people being trafficked for sexual exploitation within the sexual offences bill currently passing through the House of Commons, children being trafficked for other reasons, be it private fostering or domestic labour, remain unprotected. Unicef's report reveals that recorded figures of children trafficked here is "the tip of the iceberg". It says: "There may well be hundreds, if not thousands, of children in Britain who have been brought here for exploitation. We won't know the true extent of the problem until the necessary mechanisms are in place." Unicef says it is not just an international problem but is "here in our own backyard". The report points out that the face of trafficking in Britain has changed over the past five years and "the biggest noticeable difference is the wide range of African nationalities being trafficked". It says "traffickers are widening their operations and trying new places". Britain is emerging as a key staging post for girls being trafficked to other European states, such as Italy, where laws against the illicit trade are more stringent. Authorities first became aware that west African girls were being trafficked to Italy via Britain when they started disappearing after being taken into the care of West Sussex social services following discovery upon arrival at Gatwick airport. A police investigation - Operation Newbridge - was launched and a pattern of trafficking detected. Such is their fear of the trafficker that, since 1995, 74 girls have "disappeared" from the care of social services and returned to the men who sneaked them into the country. The Guardian has found that over 18 months between 1998 and The Guardian has found that over 18 months between 1998 and The Guardian has found that over 18 months between 1998 and 1999 180 suspected trafficking victims went missing after arrival at Heathrow airport. 1999 180 suspected trafficking victims went missing after arrival at Heathrow airport. ..................................................... http://www.guardian.co.uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1008605,00.html From bharatich at hotmail.com Thu Jul 31 10:43:52 2003 From: bharatich at hotmail.com (bharati chaturvedi) Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 05:13:52 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] saraswati plus Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20030731/9cc23859/attachment.html From announcer at pukar.org.in Thu Jul 31 14:56:37 2003 From: announcer at pukar.org.in (PUKAR @ JACIC) Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 14:56:37 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] 8.8.03: Radio Beyond Broadcasts Message-ID: Dear Friends: PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research) and JACIC (Jindal Arts Creative Interaction Centre) invite you to a discussion on "Radio Beyond Broadcasts". This panel discussion will explore the uses of low-power radio as an inexpensive medium for creative expression in theatre, concert music, heritage walks, street performances, sound installations, and other forms of non-polluting public audio broadcasting. VICKRAM CRISHNA, CEO of Radiophony India (http://www.radiophony.com) will interact with ABHA NARAIN LAMBAH, architect and heritage activist, and SHARMILA SAMANT and TUSHAAR JOG of the Open Circle Arts Trust (http://www.opencirclearts.org/), on the potential uses of non-commercial radio to organise new communities, and promote awareness around urban arts, heritage, and citizenship. The panel discussion will be moderated by SHEKHAR KRISHNAN, Associate Director of PUKAR. Date: FRIDAY 8 AUGUST 2003 Time: 6.30 P.M. At: THE LITTLE THEATRE National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA) Dorabji Tata Road, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400021 _____ 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